Quality of DVD Playback on PC is a bit poor....

I was wondering... uh... whenever I play a DVD on my PC... the quality kind of looks... well it sucks. I mean it's not bad, but it doesn't look as good as it would on my TV. Why is that? I get the same results... weither I play the DVD in Windows Media Player, Windows Media Center, or Intervideo WinDVD.

Does my video card have anything to do with it? Right now I'm using the onboard ATI Radeon Xpress 200 with 256mb shared memory. Or is it because I use an LCD monitor at 1280 x 1024? I have all the latest codecs and everything... yet DVD's look funny when I play them on my PC....

Any ideas?

There are HDPC software tweaks you need to checkout. My neighbor swears by ffdshow but I have no experience in HDPC.

http://www.myhometheater.homestead.com/HTPC.html
http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/index.php

it looks good on a TV because the reselution is so low on TV's and the pizels are blurred given a suprisingly good effect

Computer screens however have tiny pixels and much greater resolution so you can see the DVD actual quality which isnt all that good

It means that TV's cant sho great detail, ever tried plugging your computer into a TV, if you have it explains it

hope that helps

I use PowerDVD 5 i find the quality of dvds on my pc is better than on my telly..

You say "does my video card have anything to do with it" then you say "right now I'm using onboard video". Does that mean you have a video card installed but your using the onboard video instead? If so you probably have a conflict with the drivers you installed for the card messing with the onboard video. If you install a card you have to disable the onboard video and if you want to go back to onboard video you have uninstall the card and its drivers. If you don't have a card installed check your motherboards site for new drivers and also look in display properties > settings > advanced for any abnormalities.

Or he could just cease being such a piker and go to the cinema instead.

@Darth Sushi
You lost me at HDPC... =/

@howaj
Hmmm... yeah I guess that could be it... makes sense...

@fatbobsarmy
I'll give PowerDVD 5 a shot later on...

@Appzalien
Sorry for the confusion... I don't have a video card (yet), just onboard video... Drivers are up to date too...

@clocker
But I can't watch DVD movies at the cinema... =/

Your screen resolution isn't the only thing you can change in settings, a resolution of 1280x1024 set at 256 colors would not look as good as Highest 32 bit.
Right click a blank spot on your desktop and choose properties then the Appearance tab and choose Effects and select Clear Type in the smoothing check box for the best desktop appearance. Then go back to the Settings tab and make sure you have the option to set the colors to Highest 32bit, if not than you will need to load the drivers (color profiles ICC) for your monitor from the Cd that came with it. Also fron the Settings tab go into the advanced section and look into your Color Management to see if your Monitors profile is there ( add it if necessary), and while your at it look at the Catalyst Control Center, if your Graphics supports it, for any setting that may improve your play back like the video section (Theater mode etc.).

many DVD programs have the option of either using the video chip's "hardware acceleration" for DVDs, or using the software's rendering method. ideally these would both conform to some standard, looking exactly the same, but i reckon they may appear different.

if your DVD program has an option for hardware acceleration, you could try turning that on & off and comparing. without hardware acceleration, the brightness/contrast/color should be controlled by the DVD program, while WITH hardware acceleration the various settings might be controlled by the video chip's "overlay" driver options under Windows Control Panel.

on a very old computer, the benefit of hardware acceleration (video chip relieves the CPU of some of the DVD-related work) is prolly worthwhile. but on a modern computer, prolly negligible. so it's basically a matter of taste, whether you prefer to use it or not.

Play the file in WMP and use Print Screen to take a picture and show us how it is 'wierd'.