newbie??? How to get better picture and sound if download for internet???

[supertel334]

I was wondering if I download a movie cliip from the internet (.avi or other format), how would I get better picture and sound when i play it in my hdtv. Or show me a site to read more, i'm new to this. and what is .avi, wmv, mpg, etc. this there one that is better than other (picture and sound) I have look all over. Thanks for any inputs.

[Krispy Kritter]

Most files that you download, will not look very good when displayed for TV, especially on an HDTV. The reason is because the quality is greatly reduced to make the files download friendly. They can look quite good on your pc monitor, but there is a big difference from monitor to TV.

[kevo777]

First rule of thumb with video encoding/transcoding:

Garbage In = Garbage Out

Source is everything when striving for good output. Like the previous post said, 99% of anything legally downloaded from the Internet (the exception maybe being Quicktime's and Nero's HD movie trailers) has been compressed, sized, and resized for standard PC monitor playback.