Agreed, it would have been nice to show other upscaling algorithms. But neural net super resolution generators can still have significantly more detail at 4-8x, as shown here http://arxiv.org/abs/1609.04802

(Author here.) Yeah, I knew this would come up but decided to proceed with the pixelated comparison anyway. I couldn't get the GIFs to reflect the results because of 8-bit quantization/dithering. The images show the neural network inputs and outputs, not a comparison with other super-resolution algorithms (still fascinating :-).

I'm working on the Docker instance now, that should help anyone with interest/experience in the field compare results easily.

Really cool to see them taking a page out of X264, trying to match the "energy" of the image rather than the "correctness".