First, our testing methods

Test system

- 2x AMD Opteron 252
- 4GB Corsair Registered ECC PC3200
- Tyan Thunder K8SE
- Hitachi 7K500
- Silverstone Zeus ST65ZF 650W power supply
- Lian-Li PC-V1200
- Pioneer DVR-109
- Windows XP Professional SP2

ATI All-in-Wonder X1800XL
Catalyst 5.13
ATI Multimedia Center DVD 9.10

NVIDIA GeForce 6600GT
Forceware 81.95
NVIDIA PureVideo Decoder 1.02-185
Windows Media Player 10

XGI Volari 8300
Reactor 3.03.03
CyberLink PowerDVD 6

NEC TheaterSync with HQV Processing
Firmware 1.12.2.618
Silicon Optix Realta
MyHD MDP-130 DVI (source)



Disclosure: I am a consultant to Silicon Optix and have been involved with documentation for the current HQV Benchmark DVD as well as the development of the next-generation HQV benchmark suite for high-definition video processors.

Although H.264 and 1080i deinterlacing are critical elements of high-end video performance, we will focus on standard-definition deinterlacing due to time constraints. The HQV Benchmark DVD is used as our test DVD. This benchmark was chosen given our familiarity with the tests (the second revision of the testing guide was written by me)

All of the tests were conducted using a 1280x1024 DVI connection.

Screenshots were taken with the Epiphan VGA2USB. Since we're doing a true analog capture of image quality, please be aware that differences in brightness, color, contrast, or even aspect ratio are a fault of the capture device and that the images are only designed to provide examples to go along with the text. Make sure you view the HIGH-RES version of each of the images. Feel free to post any questions in our comments section if it's unclear whether there's a difference between image quality or if it's simply an artifact from the way we captured the video.