Quality question mpeg2 vs mpeg4

[computerchuck]

I don't understand quality on pc vs on tv. I mean, for example I used to capture to pc through high quality mpeg2 cap cards, but as I needed pc for other uses, I figured it would be easier to use a settop dvd recorder. Now here is where it gets tricky, it looks like crap on the pc, but on the tv, it looks good. Even storebought dvd movies don't look that sharp. But mpeg4 videos or even older downloaded movies (since its useless to do this now with all the lawsuits) look sharper than the dvds they came from. Is their a way to optimize the pc aspect to have the mpeg2 experience as resiliant as the mpeg4 experience (quicktime;xvid;divx)?

athlon64 3200, 768mbram, bfg6800ultra agp 256mb, dell 2005fpw lcd widescreen, etc.

[lumis]

the resolution of regular tv's are lower than montitors.. monitors are closer to hdtv's in terms of resolution.. and if you've got a higher resolution, you'll see more flaws in the video.. not to mention you're usually sitting closer to the monitor than the tv..

i myself use a standalone dvd recoder (pioneer 220) and it does a great job.. i'm sure i could achieve a small margin of better quality if i did a capture on my computer, but the time i save doing it on the dvd recorder more than makes up for it.. and its a helluva lot more convienent..

as for mpeg4 video, depending on the bitrate and encoding method used, they can look far superior to dvd, if converted from a good source..

i downloaded a few episodes of lost from the release group HR HDTV, and they looked really really good.. they were 700mb for about 40-45 minutes of video with dolby digital 5.1 audio.. another group SG-6 released the same episodes but used 1400mb, and they looked absolutely amazing.

mpeg4 (xvid in my experience) is far superior to mpeg2.. but mpeg2 is the law of the land right now, and far far far more compatible with dvd players..

mpeg 1 = vcd, etc (crappy to decent)
mpeg 2 = dvd, svcd, cvd (crappy to great)
mpeg 3 = was supposed to be hdtv (?)
mpeg 4 = divx, xvid, etc (crappy to excellent)

[thecoalman]

I don't think it's a matter of quality, I can get the same results from MPEG2 as I can from WMV or any other MPEG4 format using the same source. The advantage that MPEG4 has is it can be compressed quite a bit more without losing quality making it ideal for web use.

Video made for TV is interlaced, video made for computers ideally is not. Since most is created interlaced it has to be either deinterlaced on the fly during playback through software or you can deinterlace during capture, editing or encoding for playback on a monitor.

Either use good playback software such as PowerDVD to view interlaced video. Or at some point deinterlace the footage and convert to frame based.

Note: If your main target for playback is TV leave it interlaced.