dvd quality

[warpigeon]

I rented the first season of Deadwood on DVD from the video store, watched some episodes on my comp (and some on my dvd player with the tv) and found the picture quality to be excellent, as one would expect from a DVD. So anyway I'm hooked on the show now but don't have HBO and with season 2 underway don't want to wait until it's completed so I go on ebay and buy the first 8 episodes of season 2 (through this past Sunday I think). These, of course, have been recorded by some individual who has the necessary equipment to do so.

Having watched the first episode that I was sent (the first being the first of 4 episodes on disk number 1 out of 2) I'm suprised at the low level quality it exhibits. It looks like an old vcr tape that has been recorded over a dozen times. I've played the DVD on both my the DVD player that's hooked up to my tv as well as my comp and the picture quality is crap in both cases. So I've got some questions as I'm a noob when it comes to recording tv shows to DVD and picture quality:

How can the picture quality be so crappy, it's all digital, right?
Is there some reason why a boxed retail set looks so much better that Joe Blow's homemade copy?
Since the DVDs are totally watchable should I just be happy with what I have?

Thanks for any knowledge, have a nice day.

 

[sn8ke]

He might have captured it with a crap capture card with regular cable. Also, he might have just ripped a bootleg VHS off the street to DVD format. Could also be downloaded episodes just burned to a DVD... they might have even been .wmv files at one point. Could be anything really.

The retail set looks so much better because it has been digitally mastered by some of the best people in the industry.

 

[rbV5]

How can the picture quality be so crappy, it's all digital, right?

The final quality is dependant on source quality primarily, and then on the format transfer process itself. Garbage in = garbage out.
The fact that it is on a "DVD" says nothing for the quality or method...only that it is on "DVD media".

Is there some reason why a boxed retail set looks so much better that Joe Blow's homemade copy?

Joe Blow probably just does a analog capture of broadcast TV and then sells his crap to unsuspecting buyers. The boxed retail set can be remastered from the original film or video tape and reauthored to compliant DVD in a studio production environment (although it doesn't have to be, and the boxed sets can have poor quality as well)

Since the DVDs are totally watchable should I just be happy with what I have?

I think you already know this answer, but I have a low tolerance for crap video myself unless there is no other source.

 

[VIAN]

How can the picture quality be so crappy, it's all digital, right?

The main purpose of a digital signal is to bypass interference that an analog signal gets. In actuality, the digital signal also gets that interference, but due to the way the digital signal is interpreted, most of the time, the interference is negligible.

In either case, the main purpose of these methods is to copy the source and play it back just as the original looked or sounded. Analog would receive interference, but since digital doesn't, it is more ideal.

So the reason you are getting crappy quality is because, as rbV5 said: the original source was crappy. All the DVD does is hold data. Other than that, it contributes nothing towards the actual quality of the film.