DVD Quality on Radeon and Geforce

[kallekill]

I'm planning on buying a ATI Radeon card because I've heard that it has very good DVD-playback quality. I watch the movies on my monitor because it is much sharper then the TV (And my TV is smaller then my monitor). I was wondering if the Radeon has a resolution of 720*480 so that you can watch DVD-movies in the original resolution, I know some old ATI cards supported that resolution. My second alternative is a Geforce 2 MX. I have found a program called DCGenie which enables 720*480 resolution on NVidia cards. Is there a big difference in quality between the two cards? I don't care about how much they increase the performance of DVD-playback because I have a pretty fast computer, I'm just interested in the quality.

I currently have a Intel 740 graphic card which has the 720*480 resolution. I think the DVD-quality is very good on this card. I've tried an old NVidia TNT card and used DCGenie to playback the movies at 720*480 but the picture quality on the TNT is not as good as on the Intel 740. Does the new Geforce 2 cards have better DVD-quality then the old TNT-cards?

I hope some DVD-guru can answer all these questions, thanks.

Kalle

 

[sandorski]

There was a recent article on Anand's frontpage that dealt with this very issue. Radeon won, BTW.

 

[han888]

radeon do better on dvd quality than geforce

 

[kallekill]

I read that article now, but one question remains. Is there a way to set your desktop to 720*480 on the Radeon. I know you can do it with DCGenie on the Geforce. This is the reason why I'm not sure if I'll by the Radeon or the Geforce because 720*480 gives much better DVD-Quality.

Kalle

 

[StormRider]

Your message makes me want to take out my old i740 and try DVD on it. I don't remember it as being that good. I remember that it was good only at certain resolutions and that if you changed the resolutions then it became really jagged and awful looking.

As for software DVD playback on a monitor, this is also very important to me. I've had experiences with the i740, Banshee, Savage3d, Savage4, ATI RagePro, and ATI Rage128 (along with some Sigma Designs, Luxsonar and Ali M3309 based hardware decoders).

The best were the Savage and ATI series. They had truly excellent playback at all resolutions (both in terms of quality and performance). According to the MadOnion Video2000 tests, the Savage3d had the best up & down scaling -- it was the only chip with perfect scaling results (so you can playback your DVDs at any resolution and it will still look great).

The Savage4 and ATI RagePro/128 had minor flaws on some of those tests (I thought I could noticed it if you playback the DVDs on a tiny window -- the Savage3d did the best job of downscaling -- but this might be my imagination and I don't think any normal viewer would noticed any flaws).

The Rage128 had the best performance according to the MadOnion tests. I also think the Rage128 had the best color saturation -- colors looked really rich on my monitor.

Overall, I would go with the Radeon. I really love the DVD quality on my Rage128 card. Overall, it's probably the best chip out there for DVD and I would think the Radeon continues in this tradition. I always playback my DVDs at 1024x768 and I think the quality is excellent.

 

[PeAK]

The link to
Anand's DVD quality guide

 

[kallekill]

Well, maybe the Intel 740 isn't excelent at DVD-playback but I don't have so much to compare with. It is better then the TNT though. It is true that if you watch DVD at other resolutions than 720*480 it looks horrible. I think the colors are really good except for very bright colors that makes the picture look jaggy.

I think I'll go for the ATI All In Wonder if it will be available here in Europe before next year.

Still, it would be great if it could handle 720*480. Anyone knows?

 

[Oreo]

You don´t need to use 720*480 for DVD playback, it will not look horrible in any way if you don´t have that resolution. Maybe that was true a couple of years ago, but if you use a modern card and a new DVD app (like WinDVD2000 or CineMaster2000) then you´ll be able to set it to any resolution you want and still get very good quality.

 

[kallekill]

Maybe there isn't any great difference between 720*480 and other resolutions but there must still be some loss of picture quality. I can't see a reason not to watch at 720*480. I don't understand why not all cards support this resolution.

 

[kallekill]

Maybe there isn't any great difference between 720*480 and other resolutions on todays cards but there must still be some loss of picture quality. I can't see a reason not to watch at 720*480. I don't understand why not all cards support this resolution.