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Good DVD playback software!

Alchemist449Alchemist449 Registered User regular
edited August 2010 in Moe's Stupid Technology Tavern
The title says it all. My ps3 recently crapped out and with it my only real way of watching movies off of a disc. Since I don't have 300$ to spend on a new slim, could you nice folks point me in the direction
Of something that doesn't look like absolute shut like wmp and vlc seem to? It doesn't need to have editing features, just good and relatively low priced. Bluray playback would be nice but I can live with out it. Thaaaaaanks guys

Alchemist449 on

Posts

  • -Loki--Loki- Don't pee in my mouth and tell me it's raining. Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Why are you discounting VLC on the fact that the UI is ugly? It's a very good player, and you don't actually see the UI once you've got a movie running full screen.

    -Loki- on
  • Alchemist449Alchemist449 Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    It's not the ui, I mean the picture I was getting was not great. Is there a way to improve it? Or could something else be causing the crappy picture? I'd love to use vlc if it can give me a jaggy less movie.

    Alchemist449 on
  • EchoEcho ski-bap ba-dapModerator, Administrator admin
    edited July 2010
    Alchemist449 wrote: »
    It's not the ui, I mean the picture I was getting was not great. Is there a way to improve it? Or could something else be causing the crappy picture? I'd love to use vlc if it can give me a jaggy less movie.

    You're watching it on a high-resolution screen. DVDs have lower resolution than your screen, so it stretches to fit.

    Jaggy or blurry. Pick one.

    Echo on
  • freakish lightfreakish light butterdick jones and his heavenly asshole machineRegistered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Well, that's not necessarily it. VLC gave me jaggies even when I was watching a 720p .mkv file on a 1600x900 screen, which should not be happening. I mean sure, the resolutions don't match up exactly, but the amount of scaling there to do does not equal how bad the picture looked. Actually come to think of it, the jaggies might have been there at native resolution, when they didn't show up in any other media player.

    I like SMPlayer, personally. Fixes the jaggy problem, though occasionally I might get a little bit of stuttering, which isn't ideal, but I haven't found the perfect program yet.

    freakish light on
  • Alchemist449Alchemist449 Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Echo wrote: »
    Alchemist449 wrote: »
    It's not the ui, I mean the picture I was getting was not great. Is there a way to improve it? Or could something else be causing the crappy picture? I'd love to use vlc if it can give me a jaggy less movie.

    You're watching it on a high-resolution screen. DVDs have lower resolution than your screen, so it stretches to fit.

    Jaggy or blurry. Pick one.

    Blurry if I had to, blurry is less distracting than jaggy.

    Alchemist449 on
  • RandomEngyRandomEngy Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Zoom Player looks good and plays back DVDs and is generally awesome.

    Also Blu-Ray playback on a PC is a nightmare. Unless you rip it first.

    RandomEngy on
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  • solsovlysolsovly Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    RandomEngy wrote: »
    Zoom Player looks good and plays back DVDs and is generally awesome.

    Also Blu-Ray playback on a PC is a nightmare. Unless you rip it first.

    You pretty much have to use one of these three for blu-rays:

    ArcSoft TotalMedia
    WinDVD
    PowerDVD

    I was shocked to find out that I had to buy software after buying the blu-ray drive just to play a movie. TotalMedia center is what I ended up using. It's alright, it very rarely stutters for no apparent reason and sometimes there's playback issues if you don't upgrade firmware for both the drive or software updates.

    All in all, HTPC was not as easy as a PS3 and I wouldn't recommend building a HTPC specifically for blu-ray playback. As RandomEngy said, ripping first then playback is much nicer.

    solsovly on
  • Zilla360Zilla360 21st Century. |She/Her| Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    VLC supports skins.

    Zilla360 on
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  • Alchemist449Alchemist449 Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Just to clarify, it's not VLC's ui that bothered me, it was the image quality. WMP made the blacks look like they all had magic beams flying through them. VLC had jaggies so bad that I couldn't tell the difference between a persons face in profile and a peach colored 1st-grader Christmas Tree; though, on the plus side, the blacks were not terrible.

    Alchemist449 on
  • jaziekjaziek Bad at everything And mad about it.Registered User regular
    edited July 2010
    Media player classic gets the job done perfectly fine. I use it for everything video related. (Except for blu-ray, PowerDVD for that.)

    jaziek on
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  • GrimReaperGrimReaper Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    Is this hooked up to a monitor or a tv in a living room?

    If tv in living room: XBMC, if monitor on desk: media player classic home cinema.

    GrimReaper on
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  • brynstarbrynstar Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    I use PowerDVD for both DVD and Blu-Ray playback. I enjoy it and it's got the features I wanted.

    brynstar on
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  • That_GuyThat_Guy I don't wanna be that guy Registered User regular
    edited August 2010
    I use Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPCHC) with Shark007's Windows 7 codec pack. MPC is pretty much the gold standard when it comes to lightweight media players. VLC is nice, but I don't like the UI. Shark007's codec packs are pretty good too. He even has a 64bit add-on.

    That_Guy on
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