nVidias marketing on hd what does it mean

oqvist · Post by **oqvist** » 13 Aug 2006, 09:50

http://www.nvidia.com/page/technology_extreme_hd_home.html

They support HD TV???? In what way? You can watch HDTV on ATI and Matrox as well what is it that nVidia is offering?

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 13 Aug 2006, 13:26

I think you'll find that that is not, specifically, HDTV. It is HD, but not TV. And it's actually greater than HD, as 'HD' is 1920x1080.

It's not so much that ATi and Matrox don't support it (although I'm not certain any Matrox cards support 2560x1600 - and I know the TH2Go doesn't...) but the fact that ATi haven't exactly tried to make widescreen gaming easy...

Marketing is everything.

neoWidescreen · Post by **neoWidescreen** » 13 Aug 2006, 13:42

Marketing is everything.

Indeed it is. eg. Microsoft.

Some may say HD video is pointless, but there was a preview trailer for Ghost Recon Advanced Warrior that was released at 1920x1200... and the quality was MINDBLOWING. nVidia doesn't need to sell HD - I'm already sold! :lol:

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 13 Aug 2006, 13:49

The point is that Matrox is pushing the TripleHead and surround gaming - more power to them, it's a good idea. nVidia are pushing gaming on one panel, at ultra-high resolutions - that's good too. ATi, on the other hand (perhaps caused by doubts and worries over the AMD buyout) seem to have missed the 'next step' of display evolution.

nVidia will grab large portions of the 'XHD' (as they coin it) market because they're so visible.

When it comes down to it, it's business. It makes sense to take advantage of a competitor who dropped the ball.

neoWidescreen · Post by **neoWidescreen** » 13 Aug 2006, 14:07

no offense to any ATI fans reading this, but ATI has always been considered the follower of nVidia. nVidia pushes out new R&D technologies like shaders 3.0 and HDR, and ATI implement them too... shortly after. That's not necessarily a negative thing.

I'm scratching my head trying to think of any new innovations that ATi has brought to the market place; except for unified shaders. ATI capatilized it's market position after nVidia goofed up with the FX series.
But other than that, ATi never held the ball in the first place.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 13 Aug 2006, 14:27

Not quite right:

They were the first consumer company to get multi-GPU cards working with the Rage Fury Max.

Also, they were the first to properly support DirectX 9.

ATi's stance on Shader Model 3 was proven correct, although it cost them bragging rights. The next series was out before most games took advantage of SM3, or were actually capable of SM3 work at any decent framerate.

Post by **skipclarke** » 14 Aug 2006, 00:36

Me Con-foosed. :?

Are they saying that widescreen resolutions like 1680x1050 and 1920x1200 are XHD? Is that all it takes for "Extreme HD Gaming"?

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 14 Aug 2006, 16:00

I would think that WSXGA+ and WUXGA are 'high def'... while WQUXGA (or whatever 2560x1600 is) is XHD.

blueyedsoul · Post by **blueyedsoul** » 14 Aug 2006, 19:07

I would think that WSXGA+ and WUXGA are 'high def'... while WQUXGA (or whatever 2560x1600 is) is XHD.

They actually coin all three as XHD, as can be seen in the first graphic here.

FramerateUK · Post by **FramerateUK** » 14 Aug 2006, 21:07

I guess theyre just emphasising that the resolutions are far higher than the 720p that the games consoles are internally rendering the games at (even if they do scale it up to 1080i).

I wish ATI would do some more advertising...

Nabil · Post by **Nabil** » 15 Aug 2006, 14:50

No actually you guys are wrong about some things..

While it is true that what they are talking about in that article is not "HDTV" but rather just really high resolutions, nvidia cards and drivers do in fact support HDTV output.

Have any of you guys connected nvidia cards to HDTVs? I've done so a lot, using component, DVI, and HDMI cables.

Nvidia can output all HDTV signals. If you connect via component cables the nvidia drivers will automatically switch to HDTV mode and you will get a bunch of options most of you have probably never seen before. One of these options allows you to select what kind of HDTV signal you want to output - you can select all HDTV signals, including 720p and 1080i.

If you use a DVI or HDMI cable you can also choose to output 1080p. Also, when using DVI or HDMI cable, you may need to tell your video card it is connected to an HDTV and not a monitor. You can go into custom timings and check the box that says "treat as HDTV"

Using this method you can send HDTV 720p and 1080p signals to your PC monitor, though it may not be able to read the signals correctly. However, some monitors, like the Dell 2405FPW can actually read both 720p and 1080p correctly and can even scale them to 16:9 correctly if you choose aspect in the monitor's image settings (the monitor can't do that if you simply make a 1280x720 or 1920x1080 custom resolution).

I've taken a screenshot to show you guys what it looks like:

Post by **skipclarke** » 14 Sep 2006, 15:05

NVIDIA's XHD campaign is specifically around 1680x1050, 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 resolutions. And, it is specifically targeted at LCD PC Monitors. While their products do support HDTVs, and their technical departments do what they can do support HDTVs, the marketing campaign isn't targeted at those.

The reason is that LCD PC monitors use the VESA standards, which are consistent and easy to reproduce. HDTV uses a different set of standards (an ANSI standard, I believe). The standard itself provides for overscan, which includes "non visible" data. And this provides difficulties for NVIDIA. And these aren't always implemented consistenty, as seen in how different HDTVs give different amounts of overscan. For NVIDIA, ensuring a consistent (and reproducable) experience is essential to this campaign.

At least that is what my contacts at NVIDIA said.

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