Setting up for DVD viewing

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BDR

714 Posts

13 Oct 2003, 8:46pm

I've never really been much into watching DVDs on my pc, but now I'm interested in setting up one tower to view DVDs and downloaded movies.

What would you recommend as far as a video card and amount of ram for good viewing?

I have a DVD rom, but have only used it once and the movie wasn't as clear as I'd like. It also froze up at one point and I just quit there and never investigated the cause.

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Thrax

Cad

23,408 Posts

13 Oct 2003, 8:54pm

A lite-on DVD rom, about $40 will suit well as far as a DVD/xVCD player is concerned. If you're looking to pipe DiVX/XViD/Other media formats to your TV, you'd want to invest in a dedicated TV card. Hauppauge and Hollywood make some of the best. These two brands have good video out capabilities on all their cards. Your wallet will really determine what additional features beyond ViVo will suit you.

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BDR

714 Posts

13 Oct 2003, 9:29pm

I have a vid card with tv out on one of my pcs, but never used it in that capacity.

I'm not really interested in hooking it to the tv, but in using a nice LCD monitor.

I have a Lite On DVD player, 512 ddr ram. Now I need a vid card that will play movies without them looking blocky, pixelized, or blurred.

(btw, we already have a DVD palyer hooked up to our big tv in the living room.
I'm wanting this set up the bedroom, or possibly the computer room)

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Thrax

Cad

23,408 Posts

13 Oct 2003, 9:30pm

A cheap matrox parhelia card, one of the early versions would suit you just nicely for the 2D work necessary to display a DVD.

Just realize that if you're playing a DVD on a monitor, native DVD resolution is 720x480. 800x600 is the closest resolution you can run for a DVD. If you run the resolution bigger, as I suspect you were trying to do (1024? 1152?), the image is blocky and blurry. Basically you see the mpeg compression artifacts.

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Mancabus

Because Beauty is not Enough

289 Posts

13 Oct 2003, 9:41pm

If you have good DVD playback software, i.e. Cyberlink PowerDVD, then it should have no trouble playing it without making it blurry.

The blurriness could be because you are using a flat panel monitor. My CRT monitor is set to 1600x1200 and it has no effect on the quality of the picture.

__________________ "Max Power. He's the man! Who's name you love to touch, but you musn't toooouuuuuuch. His name sounds good in your ear, but when you say it you musn't fear, cause his name can be said by anyone"

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BDR

714 Posts

13 Oct 2003, 9:57pm

I have Cyberlink PowerDVD and I was playing it on a CRT, although I don't remember the resolution I had it at for the movie.

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Setting up for DVD viewing

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