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jpeg slideshow on HDTV

978 Views 20 Replies 12 Participants Last post by jroyale, Mar 22, 2005

iseec

Discussion Starter · Feb 18, 2005

What is the program to use to make a high resoultion slideshow from jpeg and show it on a HDTV? I have a HTPC connected to a Mits HDTV. I tried the DVD Pictureshow and MemoriesonTV and the results are not great on the HDTV.

Thanks in advance.

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1 - 20 of 21 Posts

Suntan

· #2 · Feb 18, 2005

I believe pretty much every HTPC frontend app has something for slideshows. I have used myHTPC (which you can still get for free I believe check the meedio forums) which worked fine for slidshow viewing.

Otherwise, if you are not worried about setup polish and just want good looking pictures from your slideshow, you could use Irfanview (also free).

-Suntan

Karyk

· #3 · Feb 18, 2005

Doesn't XP have a slideshow feature built into Windows Explorer?

Edit: It's Windows Picture and Fax Viewer. Rather crude, but it works.

heartsurgeon

· #4 · Feb 18, 2005

if you want a freebee that is extremely nice...

try picasa

free download from google (in their "more" section) or from picasa site itself.

very nice organizer system, does a great slideshow

NVboy

· #5 · Feb 18, 2005

Quote:

Originally posted by iseec

What is the program to use to make a high resoultion slideshow from jpeg and show it on a HDTV? I have a HTPC connected to a Mits HDTV. I tried the DVD Pictureshow and MemoriesonTV and the results are not great on the HDTV.

[/b]

What size images are you working with? HDTV is hi-rez in the tv world, but not in the photography world. If you try viewing a slideshow consisting of 7mp shots, nothing will come close to looking like the originals.

Great suggestions out there for freebie programs. I'd like to add Lview (the oldest version you can find) to the list. There are plenty of retail programs out that will work as well. I'm not a big fan of this one, but many people rave about it-acdsee. I don't like it because it creates it's own thumbnail caches, which is an unnecessary waste of space when you have tens of thousands of vacation photos on your PC.

iseec

Discussion Starter · #6 · Feb 18, 2005

Thanks for all pointing out the programs for me to try.

Nvboy

My pictures are in 3504x2336 resolution. It is about 3 to 4MB per picture. I shot them with a 8MP camera. You are right that my pictures come out not very clear when I view them in the HDTV that is why I am asking for help to pick the right program. May be that is the nature of HDTV, it looks excellent on broadcast materials but not so good when viewing still photographs. Anyway to convert the pictures to a HD video?

Karyk

· #7 · Feb 18, 2005

Your photos have greater resolution than your set. The problem might be that you don't have the computer to display at that high of a resolution--make sure you have it set at 720p or 1080i (or whatever approximation your set accepts for those--for me it's 1776x1000i). If you only have it set at 480 it would look worse than it needs to.

(If you need to change resolutions it might be best to look into Powerstrip.)

I'd think just about anything would downconvert to the display resolution about as well as anything else.

NVboy

· #8 · Feb 18, 2005

Quote:

Originally posted by iseec
Thanks for all pointing out the programs for me to try.

Nvboy

My pictures are in 3504x2336 resolution.

I honestly don't think you are going to find any program out there that will magically make 8mp shots look the same (or somewhat close to) the originals. For those with really low-rez photos, viewing them on HDTV works great. IMO, you just lose far too many pixels (detail) when hi-rez shots have to be down rezzed for display. I've relegated my slide show viewing to my 20" PC monitor. More often than not, I just make a bunch of DVD's filled with photos to send to family or friends. That way, they can view them however they want.

Bryston

· #9 · Feb 18, 2005

Its not free, but this company has a built in SS player that beats any I have tried. Firehand ember max. It can scale your pictures to best fit your display, play them by name, date, size, random, and iterate through sub folders etc. Its very comprehensive, and lokks great at 1080i on my hdtv.

http://www.firehand.com/products/index.html

Edit: even the free version has the SS player.

iseec

Discussion Starter · #10 · Feb 18, 2005

Have you seen the screen saver Marine Aquarium running on a HDTV? It is as sharp and detail as the HDTV programming I got from the Discovery HD or INHD.

I don't know what is the process they used to encode the screen saver to make it so real.

jtantram

· #11 · Feb 18, 2005

If you want to blow people away try motion picture screensaver -- It basically a copy of the Mac OSX slideshow screensaver. I haven't find the pan/scan/zoom features in any other PC apps.

http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~gstitt/motionpicture/

DoctorG

· #12 · Feb 18, 2005

iseec,

I use memoriesonTV with great results. The key is to buy the mpeg encoder or if you have tmpegenc you can use that. You need to save the show as DVD in order to get the best quality. If you don't have the mpeg encoder, the only option you get is vcd which looks like crap.

Gregg

NVboy

· #13 · Feb 18, 2005

Quote:

Originally posted by DoctorG
iseec,

I use memoriesonTV with great results. The key is to buy the mpeg encoder or if you have tmpegenc you can use that. You need to save the show as DVD in order to get the best quality. If you don't have the mpeg encoder, the only option you get is vcd which looks like crap.

Gregg

If he tries that, he will seriously degrade the quality of his pictures even more than just trying to view them as .jpg.

IRelayer

· #14 · Feb 19, 2005

This has been pointed out before but let me just reiterate...its actually pretty impossible to see those 8 meagpixel pictures IN 8 megapixel resolution. The resolutions of today's display devices pretty much limit you to an upper limit (with the best CRT monitor) 2048x1536 or slightly higher which is roughly how many pixels a 3.1 megapixel digicam picture would yield (2048 Ã— 1536 = 3,145,728). So if you want to get techincal, you are never going to see your 8MP pictures "as they are" unless you have professional prints done because no consumer display device can resolve that many pixels at once. A true HDTV that outputs 1080i or 720p definately cannot do it, as these resolutions are somewhat below what I just said. Just thought I'd throw that out there. IMO, the MCE2005 slideshow prog that's built in is pretty cool

-IR

iseec

Discussion Starter · #15 · Feb 19, 2005

I am a bit confused. Why the HDTV programs look much better than the jpeg slideshow on HDTV. The HDTV programs actually have lower resolution than the jpeg pictures.

Karyk

· #16 · Feb 19, 2005

Quote:

Originally posted by iseec
I am a bit confused. Why the HDTV programs look much better than the jpeg slideshow on HDTV. The HDTV programs actually have lower resolution than the jpeg pictures.

Well, I'll go back to the resolution issue again (since most people seem to focus on the program which can be irrelevant if the display resolution isn't changed).

On my HTPC it switches to 1776x1000 when a video source is playing, and is only 720x480 the rest of the time. If I didn't tell it to switch to the higher resolution for photos, they would look worse than HDTV.

I happen to use Powerstrip to automatically change resolutions, but many video programs can do that themselves. Perhaps that's what's happening with you--you're changing resolution automatically with video but not the photos.

legatus

· #17 · Feb 19, 2005

Any slideshow software that uses the entire screen will, by nature, scale the pictures to whatever the resolution is set to on the computer. Scaling still pictures (especially down-rezzing) is not something that you will find significant image quality differences on an HDTV. My HTPCs have MCE and I rather like the slight slow pan that it does when showing slides. It is not enough to obscure parts of the picture, except for right next to the edges, but it adds gentle movement making the slideshow more dynamic. This in addition to the music that you can put in the background.

Cheers,

Karyk

· #18 · Feb 19, 2005

Quote:

Originally posted by legatus
Any slideshow software that uses the entire screen will, by nature, scale the pictures to whatever the resolution is set to on the computer.

Yes, but many HTPCs have their desktops set to 480.

jroyale

· #19 · Mar 22, 2005

Okay, I'm trying to do a slideshow burnt on DVD and watch it on my HDTV and the results are actually worse than my old CRT. Now, I assume this is similar to TV in that regular cable TV actually can look worse on my HDTV than it did on my old CRT. That I understand. But what I don't understand is professional DVD's that have picture galleries in the extras, the pics look great so it is possible.

I have seen TV's such as the EPSON with the CF card reader built in and the pics look like you are watching them on a LCD Monitor, they are fantastic. So, I assume it's the deliver method and not the pics.

I also understand that DVD's only do 720x480 so my final question is, is there a device that reads CF cards that plugs into HDTV's wether by composite or by digital cables that can perform slideshows? Secondly, has anybody hooked up their computers via HDMI to their tv's and done a slideshow. I have done the latter but no slideshow. My card (NVIDIA 5200)said it would do 1080i but went all wonky on me but it did do 720p. At that, the screen didn't look great but decent. Unfortunately, I've taken back the cable since.

Any suggestions on how to perform a slideshow with exceptional quality for your digital pics?

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the_bear89451

· #20 · Mar 22, 2005

Jroyle,

If your TV is 1080i, getting HDMI working with your computer in 1080i is your best solution. There are some flash card STB readers on the market, but they are all SD. With 1080i jpg, your pictures should look mush better than the DVD or even stills via mpg2 HDTV programming. Crop your pictures to 16x9 so they fill the screen. Personally, I crop to 2x3 (not as wide) so the pictures will fit in my photo albums better.

Here is a shareware program that allows very fast cropping of a large set of pictures:
http://www.exifer.friedemann.info/index.htm

1 - 20 of 21 Posts

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