Why does DV look so much better on LCD Monitors

[canada_habs2004]

I've gotten used to watching all digital video in unsharp, pixelized appearance, all the time on my computer. I have ALWAYS found that video DV looks perfect on Tube TV's, and horrible on a monitor.

Then I was on somebody else's computer, and was watching orignal DV Avi files, and it looked so much better. The computer had an LCD monitor, where I have a CRT Monitor, but it looked so much better, both video was straight from the same Camcorder. This video was actually crisp and wasn't all digital looking, is that only because of the LCD?

I just want video to look good on my computer, what can I do to achieve this. Hollywood DVD's look great on my computer, they look better of my PC than on my TV set. Is it not possible to get Digital video to look somewhat better on a PC as well?

[BJ_M]

usually they can look worse on a lcd - depends on the settings and the quality of your monitors ....


"Hollywood" movies look good because the source is good - far better than the quality of dv

[junkmalle]

There are several issues:

Computer monitors have a very different gamma curve than television. DV will look dark and low contrast on a computer monitor unless the playback software is artificially adjusting the gamma (because it knows the computer monitor has a lower gamma). If you simply adjust your graphics card and monitor to make video look like a TV then the desktop will look too bright and washed out.

Televisions almost always use a horizontal sharpening filter because they normally deal with a low bandwidth TV signal. Computer monitors do not since they normally start with a crisp image. This is why video usually look sharper on a TV than on a computer monitor -- even though the computer monitor has much better true resolution.

Sometimes video looks sharper on an LCD because you are noticing the mask of the display (the black area between active elements) not the sharpness of the underlying image.

If you are running your CRT monitor too close to its limits you may be stressing it. Monitors can lose brightness and crispness when run at very high resolution and very high refresh rates. This would normally be more noticable on the desktop rather than in any DV video being displayed.

[canada_habs2004]

"Hollywood" movies look good because the source is good - far better than the quality of dv

definitely, but I think the quality of DV and Hollywood movies on a regular television are almost identical.

I don't get why they can both look good on a TV, but DV on a computer looks horrible, where as Hollywood DVD's still look great.

[Nelson37]

Was this video viewed from a disk or direct connection to the camera?

Was the display resolution set the same?

There should not be such a great difference between the LCD and the CRT, particularly as regards to pixelation. You may very well be seeing a difference in firewire port, codec, or possibly video card rather than a difference in monitors. See if you can borrow an LCD and connect to your PC, this would be a true test.

[canada_habs2004]

I think I figured this out, I tried playing video on my computer using 800 by 600 resolution (instead of 1024 x 768) and the video looked completely different.

I had no idea that different resolutions changed the appearance of digital video.

Also, I know that LCD Monitors only look good in there native resolution, and since the one I saw was in 800 by 600 (when it should have been 1280 by 1024) the LCD Monitor appeared a lot softer than it normally would, and therefore getting rid of the jagged pixely look on edges in the video.

So What is up with video looking better in lower resolutions, I don't think this is too convenient and definitely good cause many problems.

[BJ_M]

800x 600 on a 1280 lcd going to look soooo bad , no wonder

but lcd dont often have good black levels , why some films dont look good on them .. some are much better for this than others

[junkmalle]

I had no idea that different resolutions changed the appearance of digital video.

It's a matter of the methods used to scale the video image. If you were watching the 720x480 DV image full screen on your desktop it had to be enlarged. Depending on the software you're using and the video card's drivers you may get a simple nearest neighbor scaling (duplicating rows and columns to enlarge the image) or a more sophisticated smooth scaling. The simple method leads to obvious pixelation artifacts. Smooth scaling results in a more natural looking image (albeit blurry). Most people would say smooth scaling looks better under most circumstances.

Programs designed primarily for playback of media will normally used DirectShow to scale the image. Directshow uses the graphics card's drivers to scale the image. Most modern graphics cards use a smooth scaling method (some drivers give you control over this).

Programs designed primarily for video capture or editing usually don't use DirectShow's scaling mechanism. They usually use the quicker nearest neighbor method. Again you can often control this -- look for "overlay" options in the software.