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Blocky DVD, Divx, MPeg, Xvid Playabck

post #1 of 12
4/22/04 at 8:25am
Thread Starter 
I have an AREA 51M, 16.1" LCD, ATI 9600, 60GB, WinXP Pro, 1GB Ram, DVD-CD-RW, and have noticed that the quality of any video file played on my laptop is below what I have seen on say my old Toshiba Tecra and any other PC. Dvd playback for example is pretty blocky and washed out, I thought it might be the DVD-Drive not reading the disc quick enough, so i put some divx, xvid movies on my HD. They too, are not as clear as you would expect. I have the same movie running side by side on my Area 51m and another laptop, and the quality is distinctly worse on my alienware. I am currently using Power DVD 5, but have tried WMP, PowerDVD v4, and WinDVD, and yes I have tweaked it using powerstrip. Also have the latest audio and visual codecs, but the quality just isn't there. Has anyone else experienced this. I may send it back for a second time.

Cheers
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post #2 of 12
4/22/04 at 11:38am
Go to the video card settings and tweak your overly settings till you get it just right should clear up some of the problmes.

here is what I use as was posted on alienwares support site

Right click on Display, and choose Properties
- From the Settings Tab, choose Advanced
- Select ATI Overlay Tab and make the following adjustments
Brightness = -9%
Contrast = 100%
Saturation = 90%
Hue = -1.0
Gamma = 0.85
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post #3 of 12
4/23/04 at 10:31am
it should be noted that the overlay settings is not a tru fix, it only tweaks it so it doesnt look quite so bad. I think its been determined that the crappy dvd picture is from lack of LCD screen drivers, among other things.
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post #4 of 12
4/27/04 at 10:16am
Are there any drivers that can be down loaded that will help DVD playback?
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post #5 of 12
4/27/04 at 12:39pm
I would be very interested to know the answer to this as well...
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post #6 of 12
4/27/04 at 12:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hornet
it should be noted that the overlay settings is not a tru fix, it only tweaks it so it doesnt look quite so bad. I think its been determined that the crappy dvd picture is from lack of LCD screen drivers, among other things.

it's not due to the "non-disclosed" high response rate of the lcd that AW uses?
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post #7 of 12
4/28/04 at 10:26am
I dont think so...the refresh rate with movie playback seems ok to me..its just that the picture itself isnt 100% clear..blotchy textures/colors etc. Theres a 5+ page thread about this on the AW forums, and all AW ever says is to try adjusting overlay...gah.
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post #8 of 12
4/28/04 at 3:49pm
The problem is because the LCD screen is not 24 bit color, it (like many large screens) is 18 bit (6-6-6). To get the best picture, all you can do is set your screen to 32 bit color, and adjust the overlay. Never run your AW notebook on 16 bit color the colors will be hideous.
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post #9 of 12
5/9/04 at 9:35pm
I have had awsome results in dvd play back with the new 1.16 bios:-)
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post #10 of 12
5/11/04 at 11:16am
poolumps, was yours bad before u changed bios?
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post #11 of 12
5/11/04 at 1:12pm
Ihave to say at least on mine the grain on dvd's was quite nioticalbe before teh 1.16 upgrade now its still there but not nearly as noticable I can tell the whole display is slightly sharper and more crisp than before.
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post #12 of 12
5/13/04 at 5:02pm
After adjusting all settings in Color and overlay my end result was very good but not perfect. The 1.16 bios made everthing that much better I was happy with it before but now I think its the best lcd screen Ive seen. I belive it should not have to be tweaked and played with to get these results but im happy now:-)
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