I am having problems with a DVD I just burned.  Depending on the device I play the DVD on, the image quality varies quite noticably.  My 50" TV actually presents the sharpest representations while my work laptop is fairly "soft", with the home laptop decent but not as good as the TV.  I am an avid photographer with solid technique and the DVD consists of the best 10% or so of pictures I took on an amazing trip.  So the IQ of the photos themselves is great.

The specs on the various hardware involved are as follows:

Home PC (used to burn the DVD):
Dell Dimension 9200 Core 2 6600 2.4GHz, 3GB RAM
Radeon X1300/X1550 Series (I believe it is 256MB dedicated memory)
XP Pro SP3
Using Pinnacle Studio Plus version 12.1.3.6605
Selections within the Make tab where disc type of DVD and Video Quality for the burn was Best Quality
JPGs used in producing the DVD ranged in size from 1.8MB to 14.5MB

 

Devices the DVD was played on:

Home TV:
Panasonic TH-50PX60U
50" Plasma 780P TV, using an DVD player capable of upsampling for HD

Home laptop:
Compaq Presario CQ50-210US Athlon Dual Core QL-62 2.0GHz, 2GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce 8200M G (shared memory; don't know how much)
Windows Vista Home Premium SP1
Can't recall the DVD player used (and I don't have access to the laptop at the moment)

Work laptop:
Lenovo T400 core 2 duo P8400 @ 2.26GHz, 2GB RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series (I believe it is 128MB shared memory)
XP Pro SP3
Used InterVideo WinDVD 5 to play

 

My questions:

1. What is causing my image quality problem?  Is it the size of the JPGs used?  The video cards on the laptops?  The upsampling of the DVD used with the TV is giving the TV an unfair advantage over the laptops' DVD devices?  ???
2. What is the optimal JPG file size to optimize IQ?
3. Any other suggestions for maximizing IQ?

I am going to slip another quick question in here.  I hope that's OK.  I was looking for a way to change the menu button frame colour from white to something else (black in this case).  Is there a way to do that, or am I out of luck?

Thanks!

Moved from Studio Make Movie to Studio General Forum.

Nobody has ever encountered this or even has any suggestions?

I would really appreciate some assistance on this.

Thanks

My guess is that it is related to the displays and the video processing driving them. What are the resolutions of the screens on the laptops? Also, check the settings of the programs on them that you are using to play the DVD.

Thanks for the reply.  Any recommendation on what the monitor resolution should be for optimal display?

so this has everybody stumped?!

everlearning:

Thanks for the reply.  Any recommendation on what the monitor resolution should be for optimal display?

If your using SD video, size your player window in windows to be about 740x480 on the screen that will give you the best possible picture, otherwise you player software will have to do more conversions whether it be upscaling or down scaling to match the resolution you want. Remember this is the size of your software window - not your monitor resolution, some player software will have presets, others do not and you just kind of have to guess at the window size based on you screen resolution.. Your TV has only one resolution. If you talking HD, the same thing holds true except size player window to a size of 1920x1024. Your HD TV will do 720, and 1920 automatically. If this still gives you noticeable differences, then I'd look for better player software.

everlearning:

Thanks for the reply.  Any recommendation on what the monitor resolution should be for optimal display?

With a LCD monitor (e.g. laptop screen) it is always best to have the display set to the native screen resolution.  My laptop and work computers have 1280 x 1024 screens and that is what I use.

The size of the JPEG picture (in pixels) will determine the size shown on the screen.  For example, I take the JPEG's from my 12.1 MP camera (and my wife's 14.7 MP camera) into Photoshop and crop to a typical size of 1200 x 900 pixels.  That gives a picture that is a bit smaller than the full screen without "massaging" the picture.

I don't know why your apparent resolution (quality?) varies, but can you take your JPEG's that look good on the TV and try them on someone else' computer whose screen displays pictures that look good to you?  That would rule out a bad screen setting or other possible problem with your systems.

I often do slide shows made with Photodex ProShow Gold using JPEG's sized as mentioned above and have not seen any great difference between the slide show on a desk top, lap top or on my plasma TV.