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Roz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 10, 2005
21
0
I watched my first DVD on my new PM the other day and I wasn't all that impressed with the quality of the picture on my 23" Apple display. My complaint isn't with the colors but the picture itself seemed pixelated up close especially during fast motion scenes. I know it's not going to be as clear/sharp as a television set, but the pixelation is really noticable. Am I just expecting too much out of this display?

Thanks,

Roz
 
Yeah, unfortunately (from all my experience with DVD playback on computers), taht's the way it is. It seems much crappier than a TV, but my question is why... Sure, the resolution of a DVD may not be as high as your display, but what about tvs? They can display that same image at much larger sizes without ever looking as crappy. Is it the video card? Ths display itself? the processor? I've always been disappointed by this.
 
pdpfilms said:
Yeah, unfortunately (from all my experience with DVD playback on computers), taht's the way it is. It seems much crappier than a TV, but my question is why... Sure, the resolution of a DVD may not be as high as your display, but what about tvs? They can display that same image at much larger sizes without ever looking as crappy. Is it the video card? Ths display itself? the processor? I've always been disappointed by this.
My 50" inch rear-projection television displays at 800 by 600.... So that is the largest reason. I am not giving an excuse just stating that the 23" has a display in the upper 1000's by mid 1000's (resolution) That is the main reason. Plug your G5 into a plasma screen and it will show a difference.

Basically - It is the dvd- for not encoding it at a high rate. Look at the hd movies on Apple's site. If those are bad your monitor is also... Those are supposed to be at your 23" resolution.

kyle
 
Or play the DVD in a windowed mode, at actual size. That'll fix the problem. Sort of. :)

Unfortunately computer displays, being progressive, don't scale down as well as TV's. TV's actually have low quality displays, so they hide the faults in the movie better.

I can't wait for HD to come into the mainstream. It's going to be glorious!
 
jackieonasses said:
Basically - It is the dvd- for not encoding it at a high rate. Look at the hd movies on Apple's site. If those are bad your monitor is also... Those are supposed to be at your 23" resolution.

kyle

assuming this is true...couldn't you simply change the screen settings to 800x600 pixels (i'm not sure the ratio of sides with the 23 inch, but one of those low settings)? would that do the trick?
 
wide said:
assuming this is true...couldn't you simply change the screen settings to 800x600 pixels (i'm not sure the ratio of sides with the 23 inch, but one of those low settings)? would that do the trick?
Yes... but. a lcd has a native resolution. anything else looks bad. You can pull that off with a CRT however...
 
jackieonasses said:
Yes... but. a lcd has a native resolution. anything else looks bad. You can pull that off with a CRT however...
To elaborate, on an LCD, the pixels are actual physical lights (like tiny bulbs, basically). On a CRT, pixels are beams of light "shot" at the screen. So the CRT's "gun" can make the pixels bigger if it wants to. On an LCD, it tries to fake it by making several physical pixels masquerade as one big pixels. Doesn't scale well.
 
In my experience, this has a lot to do with the DVD, not the Mac.
Try running a DVD like LOTR and you may not see this.
For example I see this with Family Guy DVD's and Futurama, but not with newer movie DVDs. - It seems a lot to do with the encoding.
But obviously, huge resolution will always play it's part - that 23" has a higher res than most 40" plasma.
 
James Philp said:
In my experience, this has a lot to do with the DVD, not the Mac.
Try running a DVD like LOTR and you may not see this.
For example I see this with Family Guy DVD's and Futurama, but not with newer movie DVDs. - It seems a lot to do with the encoding.
But obviously, huge resolution will always play it's part - that 23" has a higher res than most 40" plasma.

It's funny you said that because the first movie I popped in was LOTR Two Towers. I played some of the HD trailers from Apple like a previous poster suggested and the picture was crystal clear!

Thanks for all your responses guys!
 
Actually most of that effect is because a regular TV is exactly the opposite of clear and sharp.

A normal TV has a quite low resolution, but blurs the picture in a way that makes people look nice, but not sharp images like a computer GUI. If you've ever tried to use a TV as a computer monitor you will see that the blurring makes text very difficult to read unless it's size 16 or above.
 
Roz said:
I watched my first DVD on my new PM the other day and I wasn't all that impressed with the quality of the picture on my 23" Apple display. My complaint isn't with the colors but the picture itself seemed pixelated up close especially during fast motion scenes. I know it's not going to be as clear/sharp as a television set, but the pixelation is really noticable. Am I just expecting too much out of this display?

Thanks,

Roz



do you realize that DVD's arent hirez enough to play at sized larger than normal view?

the reason why your DVD looks pixelated is because it was burnt at a lower resolution than you are trying to play it back at.



DVDs are meant to be played back on TVs at like 800x??? or 6??x???. Not the 1280x800 (is that when it hits true HD?). And your monitor is probably set to 1024x768.

believe me. your monitors likelihood of being the culprit is like 5%.
 
Also don't forget that DVDs (like TVs) are interlaced. Your TV only updates odd/even scanlines every frame, but your LCD updates all scanlines every frame. Thus for a DVD to playback on a computer, you have to de-interlace the video. On a TV since this is the natural way of things, you don't notice the difference, but on a computer this de-interlacing tends to be noticeable, especially during moments of rapid motion.
 
Rincewind42 said:
Also don't forget that DVDs (like TVs) are interlaced. Your TV only updates odd/even scanlines every frame, but your LCD updates all scanlines every frame. Thus for a DVD to playback on a computer, you have to de-interlace the video. On a TV since this is the natural way of things, you don't notice the difference, but on a computer this de-interlacing tends to be noticeable, especially during moments of rapid motion.
Which is what i'm sure i see on DVDs that are from TV shows and haven't been encoded with love!
Movie DVDs aare more likely encoded from the film - hence no interlacing from TV/Video
 
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