I understand the standalone player landscape when it comes to HD and upscaling but I'm quite hazy with this subject as it relates to the home computer. I have two burners and a plain old DVD-ROM drive, a 2900 xt, connected to a Viewsonic G225f CRT monitor via a DVI to analog connector.

1. Is it even possible for me to upscale regular DVD movies?

2. Does the dvd drive itself have any bearing on this possibility, OR does it only happen in software (ie. PowerDVD, or the video card drivers)?

3. Is there anyway to test or ensure that the image is being upscaled?

Any info would be great, or even just a link to steer me in the right direction. Thanks.

1. No. Where should that upscaler come from???
2. No, no drive has such capabilities. Software upscaler? Not existent or unreliable, IMO.
3. What kind of "image"?

1. A standalone has a DVD drive, a processor, a video card component, and DVD playing software. So does a PC, why can there be no upscaling then?

2. I've heard people say that they've made their video card output the DVD movie image at greater than original resolution. I know that no additional detail can be added to the image so I thought they were referring to an upscaling process.

3. The DVD movie image that is output on the monitor when played through software like Powerdvd.

What you mean is probably "software upscaling" supported by the video card?!?

Then it all depends on that and the installed drivers.

Thanks for carrying this thread chef. So, even though you say they're useless and/or unreliable, to find out more I should search around for software upscaling as it relates to my ati video card drivers.

And the hardware capabilities!

I have the 2900 xt. I know UVD isn't incorporated into the card but still it is a pretty recent high end card. Am I crazy to just assume that it has the capability?

...probably, but therefore sucks a big amount of power to do that.

The 3850 & 3870 cards are more decent when it comes to power consumption.

Someone corect me if I am wrong, but I don't think you are going to loose capabilities on the 2900 because you dont have the uvd. Not having it just means with some types of video, less of the work load will be done by the video card, and more will be done by the cpu. Uvd just means that all of the decoding work is done by the video card with certain types of video, but the 2900 can play the same with the cpu doing much of the work. Your 2900 does have avivo, ati's HD technology.
http://ati.amd.com/technology/Avivo/index.html
http://ati.amd.com/technology/Avivo/products.html
If I understand it right, all upscaling is doing is converting it to a higher resolution format. If it is done right, it will look fine, but you will not get a better image because you upscaled. Its poor upscaling that can cause poor picture quality (so if your tv does a crappy job upscaling, then an upscaling dvd player might help). It would seem that ati has addressed this issue and the cards can do it fine.
http://ati.amd.com/technology/avivo/...r_v2_final.pdf

All 2900 card don't support and willnever support UVD.

Only 2400x, 2600x, 3850 and 3870 cards do support UVD!

Sorry if I wasn't clear on that. I didn't mean that the 2900's have uvd. The 2900's do NOT have uvd. They do have avivo technology though. Unless I am understanding it wrong, the 2900's have the same capabilities/features as the 2600's etc. when it comes to processing video. The diffrence is that, with the 2600's etc that have uvd, the processing work is done by the video card (through the uvd hardware) when video is decoded for playback. The 2900 is going to have to go through the same process to decode the video, but since it does not have uvd, some of the processing work is sent to the cpu to be processed. Avivo is the software/technology which both have, and uvd is processing hardware that the 2900 does not have. Maybe this will explain it better than I am.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3047&p=1