I'm putting this thing through its paces and I went and played a standard def movie running off the DVD look terrible. They look great when played iPhone size but go full screen, fuggetaboutit.
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Standard def DVDs look terrible on a 27" iMac
- Thread starter iMikeT
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Decrease the resolution on the screen and you'll see the DVD looks better. Keep in mind that a regular DVD was NOT intended to be viewed at the high resolution that a 27" Imac is capable of.
I messed around with the resolution all ready, everything goes from tack sharp to super-pixelated. Yuck.
I have to add that I've been viewing some 1080p vids that I've downloaded and they look terrible in full screen. I think to get the most out of the iMac display at full screen the source video needs to be outputting to at least 2K.
Fallinangel
macrumors regular
soco
macrumors 68030
TMRaven
macrumors 68020
Sit further back while watching it. Anytime you're dealing with interpolation to fit a higher resolution screen, you're dealing with a lot of fake information being added, causing for quality loss and blurriness. To remedy this, you can sit further away, making for higher perceived resolution. The closer you are to the screen, the less perceived resolution (or pixel density) you'll get.
This is why your iDevice screen looks better playing standard def video, because the pixel density of it is higher than the iMac's.
There's also the fact that ANY lcd screen will look less than optimal when not in native resolution. Running a CRT of same size as the 27 inch iMac and sitting at the same distance will cause for a better picture, because CRTs have no native resolution.
This is why your iDevice screen looks better playing standard def video, because the pixel density of it is higher than the iMac's.
There's also the fact that ANY lcd screen will look less than optimal when not in native resolution. Running a CRT of same size as the 27 inch iMac and sitting at the same distance will cause for a better picture, because CRTs have no native resolution.
It would still be a blurry mess because there's no way scaling a 720x576 pixel image (actually a 720x288 image most of the time) to 27" without it becoming a blurry mess at roughly 3 feet viewing distance.
DVDs are usually 640 x 360 pixels if you eliminate the "black bars". They support 720x480 for 480p, but usually it gets reduced to 640x360 due to the aspect ratio of my layback devices (TVs, especially old 4:3 sets).
A 21.5" iMac is 1920x1080, like a 1080p television. This has 9x as many pixels. This means the DVD is being "blown up" to 9 times its normal size.
A 27.0" iMac is 2560x1440 pixels. This has 16x as many pixels. This means the DVD is being "blown up" to 16 times its normal size.
Zoom in a nice image 16x. Yes, it will look horrible.
Consider this, 720p is 1280x720. Even that gets blown up to 4 times its normal size on a 27" iMac.
A 21.5" iMac is 1920x1080, like a 1080p television. This has 9x as many pixels. This means the DVD is being "blown up" to 9 times its normal size.
A 27.0" iMac is 2560x1440 pixels. This has 16x as many pixels. This means the DVD is being "blown up" to 16 times its normal size.
Zoom in a nice image 16x. Yes, it will look horrible.
Consider this, 720p is 1280x720. Even that gets blown up to 4 times its normal size on a 27" iMac.
TheUndertow
macrumors 6502
Thx...was going to say, this is HD 101.
Take a crappy source (DVD or standard def) and blow it up to a big screen or high resolution, and it makes the junk in the source code stick out.
Streaming content won't get you there either as it's compressed...etc to get to streaming size.
Tried, still looks like cabbage, I mean garbage.
Forget 1080p, we need 2K videos.
TMRaven
macrumors 68020
Icaras
macrumors 603
Definitely, seeing as some studios already have 4K masters of some movies, like Minority Report.
Oh, how I'd love to see that in 4K 😀
Very nice. I remember this being talked about on MacBreak Weekly.
Now that did my iMac's display justice. It would have been better if it didn't take seven minutes to download a less than two minute video.
By the way, that was the first thing that I could find to really make use of this 3.4Ghz quad-core i7.
hi guys are you saying that watching low resolution videos on the 27'' imac is terrible ?
or when you want to force the video to fullscreen ?
well i don't mind black bars on the sides.
or when you want to force the video to fullscreen ?
well i don't mind black bars on the sides.
Is there a comprehensive thread about screen resolution on macrumors? I searched for one last week and couldn't find one ...
Yes watching low resolution videos on the 27'' iMac full-screen is terrible, but make the video smaller and the quality increases.
I don't watch DVD's on my iMac, I download movies and TV shows in HD instead. One of the reasons I bought my iMac was to go disc free. I didn't need to put video game discs in to play them like I did with my console, I could watch high quality video on a big screen and my iMac would be always on to stream content to other devices.
Sylonien
macrumors regular
OH yeah! Forgot youtube has some 4k stuff. Does it look better than 1080p on the 27" 2560 x 1440 pixels screen?