Why does movies look better on my TV than on my computer monitor?

DustinLC · 05-03-2005, 06:31 PM

I have a G4 Mac with a 17inch monitor (1280x1024 optimal res.). Movies I play are inferior in quality (to my eyes) than my Sony HDTV or my Hitachi HD-ready RPTV. Most noticeable are DVDR I made. There must be something I don't get here.

Wayde_R · 05-04-2005, 06:19 AM

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?

John S · 05-04-2005, 09:10 AM

Do you mean.. Even if you use the Mac/Video card as the source for both????

If so, I am a little stumped.

If your using a DVD Player as a source when you compare, there are way to many things it could be to say.

Transport, Video Card, Heck even the way the OS/and processor chipset handles full motion video in general can come into play.

Will the 17" Monitor hook up to the same DVD player you are using on the HDTV's???

DustinLC · 05-04-2005, 10:19 AM

Apple DVD player. All other questions has to be left to a computer Mac experts

. When you deal with Mac all your life, video card never has to be dealt with. Everything is just given

. So sorry if I can't give you a breakdown.

On regular DVDs, you can't really tell the difference all that much other than lighting, contrast, and color that you can adjust on your TV but not with Apple DVD player. However, for my burned DVDs, all the artifacts are more obvious. I even turned the contrast all the way down. I guess higher resolution could mean higher resolution of all the artifacts also.

John S · 05-04-2005, 11:37 AM

Not sure. I am very weak on MAC stuff....

On the PC side, most exclaim how much better it is. Burned discs almost always look worse than the original.

Originals on PC's seem to be better on average than their HDTV / ED display counterparts, but then againb, computer monitors tend to be smaller and that can account for most of the difference right there.

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James Phung · 05-04-2005, 03:05 PM

DVDs are 480i (interlaced). Even when playing on your pc, it still needs to be deinterlaced by the software dvd players. EDTV/HDTVs have their own deinterlacer built in (along with progressive scan dvd players) that will deinterlace DVD to be progressive.

Most of the pc software I've seen are all flag-based deinterlacers (they know when to make the dvd progressive by reading flags from the dvd). Most cheap dvd players use flag-based readers also. The better dvd players out there use motion-adaptive deinterlacing which does automatic deinterlacing based on how it sees the pictures (and not dependent on the flags) like in players using Faroudja chips.

Though most new dvds have progressive flags in them, some are badly flagged and flag-based readers choke when playing them.

The only pc based dvd software that I know of that is motion adaptive is TheaterTek. New versions of PowerDVD and WinDVD may also do it but I have no idea. No idea on macs either, sorry.

DustinLC · 05-04-2005, 03:26 PM

James,

I think your explanation might explain why the quality difference is greater between DVDs and my own DVD-Rs as seen on my computer monitor than on TV.

In other works, DVDs look great on TV and computer monitor but my DVDRs look great on TV but really bad on the computer monitor.

ChrisWiggles · 05-04-2005, 10:15 PM

I have no, repeat *absolutely* no idea what MACs do with their software, decoders, and etc. But with a PC you should be getting much higher resolution to the display, and certainly this is much desired for an appropriate high-resolution display like a computer monitor, compared to a SDTV, and often superior to your average HDTV. I assume MACs would be capable of the same level of performance, being computers, but I have no idea what kind of limitations there are on the apple platform.

Jeremiah Dant · 05-06-2005, 03:17 PM

I have no problem like that i my PC. It actually looks better on my pc then my tv, though the picture is a lot smaller though. I either use media player 10 for windows or interwin dvd 4. But again i have a PC and not a mac. I know nothing about macs.