Your topic and what your comments aren't exactly about the same thing :)

To answer your topic, sometime after hell freezes over.

But then I don't see the connection between how well upscalers work and why we should or shouldn't have hardware acceleration in Vegas. Unless what you're implying is that hardware isn't good enough which is why most apps do the final render in software only. Well yes, using Bryce I can use the GPU for preview renders and software for final. The later does look a tad better but is very slow. But that's on an old GPU. The new ones do better AA etc. However the problems it's handling is not the same as processing video. It's rasterising vectors and calculating shading and caustics etc. You don't do that with video.
What the GPUs can do is decode mpeg-2 in RT. My little Media Gate can playout HDV in RT so the chips exist to do the decode. Would it be good enough for a final render I don't know. Render time doesn't worry me much, realtime when I edit does, even if it's not exactly perfect final quality.

Bob.

To clarify what I was saying as a basis for commentary I restate as ....

If an up-scaled SD DVD can look as good as a Blu Ray HD DVD rendered by software within a NLE then software rendering must be suspect and we need something better, so is not hardware rendering the only solution?

This isn't even comparing apples to oranges. It's more like comparing apples to shoelaces, or maybe apples to Newtonian physics.

Upscaling and encoding have nothing to do with each other.

In general, software rendering will usually beat hardware rendering for quality, and hardware rendering will usually beat software rendering for speed. Not always true as there are some pretty poor software encoders out there. Then again, a hardware encoder is really just a special purpose computer running ... a software encoder.

I would agree.... I don't think hardware has much to do with this.

I will say that I'm a bit disappointed that Vegas's max bit rate for avchd is 15M. Pinnacle studio will do 17M and IMO... you can tell the difference.

I'll also say that the avchd simply does not look as good as smart rendered mpeg to HD DVD. Now that may have something to do with the fact that I have tape based mpeg cams and I'm having to re-encode over to avchd..... but in general.... it ALL looks better than upscaled dvd.... in fact, no comparison.

If an up-scaled SD DVD can look as good as a Blu Ray HD DVD rendered by software within a NLE then software rendering must be suspect and we need something better, ...While I don't doubt that this happens in your tests, I DO doubt that it is generally a true statement. In other words, if everything is done correctly, the Blu-Ray disc should knock the socks off of anything that originated as SD. However, like you, I have been amazed at how many demos of HD discs I've seen in stores and elsewhere that have left me underwhelmed. The industry has done an amazingly poor job of helping store owners and, more important, the buying public figure out how to actually get the mileage that this new technology is capable of delivering.

I HAVE, however, seen a few demos where things were set up correctly, and there is no similarity whatsoever. However, until the industry makes this the norm, I still think that the uptake on Blu-Ray -- despite what has been discussed in other threads -- will be slow relative to the uptake of CD players in the 1980s and DVD players in the 1990s. Using those as benchmarks, and even allowing for the delays caused by the format wars, the market penetration has been very slow to develop. I predicted this exactly two years ago, although even I (a skeptic) couldn't have predicted that the HD disc vendors would do such a lousy job helping people set up the equipment, use the software, etc., so that they could actually get the benefits of the new technology.

HD disc demand (predictions made in March 2006)

Part of the problem is that lack of real HD content. SD DVDs are made from SD telecine transfers of 35mm prints. Scanning the same print at 2K will produce not a significant improvement. Rescanning the camera neg at 2K will produce a huge improvement. That's expensive. The remastering of Bladerunner shows just how much work is involved. Most movies contain elements besides just the camera neg, even finding those bits might not be possible.
Going forward things should improve. However as others have noted you're very likely to get more resolution than you might want. To avoid that the costs of movie production will increase dramatically. The degree of image degradation caused by the optical printing process hid a lot of defects.

Bob.

"The remastering of Bladerunner shows just how much work is involved."

Have you some insight into the process they used? Mabye the "extras" disc? I have not seen the remastered version.... I assume it's very good?

"The remastering of Bladerunner shows just how much work is involved."

yeah, but they should fully HD re-master a good movie, like Kingpin.....;)