Hi-Def movies didn't look that great...

[Agent_Trig]

I downloaded a few of the WMVHD movies off the MS site last night and then played them on my PC which is connected to my Samsung LE32R41B vis VGA cable.

TBH I didn't think much of the picture, although the edges looked quite sharp and I could see smaller details that would have been washed out on a normal TV, I just wasn't impressed with the colour graduations on some scenes.

For example: On one of the HD movies, you watch a sky slowly turn from day to night and I could see the colour steps throughout the sky instead of it being a prefect blend.

Is this a problem with my TV, the HD files themselves or the PC that was playing them. Does the quality of my graphics card affect the quality of the movie picture?

Also, there was some screen tearing visible when playing these 720p movies. I heard that there was a fix for this via an update for the TV - where do I get one of those from?

I would be very grateful if these quations could be answered as I'm a little worried that there's something wrong with my new TV (although the Xbox 360 looks amazing on it, connected through component).

Cheers

[chedmaster]

remember WMV HD is quite compressed, real HD will be less compressed (on HD DVD / Blu Ray anyway) - this may have caused the banding/poor graduation

[Lrrr]

Originally Posted by Agent_Trig

TBH I didn't think much of the picture, although the edges looked quite sharp and I could see smaller details that would have been washed out on a normal TV, I just wasn't impressed with the colour graduations on some scenes.

For example: On one of the HD movies, you watch a sky slowly turn from day to night and I could see the colour steps throughout the sky instead of it being a prefect blend.

I noticed this too. I have downloaded some HD movies from the Net and they didn't exhibit this problem, so I think it is related to the amount of compression. Some of those MS demo movies were made quite a long time ago as well, I think the codecs have moved on since then.

[Agent_Trig]

Oh right, so its the files themselves? That's good then.

Does anyone know where I can get some high quality 'true hi-def' movie files from?

[dan1979]

Against the board rules to say where from

[Flibblebot]

You may want to look for some movie trailers - quite a few upcoming films have HiDef trailers. Most of them are in QuickTime - I don't know how that compares to WMV in terms of compression, banding etc.

[chedmaster]

try divx hd may be slightly better/less compressed

i find quicktime .movs to be v high quality but i hate apple products eg itunes and quicktime

[Rich777]

360 looks good, screen is getting 720p/1080i over component.

Maybe something to do with PC
What was your desktop res set to ?

ie: if it was "800 x 600" or something then that is what Windows media player is feeding the screen ..and not 720p/1080i, it can make quite a marked difference.

If you are thinking of an upgrade card DVI is much better than RGB.

[pinkprobegt]

Yep, the new Apple H.264 trailers look great The old Windows stuff isn't as good anymore. Some of the other stuff I have is also very good.

And as mentioned, you will only get them looking very good if your PC is matching the screen pixel for pixel so using 1024x768 on a 1366x768 screen will make it look not so good as it's having to scale. Thankfully my TV is 1280x720 and my puter does that no problems.