DVD play back on computer BAD (in general) - suggestion needed

[Hoef]

I thought I turn to the collective knowledge of MR to get insight on a problem that I have:

OK here it goes ... I usually show my animations on a television using a DVD player. Now the gallery I am going to exhibit at will play the animations (on DVD) on an Imac. However, when I insert a DVD on my computer (G5/flatpanel) the full screen always look fuzzy and in general bad. Probably because television resolution is low and fuzzy to start with. What do you guys recommend? Maybe a DVD player setting? Rendering for QT play back?

Any advise appreciated!

 

[andrewfee]

If you're watching fullscreen on an LCD, then yes it will look "soft" because it's being stretched up to fill your monitor's high resolution.

It will look the same on any LCD tv etc too, CRTs work differently however, and have no "native resolution" so they look relatively sharp no matter what resolution is used. (generally 720x480 for TV content)

 

[Hoef]

If you're watching fullscreen on an LCD, then yes it will look "soft" because it's being stretched up to fill your monitor's high resolution.

It will look the same on any LCD tv etc too, CRTs work differently however, and have no "native resolution" so they look relatively sharp no matter what resolution is used. (generally 720x480 for TV content)

Right ... Any suggestion on how to "solve" this? Maybe rendering sorenson and play QT full screen? or shrinking the DVD viewing area?

 

[ftaok]

Right ... Any suggestion on how to "solve" this? Maybe rendering sorenson and play QT full screen? or shrinking the DVD viewing area?

I wouldn't worry about it. Think about this. When you watch your animations on a TV, how close are you to the set? 5, 6 feet??? How close are you when you watch it on the Mac? 12 inches???

Of course the material is going to look worse when you are viewing it at a closer distance. The rule of thumb for viewing distance is 2x the diagonal distance, but that's for TVs. Not sure if computer monitors are the same.

Anyways, at your gallery showing, I would think that your animations would be displayed further away. It will probably look fine.