Hello,

I have a question that I hope I can get some clarification on. I am in the process of finishing up my Home theater as far as the construction goes. I have a Sharp DT-500, an Oppo 970 and an Onkyo Upconverting DVD/Divx/Xvid player (one of these DVD players will go in the theater). None of the equipment is hooked up yet. I plan on using HDMI to the projector.
During the downtime that I sometimes have, I have been converting my DVD's to Xvid video using AutoGK and the 1/3 DVD setting. I am trying to save space asi it is at a premium in my home. I have been putting 3 films on each DVD this way.
So my question is....will these Xvid files look like total crap when I finally view them using my projector or will they be almost as good as viewing the actual DVD's? Am I wasting my time doing this?
Thanks for any feedback on this.
Mark

Bump

Does anyone play Xvids on their projectors?

It'll look great. Don't worry about it. Oppo does DivX and Xvid too and you may want to try both along with HTPC which is really good for DivX and Xvid due to upgradable codecs.

I don't have a projector, but we watch Xvids on our LCD all the time. There is absolutely a loss of picture quality moving from DVD to Xvid. This can take many forms: blocking during motion scenes, graininess, lower color depth, etc. Whether this will be enough to make overbalance the gain in convenience is something you will have to decide for yourself. When watching a decent movie, the image image quality kind of fades into the background, unless the faults are very intrusive, or the film is itself interesting solely for its visual appeal. (5th Element comes to mind here.) - DR

Thanks guys for the info. Seems to be a bit conflicting though. I guess I will keep doing what I am doing and hope for the best.
Thanks again!
Mark

I don't have a projector, but we watch Xvids on our LCD all the time. There is absolutely a loss of picture quality moving from DVD to Xvid. This can take many forms: blocking during motion scenes, graininess, lower color depth, etc. Whether this will be enough to make overbalance the gain in convenience is something you will have to decide for yourself. When watching a decent movie, the image image quality kind of fades into the background, unless the faults are very intrusive, or the film is itself interesting solely for its visual appeal. (5th Element comes to mind here.) - DR

After watching many different Xvid videos on my Hitachi PJ-TX100 via my Oppo 971H I can vouch for dr0 here and say that I agree completely. To be honest I don't have any idea why Huey would say it will look great, because it just won't.

I personally would never convert a DVD to XviD and presume there's no quality loss. On some films with the right magic compression level, it may be okay, but it sounds like in your case you're applying a fixed compression level in most cases.

I think XviD is perfectly suited for watching on a average computer monitor, not full-screen, and definitely not output to a regular sized display, i.e. a TV.

Hall, you should try HD-Divx via HTPC. It's better than SD-DVD.

1/3 DVD quality may not be as good as DVD (obviously), but it if you need the space, what else can you do? Since you are already in that position (has PJ, has Xvids) and have little choice to change, why not try it and see how it looks.

Being negative about video quality won't change the OP's current situation. I'm just being positive as most people aren't videophiles.