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Maximizing DVD Playback Potential on Your Computer

Posted On : Dec-18-2009 | seen (761) times | Article Word Count : 591 |

If you enjoy watching DVD movies on a DVD player, you’re missing a lot from playing the material on a PC instead. Videophiles have long known the advantages of playing digital video materials on a computer than on consumer electronic appliances like the DVD players.
If you enjoy watching DVD movies on a DVD player, you’re missing a lot from playing the material on a PC instead. Videophiles have long known the advantages of playing digital video materials on a computer than on consumer electronic appliances like the DVD players.

They either rip the video and store it as a VOB or AVI files or just play them straight from the HTPC’s DVD optical drives. That’s because computers are the natural home of digital sources. Those consumer players are just derivatives of the certain PC parts, like memory, decoding chips, video and sound cards. DVD players are simply specialized computers focused on one function alone – video playback.

Naturally Upsampling and Progressive

If you have a large screen LCD or plasma with a native resolution of 720p to 1080p, you can upsample your 480i material on the DVD straight away when playing the disc on your PC’s DVD optical drive. Not many know that the desktop and laptop computer are the first and original upsampling players that can upscale a 480i video material to the screen’s native resolution with is almost always greater than the 640 x 480 resolution found in DVD movies.

Almost all PC monitors have 1024 x 780 native resolution and they have been upsampling the PC’s VGA output resolution ever since. Your 480i DVD source gets upsampled in the computer’s video upscaler with a more competent result than any consumer-grade DVD player in the market with the possible exception of standalone upscalers costing tenfold.

With excellent video players like WinDVD or PowerDVD from Cyberlink – the most widely used playback software today now on its 6th version, the interlaced 480i on the DVD gets de-interlaced as a progressive scan full-frame display at 24 frames per second. Home theater PC users have been enjoying progressive scan pictures from interlaced DVDs long before consumer grade players offered progressive scan feature on their component connections.

Software Application Features

The most alluring feature of PC based DVD playback is its ability to enhance the video to make it stand out under any viewing conditions. Apart from upsampling it to your display’s native resolution and de-interlacing it to full frame display, you can adjust brightness, contrast and color temperature to correct default video conditions that are more suitable in dark movie theaters than in the well-lit ambiance of your room. You can have edge enhancement applied when using PowerDVD and compare it with default settings using its split screen facility for previewing all the enhancements you do.

Other notable features include the ability to access the entire content of the DVD allowing you to jump to any specific file without having to go through the menu screen you see on the TV at start up. You can even bypass those annoying commercials that often can’t be turned off from your DVD players. Another great feature is you can have screen snapshots taken whether the picture is moving or on still.

Audio-wise, the computer’s built-in sound processor on the motherboard has the basic stereo and multichannel options to render the 5.1 or 6. Dolby or DTS tracks using the software’s native decoding algorithm. For PowerDVD, it’s the Cyberlink Virtual Speaker (CLVS) system which also performs reverb enhancement, inter-channel cross-talk cancellation and simulated multichannel for simple stereo tracks in DVD materials. In short, with the right software application, the PC has the same DSP features you find in consumer-grade HT receivers and better functionality and competence to display movies. GP

Article Source : http://www.articleseen.com/Article_Maximizing DVD Playback Potential on Your Computer_7291.aspx

Author Resource :
ITC Sales are a leading supplier of Dell and HP Laptops such as the Dell Precision and Vostro. ITC also supply servers such as the Dell PowerEdge

Keywords : Dell PowerEdge, Dell Precision, dell, poweredge, sc1430, 1900, 2900, SC440, 840 tower, server, solutions,

Category : Computers : Hardware

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