How to watch HD DVDs on my computer?

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Meowcow

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Aug 21, 2014
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I guess my computer just doesn't have a good Video Player program. Every time I load up a DVD, it's in awful quality. I've been using VLC because, well, that's really all I had and the quality is horrible. And Windows Media Player didn't even detect the DVD.

Last time I visited my Dad, he had a program where the DVDs looked as good as they did on TVs and he just said it came with his laptop. He doesn't even know what it's called.

Are there any programs out there that can display my DVDs in HD? Because I doubt there are free programs, I'd even be willing to pay, so if they cost something, that's not too big of an issue as long as I find it reasonable.

Any help is appreciated.
 
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VLC media player is probably the best free player available and one of the best players period. If it looks bad, it's likely either a setting or the resolution is not set correctly. Or possibly the disk is damaged or dirty. If the movie is a 1080 optimized version but your display is 768, or 720p, it's not going to look as good.

In most cases movies should look better on a good monitor than they do on an equivalent resolution tv as the monitor usually has a much denser pixel count than the tv which generally has the same pixel count over a larger area.
 
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1) I use the program K-Lite (Standard or Full). I've also tried VLC which I found wasn't as good at times.

Simply install K-Lite and choose the default setup and it will use the CPU decode method which is ideal for most people (hardware decoding can use settings from the video control panel which aren't ideal. I had an issue years ago with video looking horrible and this was the cause. AMD's drivers were applying flesh tone correction and other things).

http://www.codecguide.com/download_kl.htm

2) I've found almost ALL programs and codec combinations to look identical to me unless hardware decoding AND video settings were modifying the data.

3) The MONITOR will limit how good things look. Poor black levels or response times will produce inferior experience and different software won't help.

Color can also be affected by monitor settings (I go by flesh tone). You may have a VIDEO setting that may produce flatter but more realistic colors instead of oversaturated, brighter tones.

4) HD scaling?
I've not seen any benefit between different programs, however I believe many including modern K-Lite already utilize HD scaling methods.

Summary:
Again, I suggest K-Lite (which installs its own video program WMPC-HC to by default launch programs) and use the default setup.
 
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I must have been updating but I gave the link. I recommend clicking the "K-Lite Standard" blue link on the mid-bottom, right location. Installing is pretty simple.

If the program WMPC-HC isn't automatically launching (mine did) you can change the default programs within Windows for video/audio usage.

(I should add WMP will work now if you want though I see no point. K-Lite adds the required drivers needed. I like K-Lite as it's never failed me and I can also choose settings to "remember DVD position" or "remember file position" which is nice.)
 
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So I've been tinkering with VLC options a bit and got it working somewhat well. Movie wise, it's like 95% as good as if I watched it on my TV. Definitely good enough, but I'm still just browsing around to see if there are better solutions.



DVDs aren't HD? I don't want to say you're wrong because, well, my knowledge of this is extremely limited, but how aren't they? The DVDs were pretty much as crisp as watching a YouTube video on 720p. Definitely better than YouTube's 480p. Like I said, this isn't something I really know about, so I'll take your word, it just kinda blows my mind.

And as for the last part, YouTube videos look fine for me.

Edit-
Also for the last part (I seemed to have skipped over it), the issue is that it's more blurry.



Windows 8 and 1920x1080
 
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720x480 or 720x576. May be interlaced.

Youtube likely has much higher compression even at the higher resolutions. DVD-video can be up to 9,800 kb/s data rate, but usually is 4-5Mb/s. It's a bit hard to find figures for Youtube because their codecs vary a lot, but 1Mb/s for 480p and 2.5Mb/s for 720p seems to be a reasonable approximation. Their encoders are better than those around when DVD was created, though.

 
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When you use a video player in Windows, it's just a wrapper with a user interface. The movie decoding and displaying is actually done by the codecs you have installed. So once you install K-Lite, all your video players will be using K-Lite automatically.

The exception is VLC. They put their own codecs into the VLC player, which is why a lot of times it will work when other players don't.


Actually they're 720x480i, anamorphic (i.e. not a 3:2 aspect ratio like the resolution implies)


Nope, they're not HD. You're talking about up-scaling - resizing the video image so it fits on today's larger 1080p screens while interpolating diagonal lines so it appears to remain sharp, and not just a blurred enlarged version of the original. Try following these instructions in VLC if that's what you want. The menus are a bit different (older version), but you should be able to find the same options.
http://blog.thewombat.org/2008/11/how-to-use-vlc-096-as-upscaling-media.html

There's also progressive scan - converting the 480i DVD data into 480p. But pretty much every video player today automatically does that via deinterlacing. Interlaced video is incompatible with non-interlaced computer screens, so you have to deinterlace it if you want the video to look right. If you've ever seen video which seems to break into horizontal lines every time there's motion, that's due to an improper deinterlacing job.
 
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Well, all I can say is that I got it working near flawlessly. There's a good chance that it's displaying perfectly, but I'm just spoiled by Blu-Rays and I'm noticing the lower quality.

I'm not at home so I can't test Blu-Rays right now nor can I test these on a TV at this moment (hotel doesn't have a DVD player, first world problems).

Normally I would pick a solution, but all of these responses have been very helpful. Thanks everyone.
 
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