There’s no place for 720p media in today’s increasingly common 1080p and 4K displays, but despite that, the resolution continues to be popular. There’s a sea of old YouTube videos uploaded in 240p, let alone 720p, and several OTT platforms limit the resolution to 720p on their more affordable plans. If you are an Edge user, 720p’s blocky mess could soon turn more tolerable. Microsoft has announced that it’s testing video super resolution (VSR) on the experimental branch of Edge. VSR improves the quality of low-res videos, turning them crisper and making them look high-res. If you are a gamer, you must’ve heard of Nvidia’s videogame performance-enhancing DLSS tech – VSR works similarly to that. “Video super resolution uses machine learning to enhance the quality of video viewed in Microsoft Edge by using graphics card agnostic algorithms to remove blocky compression artifacts and upscale the video resolution, so you can enjoy crisp and clear videos on YouTube and other video streaming platforms without sacrificing bandwidth,” reads Microsoft’s press release. The feature is only available on Edge Canary for now, that too for just a handful of users, but should come to more users in the “coming weeks.” Since it relies on GPU-agnostic algorithms and because of the processing power required, the hardware requirements for VSR are steep. It needs Nvidia RTX 20/30/40 series or AMD RX5700-RX7800 series GPUs and for the device to not be on battery power to work. The video to be upscaled should also not be DRM-protected. All popular OTT platforms like Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime use DRM to protect copyrights for their content, so VSR likely wouldn’t be able to work its magic on them. Where it will work is platforms like YouTube, which are DRM-free. Once available, VSR will be automatically enabled by Edge if your PC and the website support it. It can be disabled, though, from an HD icon on the address bar if you’re concerned about power usage.
