DVDs look terrible : (

Have you tried more than one DVD? Are they oiginal dvd's or DivX/AVI stuff?

You could try the free program FFShow...very powerful, but quite hard to use.

Oh, BTW, is your display calibrated for color/contrast/brightness, etc?

EDIT: Oops, meant to type "ffdshow" instead of ffshow..

Yes. One example would be ffdshow.

Another might be Nvidia's Purevideo driver software--especially if you have a late-generation Nvidia graphics chip.

Please keep us updated if you figure it out, those DVD's should look great on that system. Do avi's and mpg's, etc look equally bad?

a lot of films come with a grainy appearance anyway, even projected in a movie theater. the remainder of the quality depends on the mastering of the dvd, the decoding software, and your screen. companies oftentimes skimp when it comes to mastering or licenses are monopolized by companies that don't know what they're doing or don't own great equipment. on your end, lcd screens, especially on a laptop just tend to not put out smoother, vibrant images than a tv screen which was built for that purpose. it will look sharper but you will receive all the fuzziness too. blacks won't be true blacks and colors get washed out, even on a very good screen compared to a midlevel tube tv. in my experience i have yet to come across even an lcd tv that provides a better picture than a decent flat tube nonhd tv from a normal viewing distance and without hd media (ymmv, glossy lcd's have potential but haven't compared them side to side). on the software side some programs can attempt to reconcile these shortcomings with filters or adjustments and though i haven't tested many, i like powerdvd a lot for the sound and video enhancement modes (CLEV, DD, etc.) and smartstretch sizing. not for fine tuning or power users but excellent if you are looking for a program that works well with miminal fuss. also some programs will overcompensate in these adjustments, like with interpolation, and the result is overly blurred, so play around with settings. that's all i got. i guess i'll check out ffdshow more since ive had it installed for awhile.

^Messenger: check out the latest SXRDs from Sony; I have a CRT HDTV (rear projector high resolution cathodes)--an Hitachi Ultravision--pretty high end (for a RPTV). Until I saw the SXRD, I never found anything among the new fixed-pixel displays that could match it...until the SXRD. Good stuff...

I still say the black levels aren't quite up to (eh, down to) the levels of CRTs, but they're awfully close. LCoS for the win?

For high resolution LCDs like ours, ffdshow is a must when viewing conventional DVDs.

Guides:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...&&#post7492264
http://www.htpcnews.com/index.php?op...=132&Itemid=29
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...hlight=ffdshow
http://www.hardware.no/guider/hele_m..._del_7/15836/7

DL links:
http://www.afterdawn.com/software/vi...rs/ffdshow.cfm
http://ffdshow.leffe.dnsalias.com/andy2222/

More discussion and screenshots (my thread):
http://www.notebookforums.com/showth...hlight=ffdshow

try updating ur video drivers.

Just to make sure before I dive into this for no reason- should I bother with all the ffdshow stuff for a Dell 2405fpw 24" lcd and my also my 1920x1200 laptop? Or is this only for giant lcd tv's?

Check out these screenshots....
http://www.htpcnews.com/forums/index...howtopic=17427

...and those in the links above and I think you'll see that it's worth it. Of course, DVD's look even better than those screenshots because ffdshow also does real-time 3D denoising as the DVD is playing.

But ffdshow really eats up the CPU. My Pentium M 2GHz can barely run it--CPU is running 75%-95%. But for my 1920x1200 WXUGA, it really makes a difference.

FFDShow is an awesome piece of software! Use it to play all your video even if you think it can't be better!

Parásito social knows the score....

adfterdawn.com is a great resource for this type of thing.

My Dell Inspiron came with PowerDVD, and my DVDs looked like you describe (in short, "disappointing").
I recently (two nights ago) used a guide on afterdawn.com written up by one of the mods on how to uninstall any extranious codecs from your system, and reinstall the lastest collections from various programs (freewares, one of which is ffdshow).
It's a step by step process, and not very difficult.
Now I watch DVDs crystal clear using Windows Media Player 11 Beta, and they look much better (and WMP11 seems to use less of the CPU resources) than Cyberlink's PowerDVD.

DISCLAIMER!...
I have Norton Goback on my system, which includes a cute little program called "Safe Try Mode". I can make system changes, and they screw it all up, I can "undo" it all.
If you go yanking out codecs, even though this worked for me (and many others), you should back them up.

Once all your codecs are up to date and you have eliminated any conflicting ones, if you are still experiencing problems, the source may be a Video Card setting.

S'all I know.

Hey nice site thx Kitty, in fact I found a brand new version of ffdshow there... http://www.afterdawn.com/news/archive/7797.cfm

I have gone through getting everything set up through Zoomplayer Professional/ffdshow and HOTDAYUM dvd's look crystal clear, gotta love this forum.

Hmmm that new ffdshow release may have screwed up my audio, Flash websites no longer have sound wtf? And my audio icon is gone from the lower right, I can still get to it through sound card properties but that is weird.

If you look on that site, I believe in the thread I'm refering to, that is an issue that someone had that was addressed specifically.

Well I couldn't find it on those forums but you inspired me to try another Deep Search of google, and lo and behold I found the fix, my registry got messed up somehow here : HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Drivers32 , so I went to another pc here and exported that entire key and merged it on this one and boom instantly fixed. Million thanks to you Psychokitty!

No kudos to me, s1999.
-I wouldn't have thought to do that, as simple and logical as it is.

...There is something about getting your DVDs to play clearly that is somehow more satisfying than almost anything else you might ever need to "fix" software wise.