Picture Quality - DVD Player vs PC's DVDRom

[martind]

My setup is as follows

Pioneer DV380 DVD player
Pioneer VSX915 AV Receiver
Samsung LE26R41BDX LCD
Canton CD1 Speaker set
Self built PC (Windows XP, 1Gig ram, 3 GHz Intel Pentium, 2 x 200 GB HDD, ATI 9700Pro AGP card)

Connection between above -

DVD to amp by coax for audio and component for video.
The amp goes to Samsung LCD by component.
The PC that is connected to the LCD by VGA and to the AV receiver using SPDif for audio.

Recently I have purchased a slave HDD for the PC to backup my DVD collection (using DVD Decrypter).
After I had backed up one of the DVD's I thought I’d compare screen shots on both sources by running the same film from the Pioneer DVD player and the hard drive (using PowerDVD software), then pausing the film at exactly the same spot.

I was amazed to see that version on my hard drive was clearer that the original that was running from my DVD player.

Now I know that my DVD player is not capable of upscaling and after comparing both sources side by side there is no way I am forking out for a player that does upscale when I happy whith the PQ from the PC.

So my questions are

What software is available that can further enhance the picture quality?

Is there better software out there to use for backing up DVD's?

My Pioneer DVD player is multi region, can i get my PC DVDRom to be multi region too?

What else would you add to the PC (hardware or software)?

Just want to say, that i am not looking to rip the films (that i backup to my HDD) to blank DVD-R's, just looking at getting the films onto the PC and then watching them at leisure with the best Picture Quality etc

Cheers

Martin

[ConfusedTA]

How to improve picture quality from a DVD

[paulpenny]

Just the question I wanted to ask, but I couldn't put it quite so succinctly. Also, a very good answer. Many thanks

Paul

[The Dude]

Get yourself a copy of Theatertek would be a good way to start the upgrade process.... watching a DVD using Theatertek (rather than WMP, WinDVD, PowerDVD etc) will bring about the same level of improvement once again.. Also worth noting that the newer vesions of TT are quite happy playing .avi, .mpg, .vob files etc from the hard drive...

[dejongj]

Use something like AnyDVD to get your DVD-ROM to be multi-region...That in combination with a aftermarket firmware would do the trick...

[dan1979]

Definitely go for Theatertek and use ffdshow to resize the inage to match your display and the results will be far ahead of your DVD player.

As above anyDVD is good for making your player multi-region with the added bonus it can ignore all the copyright warnings/ads and jump you straight to the film/main menu

I use DVD Shrink to back up discs, very user friendly and you can ditch specific parts of the disc you don't want, for instance you can get rid of alternate audio tracks and trim off the end credits to save space.

From a PC hooked up to a hi-def display there's also hi-def films of course, that's a whole other step-up from anything you can do with DVD's.

[martind]

Am i Ok sticking WinXP Pro if i went for TheaterTek and FFD Show?

I'm not looking to install a TV card so can't see any need for changing to Media Centre as my OS (or am i missing something by remaining on XP Pro - to be honest i dont know enough about MCE as an OS!).

[martind]

Am i Ok sticking WinXP Pro if i went for TheaterTek and FFD Show?

I'm not looking to install a TV card so can't see any need for changing to Media Centre as my OS (or am i missing something by remaining on XP Pro - to be honest i dont know enough about MCE as an OS!).

[The Dude]

Nothing wrong at all with XP Pro, no worries at all.
Media center is only a fancy front-end application for XP pro anyway..

[dejongj]

I get the tongue in cheak but XP-MCE is a little bit more than a fancy front end....

Anyway if you just want to use your PC as a DVD player then yes, simply just go with TeatreTek and ffdshow. Configure it to auto play and you get the teatretek interface immediately. You might want to add some remote control functionality though...
Also if you want to use the PC for more than just a DVD player, you may want to think of another user interface than the normal desktop as if you sit more than 10-foot away from you screen (which you should if you treasure your eyes...) then the normal desktop is severly small and difficult to navigate.

[Pbryanw]

Originally Posted by dejongj

Also if you want to use the PC for more than just a DVD player, you may want to think of another user interface than the normal desktop as if you sit more than 10-foot away from you screen (which you should if you treasure your eyes...) then the normal desktop is severly small and difficult to navigate.

Try MediaPortal for this. Seems to be quite popular on the forums at the mo. I use it for dvd browsing (linked to Theatertek) and it does the job well.