Before purchasing WD TV Live Player I was watching movies using the following setup: PowerDVD 10 is installed on my pc and my Bravia TV is attached to my pc. The movies were saved to an 2TB external hdd attached to my pc.
When I heard about WD TV Live Player I bought one and began using it instead of my pc.
However, I notice a difference in what I will call the “viewing quality” of the movies played. Using my pc and PowerDVD 10 the movies seem sharper, the colors brighter. Of course the menu’s were also available; I save movies in the VOB format but I hear that the next Lve Player firmware update will resolve that issue so to me that’s OK.
Has anyone here previously used their pc attached to their tv for viewing movies? If so, do you notice any difference between that and using the Live Player?
If so the only possible difference might be in upsampling (since you are not using HD material). It’s possible your PC is upsamping better than the Live. The Live is designed to display HD material. While I think it does a very good job upsampling that isn’t a primary concern for most people (if you don’t watch HD material you’d be better off with the Live’s lower res counterpart, I suspect).
I am not sure what you mean by upsampling. I googled the term and from the definition given by Wikipedia, namely " Upsampling is the process of increasing the sample rate of a signal" I say no, that is NOT what I am doing.
The dvd movies that I ripped to my external hdd and am playing back using my pc and tv are just ordinary dvd movies. The connection from WD TV Live Player to my tv is HDMI. The connection from my pc’s video card to my tv is also HDMI.
I appreciate your answer. It’s logical and right. I am a bit puzzled. Am I or am I not seeing a difference in sharpness and clarity? I thought perhaps my pc’s video card was adding a little extra something to the transmission.
The point is that you are using a program, PowerDVD10, on your computer to play your DVD’s. I have just looked at the spec for PowerDVD 10 and it brags about up-scaling DVD’s and improving the clarity. So therefore I am not surprised that playing the same movie on the WDTV is different. Basically PowerDVD is changing it to make it look better.
In essence you are taking a signal which is NOT HD and playing it on an HD display. In order to do this the device (whatever it is) needs to upsample (or upscale – doesn’t matter which term you use) the image to make it “fit” the increased resolution. Some devices do it better than others (the PS3 is supposed to be superb at this, for example).
I think the Live does it well enough, but as I said, it’s primarily an HD device and that’s the main concern for folks who bought it. I would not want WD to spend any more time in development on how it does it (assuming that time takes away from developing better HD features).
In a few more years it will all be moot – all worthwhile content will be HD (even old stuff is getting upconverted, and superbly).
Yes, you are right. I should have realized that the difference in sharpness, picture clarity and even brightness of colors was due to PowerDVD 10. After using the link you provided I checked out the video settings that I am using in PowerDVD 10 and indeed they ALL enhance the quality of dvd playbacks.
With such noticeable enhancements its not easy to choose the Live Player. For now I think I will use my pc and PowerDVD 10 (my computer is connected to a 32" Bravia (Engine 2) which I also use as a monitor). At least for now I think to use this setup considering also that PowerDVD 10 supports menu’s in VOB files.
