OT : Divx and Screen Resolution

[nod218]

This is a little off the topic but I am confused about the resolution of a divx file. I have a 21 inch monitor and my normal resolution is 1600x1200 and I watch divx files in full screen. These divx are encoded to be 640x480. If I lower my screen resolution to 640x480 when i watch divx files, will it improve the quality? or will the quality be better if i leave it at 1600x1200?

If anyone knows this, i'll appreciate the answer.

Thanks

 

[Nebor]

Quality will be the same no matter what. It's a 640x480 file. You're not going to improve that. You can watch it in the proper aspect ratio, or you can stretch it to fill your whole screen.

 

[Blastman]

I would say yes the Q would be better running the DIVX at a screen resolution of 640x480.

The more you stretch a DIVX the more you will degrade quality. Running the DIVX at its coded resolution of 640x480 (or less) will yield the best IQ.

If you are using 1600x1200 and you take a 640x480 DIVX and stretch it too full screen ,you will stretching it a lot more than if you were running a lesser screen resolution like 1024x768 -- and went to full screen. I would think dropping the screen resolution to make it bigger would also have some diminishing returns as your eyes would be better able to notice the graininess the bigger the image gets.

 

[Matthias99]

What?

You have the same *size* of screen to display the image, regardless of what resolution you run it at. 640x480 stretched to 1600x1200 on a 19" monitor *should* look the same as 640x480 stretched to 1024x768 on a 19" monitor. The "pixels" (of the blown-up image) are the same size. If it doesn't look the same, there's something seriously wrong with the player or video card you're using, because it's not upsampling right.

 

[kza]

Uhh....if you take a 640x480 video and full screen it at 1600x1200, you'll lose quality compared to leaving it at it's original resolution. Do that with like a small jpeg like at 320x200 resolution and blow it up to 1600x1200 and you'll see the difference compared to if you had made it originally at 1600x1200.

 

[Blastman]

Uhhhh, you could be right Mathias99 ... ... it sounded good when I wrote it. LOL.

?? My thinking is that stretching the DIVX to get bigger would be worse than enlarging it by dropping the screen resolution (while running the DIVX at it coded resolution.)