My old DVD rips look better on Plex now—thanks to NVIDIA’s forgotten AI upscaler
I’ll be honest: I completely forgot that NVIDIA’s super resolution RTX video existed. The other day I was browsing the NVIDIA app to try to troubleshoot a custom resolution issue and spotted the setting.
This brought back the initial announcement of the tech flood and why I never used it. My browser-based videos already looked good and I had plenty of bandwidth. But now that I have a Plex server full of DVDs of old shows, the idea of using my GPU’s AI hardware to upgrade that content has become very appealing.
What Nvidia Video Super Resolution Actually Does (And Why It Matters)
In case you’ve never heard of NVIDIA VSR, it’s an NVIDIA driver feature that allows RTX GPUs to apply the power of your GPU’s tensor cores that typically power DLSS, and use them to increase the clarity of a video up to 4K.
It works with any video stream played in a Chromium browser like Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge. You don’t need to do anything special to make it work other than enable it in the NVIDIA app under “Adjust Video Image Settings” in the “RTX Video Enhancement” section.
If you leave this window open and start playing a video in your browser, you will see the text change from “inactive” to “active.” So you will know if it works or not.
Of course, in my case I could see it immediately. It’s difficult to show this using screenshots because VSR stops working when you pause the video. I tried to create a comparison using the Darya DVD that I ripped from Plex. I imported these for my wife, but turns out the PlayStation 5 is region locked when it comes to DVDs, so that was the only way for her to watch the box set I bought her!
I think most people should see that VSR cleans up jaggedness in the picture, but it’s much more obvious on a large 4K TV. Likewise, my Star Trek DVD clips look much better with VSR enabled.
Of course, our main TV already has a great upscaler for DVDs, but in my eyes the VSR is clearly better in motion.
Don’t take my word for it. There are many old TV shows on YouTube, such as The ComComputer Chronicles and many free movies too. If you have a GPU capable of enabling VSR, turn it on and off while one of these videos is playing and see if you can tell.
Why Plex is the perfect partner for VSR
VSR seems like the perfect fit for Plex, because for many people, it’s where they store their old media. DVD rips, digitized VHS tapes, and similar low-quality footage are typical of Plex installations.
DVD rips, in particular, are a great use case, because unfortunately, even with a DVD player connected to my PC, I can’t apply VSR to that video stream. Unless there is some sort of browser based DVD player that I don’t know about. Now that I’ve said it, I bet someone will at least tell me about it!
Why my TV apps and streaming boxes can’t compete
While all of my modern physical TVs and media players can do some type of video upscaling, they simply don’t have the power (and AI training data) that NVIDIA’s hardware and software provide. The only streaming box I know of that does AI upscaling of this caliber is NVIDIA’s Shield TV.
I have a lot of old anime DVDs that I watch on my CRT TV because they look atrocious on my 4K flat screen, but ripping them to Plex and applying VSR makes them perfectly acceptable on my more modern TVs.
The Hidden Tradeoffs (and Why I Still Prefer This Setup)
The only reason this is practical for me is that I have a Windows computer permanently connected to my 4K TV. If this were not the case, it would be impossible to benefit from the technology using Plex on my TV. I don’t miss it as much when watching those old 4:3 shows on my iPad, because the smaller screen size makes everything look sharp.
Honestly, until I rediscovered VSR, I completely avoided watching my old media on my new TVs because I found the poor upscaling quite jarring. So if you like old movies and TV shows and have a GPU that can do VSR, I really suggest you experiment with it a little. You might find a whole new way to enjoy our Plex library.
