Upscaling standard DVD in Windows Vista?

[HannibalX]

I have PowerDVD 8 Ultra running on Windows Vista Business (32). DVDs looks simply horrible on my 22" Samsung (1680x1050). The image appears to be "stretched" to fit my screen but not actually "resized" or ?upscaled?. The video card is a Radeon X1950 Pro 256 if that makes a difference. I have tried all sorts of options in PowerDVD with no luck. The picture continues to look awful.

I have done some reading about using FFDSHOW and Zoom Player Pro to accomplish a true "upscale" but apparently this isn't possible in Vista because of DRM? Is this correct.

I haven't tried the FFDSHOW+Zoom Pro method yet. Has anyone tried this and been able to see an improvement? Right now I am sorely disappointed with PowerDVD 8. Any ideas?

Thanks,
PR

 

[jtvang125]

Anytime you stretch or go full screen, powerdvd is already "upscaling" the movie. I think your problem is the aspect ratio. I believe when a movie is playing you can right click on it and make sure "Keep aspect ratio" is checked. This will prevent any stretching. The overall quality will also depend on how close you sit to the monitor. If you're sitting like you're doing work, you're too close and it's going to look bad. Generally sitting 5 ft away from my 24" seems to give the best viewing experience.

Also my htpc running vista has no problems upscaling dvds in Media Center or Media player.

 

[HannibalX]

Originally posted by: jtvang125
Anytime you stretch or go full screen, powerdvd is already "upscaling" the movie. I think your problem is the aspect ratio. I believe when a movie is playing you can right click on it and make sure "Keep aspect ratio" is checked. This will prevent any stretching. The overall quality will also depend on how close you sit to the monitor. If you're sitting like you're doing work, you're too close and it's going to look bad. Generally sitting 5 ft away from my 24" seems to give the best viewing experience.

Also my htpc running vista has no problems upscaling dvds in Media Center or Media player.

I don't think this is the case. The image is clearly "stretched" and not resized. The aspect ratio doesn't seem to be a problem.

I have spent the last two nights working with FFDSHOW and Zoom Player with mixed results. There are specific options in FFDSHOW to resize or upscale the image from it's native resolution. I still have some tweaking to do but this seems like the best way to accomplish this on the PC.

 

[newnameman]

Originally posted by: Pale Rider

Originally posted by: jtvang125
Anytime you stretch or go full screen, powerdvd is already "upscaling" the movie. I think your problem is the aspect ratio. I believe when a movie is playing you can right click on it and make sure "Keep aspect ratio" is checked. This will prevent any stretching. The overall quality will also depend on how close you sit to the monitor. If you're sitting like you're doing work, you're too close and it's going to look bad. Generally sitting 5 ft away from my 24" seems to give the best viewing experience.

Also my htpc running vista has no problems upscaling dvds in Media Center or Media player.

I don't think this is the case. The image is clearly "stretched" and not resized. The aspect ratio doesn't seem to be a problem.

I have spent the last two nights working with FFDSHOW and Zoom Player with mixed results. There are specific options in FFDSHOW to resize or upscale the image from it's native resolution. I still have some tweaking to do but this seems like the best way to accomplish this on the PC.

It most certainly is the case. I'm not sure what you think the difference between stretching and resizing is?

This isn't to say that it's impossible to improve the quality of your upscaling, of course.