Playing movie from PC is not as good as from dvd player. Why?

[hulinning]

Hi all,
I epxerience video quality is reduced when playing low quality AVI movies directly from PC to a HDTV (720p).

I use a Sapphire hd 2600 XT DDR3 for my video card. I change different output resolution from PC but the movie playback quality is still the same. Only the Windows is affected by the output of video resolution.

It seems the playback content cannot be scale by the Video card before sending to the HDTV set. It just scale the entire Windows.

However, playing high qualitty dvd or hd movie from PC and output to HDTV set is very good.

I wonder if there is anything to help scaling the playback content before sending out the hdtv set.

When I play the same AVI movie from a DVD, the output is better since dvd scale it up internally before sending the video out. Or probably, the dvd has a better decoder chip set. I got Ziova CS505 Network dvd player.

Unfortunately, I have to ship the unit back for warranty service since it stops working after failing updating Firmware.

I use VCL to play AVI movie and Intervideo or Windows Media Player v11 to play dvd movies on Dell GX280 2.8 GHz Windows Vista Ultimate.

Thanks

[Baldrick]

How do you connect to the hdtv? using dvi or hdmi?

So you are saying that hd material look good but not SD? You should be able to get at least same quality as a standalone player but you might have to apply filters manually like with ffdshow to acheive good upscaling to 720p. Google for ffdshow upscaling.

[hulinning]

Hi Baldrick,
The video card outputs through DVI port and I use a DVI-TO-HDMI adapter provided by sapphire to connect to my HDTV set having 720p HDCP native resolution.

I think if the video quality is good then the playback on hdtv is good and if it is not good (low quality) then it will be not good on my hdtv. But, normally, I see a a better video quality when playing low quality from a dvd rather than from HTPC. It is better because the video is either upscaling either from my HDTV set or my DVD player. I think my HDTV always upscaling the video if it is not HDMI input.

So because I playback from my htpc through dvi to hdmi on my hdtv therefore, the video is not scaling by my hdtv set.

As you said ffdshow is probably the solution for upscaling the video before sending to my HDTV.

One more option is to playback from HTPC through components connection then let my hdtv set upscaling the signal. I have not tried this yet. I will try today.

[Krispy Kritter]

Depending on the type of TV that you have, it may already be upconverting/downconverting all of the inputs to its native resolution. Obviously, the higher quality the input, the better it will look. Many of the newer HDTV's don't display SD material very well, at least not when compared to DVD or HD video.