[Allan Mack]

The other day, I observed the 17" LCD iMac--it was playing Monsters, Inc.


The picture looked slightly blocky or pixelized in certain scenes. The version I saw was the widescreen version, with black bars at the top and bottom. (I assume there are black bars because the iMac's display is 16:10 and the movie is closer to 16:9.) I never saw any blockiness/pixelation on my home TV (Sony 36XBR450)


Is this blockiness/pixelation due to the high resolution of the iMac's display (1440 x 900)? I've seen Toy Story 2 on my sister's iMac DV (15" CRT @ 1024 x 768) and never noticed any blockiness/pixelation.


So the question is... What is the ideal monitor resolution for viewing anamorphic 16:9 DVDs? 1024 x 768? 800 x 600? Does it matter?


On the 17" iMac, I also noticed a lot of combing in the video-based feature "Mike's New Car". There was no combing during the movie, which (I assume) is 24 fps.


When I tried out some video-based material on my sister's iMac DV, there was also a lot of combing. The combing disappeared when the feature film (24 fps) was played.


I guess video-based DVDs don't fare too well in the Apple DVD Player. My inexpensive standalone DVD player (Panny RP82) does a much better job of handling video material. Why can't a supercomputer (Power PC G4) handle simple stuff like this? I guess the Mac platform is not big enough to have specialized DVD playback software/hardware like on the PC end...

 

[edvniow]

I don't think that's a problem with the iMac's monitor reslolution, it's how LCDs are in general.


On my iBook, images and videos look more pixelated and blocky.


On my PC with 17" Viewsonic CRT, everything looks more blended in and less blocky.


There's advantages and disadvantages to each though. Things may be crisper on an LCD, but they're probaby smoother on a CRT.