Atrociously bad DVD playback on AMD 6970/Windows Media Player

[swaaye]

The PAL DVDs play the audio about +4% too fast so everybody sounds ever so slightly extra high pitched. PAL DVDs are tricky things when they come from NTSC land. There was probably some deinterlacing done to make them and it could cause them to be even nastier than the NTSC edition. The video segments are inherently interlaced I believe so they would need to be deinterlaced to make a progressive PAL DVD. If there's any weird ghosting in panning shots then they didn't do a good job.

 

[Grall]

No ghosting, the later seasons (when they supposedly started using 'inferior' video effects) look quite nice and clean. It's just the earliest stuff that's a bit grainy and colors are a bit washed-out too. But then again, TNG never was all that flashy, with the color scheme of the Enterprise looking like a tan hotel lounge, and all those jumpsuits people wore...

 

[Grall]

As a small aside, playing the same DVD(s) on my Macbook using apple's own included DVD player software gives the expected level of image quality, which is a bit noisy but not terribly awful.

As might be expected, I now actually use the mac for watching my X-Files DVDs, even though the built-in speaker leaves a lot to be desired from a fidelity standpoint. I can deal with that, considering audio is not the most important factor of the series, or even video actually; but rather the story itself.

I found a nice mini displayport to DVI cable at my preferred PC vendor that allows me to view the action on a larger external monitor, and as for sound I guess I could wear a set of headphones. Hm. Now that's a thought...!