Do graphics cards make streaming video higher quality?

[yannifb]

I have a gtx 295, and i always hear about people wanting good gfx cards for HTPCs since they supposedly make video look better. Im about to watch a movie via netflix instant streaming and i want to know if i can increase the quality using my card.

 

[yannifb]

bump- i need an answer quick, any help would be appreciated

 

[hunter315]

There are some programs that support GPU accelerated upscaling, however the graphics card itself will not do that without the program calling for it.

 

[jaguarskx]

Generally speaking, mainstream video card should be all that you need for getting the best video / movie quality. In the recent past the high-end video cards lacked multimedia subroutines to improve video quality which the mainstream cards did have basically because high-end video cards were more for gaming than anything else. Now all high-end video cards (to the best of my knowledge) have all multimedia subroutines enabled.

Low-end cards are a different story. They will lack some multimedia capabilities to save on cost or power or both. www.Xbitlabs.com did a test on "HTPC cards" to determine which ones offered the best video quality. The cards varied from mainstream video cards like the HD 4650/4670 and Geforce 9600GT down to the low-end HD 2400/3400 and GeForce 8500. The best results were from the HD 46xxx and Geforce 9600GT which tied for first place.

See review:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/media-playback.html

 

[baverdi]

internet controls most of the video stream. if you are able to stream real high def then yes.