Nvidia Chrome and Edge Browsers

[Ed: Nvidia was expected to release a driver to support this feature on the 7th, but it did not. A new driver did come out on the 8th, but it does not include support for RTX Video Super Resolution.]
Nvidia has been at the forefront of using AI to upscale images for several years now. Although it begun this journey by using it for video games via Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), it’s now taking it to an unexpected platform: the web browser. On Feb. 7, Chrome 110 will get a wide release, with official support for Nvidia RTX Video Super Resolution, which Nvidia first announced at CES 2023. This will let anyone with a GeForce RTX 30 or 40 series GPU experience upscaled video in both Chrome and Edge.
RTX Video Super Resolution works by taking any low-resolution video viewed in a browser and upscaling it to 4K. This should theoretically allow you to watch a 1080p video on a high-resolution monitor without it looking like garbage. If you’ve ever tried to watch YouTube full-screen on a 4K panel, you know how bad it looks. Nvidia says its algorithm will remove compression artifacts and then upscale the stream. It demonstrated it below with game footage captured at 1080p using H.264 @ 8Mbps. As you can see, it looks quite sharp at 4K and delivers a noticeable improvement in image quality.

Support for Nvidia RTX VSR is already supported in the latest Chrome release labeled 110.0.5481.77, according to Videocardz. It’s not enabled by default; you must turn it on in the Nvidia Control Panel. That is also assuming Nvidia delivers a driver that supports it, although it’s widely expected the company will do so on schedule. It’s unclear why only these GPU families will work, but Nvidia confirmed that support for older GPUs will come later.
It’s an exciting development for GeForce owners, as this has long been a pain point for video consumers. Not many videos are uploaded to streaming sites at 4K due to bandwidth limitations. Many gamers have high-resolution panels, and we’ve been forced to watch videos at lower resolutions. Since this is basically a free “upgrade” for anyone with a late-model GeForce GPU, we can’t wait to try it out and see if the results are as impressive as Nvidia’s marketing video. It seems like a technology that could deliver tangible real-world results. Now we will have to wait to see if AMD offers something similar.
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