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A question about Blu Rays on Computer

S

skitallz

n00b
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
7
Hi everyone, i'm a little new here to forums but i've been a long time reader. I had a question I needed to ask that I thought everyone here could help me with.

Last week I just built a new computer and along with it, I purchased the Soyo Pearl 24 inch monitor. I know that there is a thread already, but it was for the topaz model. Now my question might be a little crazy to some of you, but I was wondering about the actual quality of the Monitor itself. I built my computer with gaming in mind, but I also built it with the intention of watching hi def movies, more specifically blu ray movies. My problem is the difference in quality of blu ray movies on the monitor, and the difference to what blu rays look like on tv's. I have always believed that computer monitors have always been a step up from television displays, even if they are 1080p monitors.

I remember walking into a circuit city one day and looking at spider man 3 on a sony television at 1080p. My friend and my myself literally couldn't walk away form the television from how amazingly detailed it was. It was like watching real people in a box. After seeing this I built my new computer with an LG hddvd/blu ray drive in hopes of computer monitors being able to show that stunning amount of detail and quality. To help out, the computer that I built was a

Core I7 2.66 ghz
Asus P6t board
Evga Geforce 260 superclocked
3 gigs of 1333mhz ram
LG Combo Hddvd/Blu Ray drive
Seagate 500 gig 32mb cache drive
750 watt power supply
and of course the Soyo pearl series 24 inch monitor running at 1920x1200 using DVI.

Now what I wish to understand is, can the quality be attributed to my parts, or is it just the monitor myself? I don't have much of an understanding of monitors, saw the deal for this monitor at office max, and bought it cause I thought it was going to be an awesome monitor for really cheap. I have not much knowledge of monitors and how they are made or what technologies go into them. I Just thought that they have always been a step up from any tv, even todays.

When connecting my same pc to my 720p 50 inch samsung in the living room, I see almost the same quality I saw at the store, just not so much cause it was 720p rather than 1080p. I have a fair knowledge of the resolution and some of the technologies, but not so much that I can't understand why a monitor running at 1920x1200 can't outperform a 720p or even a 1080p television monitor.

I have to admit though, watching movies on the soyo monitor are very detailed, but comes no where close in comparison to what I saw at the store. The picture quality is very clear and sometimes you can notice the high detail, but again no where close to the one at circuit city. I am really stuck here on how to get that kind of quality in picture detail. I've even researched and bought the best looking blu rays to see if I can achieve what I saw in the store. I went from vga to the ever expensive dvi cable to achieve the quality. I've tested different players on the computer. I just can't seem to achieve that type of quality.

Can anyone explain to me what I am missing, and what technologies go into television sets that might make it much better than your average monitor? Thanks
 
1. Make sure your videocard/display isn't scaling the 1080P video signal over to the 1200 liens of resolutions. You should have some thin black bars on the top and bottom of the screen when playing HD content fully screen.

2. the Soyo, while some were MVA panels, many were TN, you may not have very good color due to TN dithering techiques, and poor extremes such as blacks.

4. The Sony TV is likely a very high end panel type, probably from their S-LCD supplier they created. Tuned for movie watching... Tweaking the color profile for your monitor may help some.

And then effect, a huge 42-52" TV is going to have a much more WOWing effect than a 24" on your desk...
 
Is there some kind of program that would be perfect for tweaking my monitor's colors? I don't really know much about colors, and I don't really understand what colors have to do with the actual sharpness of the picture. This is all confusing but i'll gladly try some sort of program to accomplish a better picture. Btw, is there a monitor out on the market that's 24 inches and will give quality around what I saw?
 
Okay, I have to ask this when I see that someone is wowed by a demo in the store these days.

Did the motion seem really smooth, smoother than you're used to seeing it? Did it look like video in a way, like a sporting event in HD?

See, there are a lot of these 120Hz LCD sets now, and they have an optional feature that makes the motion smoother by inserting fake frames in between the real frames. In the stores, naturally they have it turned on because it attracts attention, and makes the movie look unlike anything people have seen before. Some people see this and associate it with Blu-ray, even though it's actually the TV that's doing it, and it can do it with DVDs as well (though combining the smooth motion with the higher detail of BD makes it stand out that much more, of course). They get home with a BD player for their TV that doesn't have the feature, and then they wonder why it doesn't look like it did in the store.

Personally, I don't care for it because I'm kind of a purist that wants to watch the movies more like they would look in a theater, but to each his own. Some people really like it.

WinDVD has a feature like this, BTW, called Trimension or something like that. I haven't used WinDVD for a few years, so I don't know the current status on it and whether it works with BDs or not.
 
The bottom line is computer monitors are not as good as dedicated TVs at video.

The 8.5 and 9th generation LCD production lines used by the largest TV manufacturers for 40" and above sets are not being used for computer monitors - monitors come from the old, crap or 3rd party manufacturing lines. The price of monitors tells you a lot. TVs are designed for and calibrated for video colors (reviewers nowadays actually check!) and their processing is dedicated for this purpose, and computer monitors are generally uncalibrated, noisy in video and have crap video processing hardware. TVs now have 50,000:1 dynamic Contrast Ratios and better than 3000:1 static CR (local dimming LED TVs and Plasmas are even better) but computer monitors despite the fake specs almost never crack 1000:1.

TVs are all 1080p now, so your monitor (22") is even at a small disadvantage in resolution. When it comes to video, that Pioneer, Panasonic, Sony or Samsung TV you may have seen is superior in every respect.

In the old days, cheap CRT TVs were not as good as computer monitors for a variety of reasons (480i vs SXGA is one reason), but those days are long past. That said, you could compensate for some of those shortcomings by tweaking your setup - calibration, choosing the right video codec and settings, video card settings, etc., but it will never look as good as a well calibrated high end TV.
 
Interesting. I always thought that Computer monitors were superior, but tv's really have taken a huge leap forward, especially with the technology with the insertion of frames. I'm really starting to get the impression that hi def movies aren't all that great compared the wow factor going form vhs to dvd. Even as I looked at the blu ray movie, I still didn't tihnk it was much of a step forward from dvd.

Can I ask what kinf of monitor is out in the market that is reletively inexpensive that can do what those tv's are doing now? Does the panel types have anything to do with it?
 
Watching Bluerays on a computer LCD will not show the benifits of it. You can not see the added resolution on a 24 inch screen, and TV LCDs have a much higher contrast ratio which is real important for watching video.

Bluerays look fantastic on a 52 inch 120Hz LCD TV. It is actually a much bigger jump then Standard Def. to DVD IMO.

Dave
 
Is the quality not as good? Or is it in fact too good? Because 1920X1200 on your 24" is essentially higher than TV's 1920X1080 capable resolution. Granted TV's are manufactured to reproduce better images, for movies and ... well...television.

Actually, I have a follow up,
At 1920X1200, when I stick in a DVD in the dvd-rom drive (currently: samsung) I have noticed the images look more Grainy than when viewed on a TV...is this because of the "higher than 1080p" or "higher resolution" of the lcd monitor compared to the TV?

Im thinking of getting a 30" behemoth, and I as wondering if this grainy effect would similarly be reproduced, or would it look jawdropping, as it does on a 40"+ HDTV.

Thanks fellaas
 
The extra resolution is only at the top and bottom, outside the 1920x1080 area. Unless you're chopping off the sides so that the image completely fills the screen, that extra area on a 1920x1200 monitor would be filled in with black bars.

As for the "grainy" effect, it may just be that the monitor is more revealing, or the TV has some noise-reducing processing. You may just be seeing the natural film grain more clearly, and seating distance could play a role in this too.

BTW, graininess is a controversial topic when it comes to Blu-ray. People like me want the movies presented as they are, which often means there is film grain. Others, however, want them "cleaned up" (using DNR, or digital noise reduction). This DNR has a side effect of removing fine detail, and that's another reason people like me don't like it. There may be a middle ground, but I don't think you'll ever get everyone to agree on how much should be used. My opinion is that noise reduction should be implemented in the displays, so that both camps can be happy. If it's done in the transfer, those of us who want the natural grain won't like it.
 
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