Why do movies play better on your TV than your computer monitor?
In what way exactly does it not look as good? That TV is pretty nice, do you expect the a 17" monitor to be better? No matter how much res you get out of the 'puter the image only has so much video information and won't look any better despite throwing more lines of resolution at it.
@ all U 1080P lovers
It could be that the dvd format is just made for TV and not that high of a resolution. I don't know much about macs but maybe they have a hard time with video images, I hear they're a poor substitute for a PC
Try messing with the res on your mac. What kind of video card option does a mac have? Is there something that might be better suited to video?