NVIDIA announced at CES that it will provide AI-based Video Super Resolution (VSR) technology for GeForce RTX 30 and GeForce RTX 40, which enables resolution enhancement through AI when playing videos through Chromium-based Chrome and Edge browsers; and Microsoft also announced in the Insider Program that it will provide Video Super Resolution technology (Edge VSR) for the Edge browser. Unlike NVIDIA VSR, which requires a new generation graphics card with Tensor Core, Edge VSR can be applied to NVIDIA GeForce RTX 20 and above and AND RX5700 and later graphics card; but under the seemingly beautiful premise, Edge VSR has a bit too many restrictions.
If you want to use Edge VSR, you must join the Windows Insider program and set it in the Canary channel. Currently, 50% of Canacy users are open to use it. If it is already enabled, you will see a dedicated HD symbol in the address bar. If you view it separately Less than 50% of Canary users can manually enter “edge://flags/#edge-video-super-resolution” in the Edge browser to open the function.
▲It is only suitable for video enhancement below 720P, and DRM-protected videos cannot be enhanced
The purpose of Edge VSR is roughly the same as that of NVIDIA VSR. Both use AI algorithms to eliminate blocky compression artifacts and improve image resolution. However, it seems that Edge VSR performs AI calculations directly through the GPU, without the need for AI acceleration cores; however, Edge VSR It is mainly aimed at enhancing videos below 720p and the minimum width and height must be higher than 192 pixels. At the same time, if the movie itself is protected by DRM technology such as PlayReasy or Widevine, it cannot be applied. Simply put, it is like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and other DRM-protected movies. Streaming services are unavailable. Of course, because Edge VSR needs to use independent graphics card resources, it is currently necessary to force Edge to point to an independent graphics card in notebook computers, but Microsoft promises to try to make this feature automatically enabled through hybrid GPU technology.
From the author’s personal inference, the purpose of using Edge VSR may be to provide a better viewing experience in an environment with poor network quality, while NVIDIA VSR is to upgrade the original video quality to 4K. After all, Many streaming videos may only provide the highest FullHD, but the current mainstream of gaming PCs and home TVs is already 2K to 4K.