[MPlayer-users] Why do rental/bought DVDs look so bad?

[Reimar Döffinger]

Hello,
On Thu, Mar 08, 2007 at 11:07:03PM +0000, James Rowlett wrote:
> The bad ones seem to be PAL which are reported as progressive. May
> be a coincidence. I would have thought progressive ones would look
> better than interlaced ones. And, I am not sure I trust the application
> which tells me if it is interlaced or not.

You would clearly notice if interlacing was the problem.
Most likely they are somewhat older films (or more precisely a copy made
from an old celluloid that has accumulated dirt, scratches, whatever
there can be) without being postprocessed.

> Anyway, It seems that they can be made to look reasonable. Interesting that
> a hardware DVD player connected to my TV plays them badly, when adding
> -vf hqdn3d (under Linux) makes them look pretty acceptable.

If it looks bad on the hardware player that's how they were meant to
look by the creators. Though anyone who has had a closer look at some of
the DVDs can confirm that most creators are idiots at least on a
technical level (like not allowing you to disable subtitles when
selecting English audio - I heartily advise buying a player where there
is a hacked firmware available...)

Greetings,
Reimar Döffinger