DVD playback on AcerAL1916W

Camalot

Camalot

Camalot

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Hi,

Just bought a Plextor DVD player for PC and was hoping for a nice DVD image on the screen. How wrong was i !

The image i got made me give out a sigh of disapointment!. It all looks blury and not as "sharp" as a DVD normally looks. Could this be down to drivers or the software im using?

I installed this intervideo windvd4 on the cd that come with it. Even when thats loaded, the writing in the background is all jagged and looks very poor.

Using omega drivers on a nvidia gforce4 mx 400, old i know but still.

Any idears or am i just stuck with this poor image?
 
have you made sure you're running at native resolution and at 60Hz refresh rate? You could try adjusting the OSD as well for things like 'phase' and 'pitch' which can improve sharpness on VGA connections. Maybe try the latest NVidia GFX card drivers too
 
You might have a point as i recently got this monitor and initailly i was in awe of how bright and crisp Windows and games looked on the screen. Then i have started watching dvds on the acer using win dvd 7 AND WMP10 and found the picture to have a like subtle grainy quality to DVDs. Could it be something to do with the resolution the Acer runs at.

I have a nvidia 6600gt Forceware Drivers 81.98 and a amd 64 3700 so doubt its the comp. Have played about with different players , power dvd and WMP10 but still theres a slight grainy quality to the DVDs not as sharp as a 32inch CRT connected to a RGB scart, so the Acer while surpassing on all other levels could do better on dvds , could this be something to do with not having a DVI socket. Options for focus and clock which dont help the issue on dvds.

There also doest seem to be a specific xp driver for it , just plug and play monitor one. Played about with colour brightness settings in win dvd and have got it pretty much decent but not high quality, if you about 3+ foot away from the screen then you dont notice the slight grainy affect. Will keep the screen as i got it cheap. Any ideas or advice.
 
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native res on the 19" widescreens aren't quite dvd friendly. you'll get the best results using somethign like ffdshow to upscale to the res of the TFT:)
 
james.miller said:
native res on the 19" widescreens aren't quite dvd friendly. you'll get the best results using somethign like ffdshow to upscale to the res of the TFT:)
Click to expand...

Interesting, any links, Programs etc i can try that might help.
 
I just put a DVD in to show my mom and she said it looks like a VHS lol

Ive downloaded movie trailers that look sharper?

Its at native res, 60hz
 
Camalot said:
I just put a DVD in to show my mom and she said it looks like a VHS lol

Ive downloaded movie trailers that look sharper?

Its at native res, 60hz
Click to expand...

I wouldnt go as far as to say mine was VHS quality, but sometimes there seems to be some pixellated quality to the picture.

I Have tried stuff like lord of the rings, Matrix films and Superbit DVD titles like Bad boys 2 and Spiderman and they all have it, depends on what sort of quality your used to on DVDs and if your a picture perfectionist which i can be, but its something that i can live with but would rather not have.
 
Nothink wrong with either of my acer widescreen monitors. I cant say i actually sit and watch an entire DVD film on them ,however what it does display i cant pick fault. Rather use my great big widescreen television to view them on. Still each to there own.
 
There shouldnt be any issue if you sit more then 2 meteres away from screen to watch. powerdvd/windvd/mediaplayer will display the dvd at what ever your windows resolution is. Chances are its bigger then the dvd resolution of 720x576 so the software is upscalling it to your windows res which is what tends to make the image grainy. unfortunatly you cant just drop the windows res as then the monitor is scalling that to its own native res. You cant win ;)
 
Well after taking into account what people have been saying i went on a google search for info on dvd upscaling etc etc.

Came across this article http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=ffdshowdvd_1 ( mods let me know if link is cool ) on how to get improve the dvd image on pc res at my 1440x900.

After removing most of my video codecs i installed the FFDShow and went about making changes and using Media player classic as i dont have the listed players the image is pretty much spot on. Will need to do some tweaks but im impressed with my efforts so far. Output res for the DVds using the FFDshow 1440x960, only drawback is that now my cpu usage on dvds is gone from 20% to 60% but will see how things go.
 
Raven8472 said:
Well after taking into account what people have been saying i went on a google search for info on dvd upscaling etc etc.

Came across this article http://htpcnews.com/main.php?id=ffdshowdvd_1 ( mods let me know if link is cool ) on how to get improve the dvd image on pc res at my 1440x900.

After removing most of my video codecs i installed the FFDShow and went about making changes and using Media player classic as i dont have the listed players the image is pretty much spot on. Will need to do some tweaks but im impressed with my efforts so far. Output res for the DVds using the FFDshow 1440x960, only drawback is that now my cpu usage on dvds is gone from 20% to 60% but will see how things go.
Click to expand...

yes sorry i didnt get back to you. that's exactly how you do it. The olny side affect is of course that cpu usage goes up, but it's either your gpu doing the work or your cpu and tbh when your watching a movie, it doesnt really make any difference.....

....except to picture quality, which is improved immensly:)
 
Thanks for the idea james,

So far ive tweaked the image im getting so its a noticable improvement running at double standard dvd res with the smoothing noise filters..

Great thing is that you can even customise which programs you want FFDshow to process , as ive only got it for DVDs so anything else is untouched.
 
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