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Post by theprofessor on Mar 18, 2009 15:08:46 GMT -5
Alrighty, folks. Hopefully some of you can help me here. I just recently upgraded my television from a dinky pile o' poo from the 80's to a sleek 50 inch, 1080i. Problem is, upon popping some old dvds from mst3kvideo.com, i discovered them to look shockingly bad on my new tv. The encoding was ugly and the screen ratio was quite small. Since then, i've taken to downloading the episodes off of the DAP and they look much better. Still, there a few episodes that i want upgraded from what they have (like Daddy-O and Girl's Town plus all the KTMA). So my question is: who sells the best looking dvd's out of all the fan-sellers out there? Or, rather, who encodes their episodes the best so they look decent blown up on a large tv? Thanks for any help!
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Post by Mod City on Mar 18, 2009 15:14:02 GMT -5
Huh. I don't know what kind of television you have, but I have a 47" 1080p with a progressive scan DVD player (upconverts to 1080i) and all my discs from mst3kvideos.com look great. It could depend somewhat on what kind of DVD player you're using.
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Post by hugo on Mar 18, 2009 16:13:08 GMT -5
"screen ratio was quite small"
I'm curious as to how the aspect ratio could be any different. They're all based on NTSC broadcasts with an aspect ratio of 1.3:1 (or thereabouts) They'll be pillar-boxed on a widescreen TV, but that's true of any of them, regardless of their source.
Skyronitor is widely acknowledged to have the best quality original source material, but I'm not sure how the encoding would compare.
Ideally speaking, a DVD player capable of reading raw Divx or Mpeg files would be best, as the videos could be downloaded from DAP and viewed without any further encoding. Or, if you were to encode them yourself, you could choose a nice, slow 2-pass encode.
Also make sure you're comparing apples to apples. A DAP version of a season 10 episode is obviously going to look better than a Skyroniter KTMA episode.
There's a million different factors that could affect a DVD's appearance on a given TV, but considering Sky's obvious commitment to quality, it would be hard to dispute that he's at the top of the heap among fan-made DVD purveyors.
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Post by Double 007 on Mar 18, 2009 17:01:34 GMT -5
Have a play with the settings on your new TV and player, it'll be something to do with those. Also, think about upgrading your DVD player. A new HDMI upscaling player from Sony is only $70 and the leap in quality will astound you. Same thing happened to me when I got my new Oppo 983. Picture looked terrible and I wanted to cry. But tweak a few settings on the receiver and player and it's great.
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Post by theprofessor on Mar 18, 2009 17:19:07 GMT -5
I play all my dvds in my playstation 3, which upscales to 1080. I've actually tested two episodes back to back, a copy of Rocket Attack USA from the DAP and one from sky. Same televison and dvd settings for both. The dap dvd fills up my entire screen and looks quite good. The one from mst3kvideos.com fills up about a quarter less of the screen and, even with the smaller size, has plenty of noticable encoding nastiness.
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Post by hugo on Mar 18, 2009 18:20:11 GMT -5
Was the one from DAP burned as a true DVD, or as a raw video file? Strange that it should fill up the screen (i.e. being stretched) like that.
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CHF01
Nanite
Keanu Klaatu
Posts: 25
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Post by CHF01 on Mar 19, 2009 12:44:44 GMT -5
Hi professor. Remember that these are fan made copies of the show, recorded on VHS tapes. These analog recorded sources are then transferred to digital DVD(aka AAD). The standard resolution for many of these transfers is 720x480 pixels. You will certainly notice some anomolies with your hi end 1080p TV system.
In my opinion, you will not find a better quality fan made copy of MST episodes than Gary's at MST3KVideos (or better service for that matter). There are others that have good fan copies at other sites as well, but you will encounter the same issues with those DVDs on your nice new system.
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CHF01
Nanite
Keanu Klaatu
Posts: 25
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Post by CHF01 on Mar 19, 2009 15:43:27 GMT -5
Oh, and like the others said in regards to the DVD player: check and ensure that your TV AND DVD settings are both set to progressive, not interlaced.
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Post by hugo on Mar 19, 2009 18:42:53 GMT -5
That's all kinda redundant, though, since he's made it clear that he's done direct A-B comparisons, and the videos from mst3kvideos.com aren't looking as good on his system as episodes he's burned himself.
Sky unquestionably has the best available *source* material available, but apparently something about his encoding process isn't getting along well with the PS3.
I suspect that the original posters "homemade DVD" was merely a direct burn of an AVI file from DAP. (a data disc, in other words) whereas the videos from Skyroniter are genuine DVD videos (similar to the difference between a CD-ROM and a "red book" audio CD)
The PS3 is a notoriously BAD player of DVD videos. (It plays Blu-ray discs wonderfully, however) Although it has an HDMI output, it DOES NOT upconvert standard DVD's. The output is stuck at 480p. So, while it does a great job of playing DVD-ROM videos (divx, mp4, avi, etc.) it's embarassingly bad at playing standard DVD's.
While this may not have been noticable with store-bought discs, I have to imagine that any homemade discs would only fare worse.
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Post by pablum on Mar 20, 2009 0:32:40 GMT -5
Problem is, upon popping some old dvds from mst3kvideo.com, i discovered them to look shockingly bad on my new tv. The encoding was ugly and the screen ratio was quite small. I've bought from a couple other well known vendors of fan made MST3K DVDs including from mst3kvideos, and you should know that the others I've dealt with have the same issue. The additional black bars on an already small 4:3 picture frame are prevalent in many MST3K fan DVDs. In one case with a copy of an episode I bought I could tell it was actually a DAP XVID blown up and turned into a DVD (I won't mention the site, but it wasn't mst3kvideos.com). I usually stick to DAP DVDs when I can even if the clarity of the picture is slightly fuzzier because the extra black borders on other fan vendor copies are a distraction for me as well. Most of DAP's DVD encodes don't have those borders except for ep. 909 Gorgo. DAP doesn't have all the episodes, so you'll be forced to pick and choose between the various vendors for episodes they don't have in DVD format. Since the vendors I've used seem to all have that black bar issue, any of them should suffice.
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Post by hugo on Mar 20, 2009 0:57:36 GMT -5
At the risk of sounding really annoying and pedantic: if your videos (when viewed on a widescreen TV) DON'T have black bars, you are looking at a modified version of the original. There are no "additional" black bars on a normal picture. If there are, you've got your TV's scan settings all jacked up. If one's going to be a purist, you might as well embrace the "black bars" as it's a sure sign that you're seeing "the whole picture, and nothing but the picture."
Further note: any HDTV worth its salt will have an option to "stretch" regular TV signals to eliminate the black bars, if you so desire. Your results may vary, depending on your unit's processing abilities.
Further further note: heheh, I said "unit."
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Post by hugo on Mar 20, 2009 1:01:39 GMT -5
Problem is, upon popping some old dvds from mst3kvideo.com, i discovered them to look shockingly bad on my new tv. The encoding was ugly and the screen ratio was quite small. I've bought from a couple other well known vendors of fan made MST3K DVDs including from mst3kvideos, and you should know that the others I've dealt with have the same issue. The additional black bars on an already small 4:3 picture frame are prevalent in many MST3K fan DVDs. In one case with a copy of an episode I bought I could tell it was actually a DAP XVID blown up and turned into a DVD (I won't mention the site, but it wasn't mst3kvideos.com). I usually stick to DAP DVDs when I can even if the clarity of the picture is slightly fuzzier because the extra black borders on other fan vendor copies are a distraction for me as well. Most of DAP's DVD encodes don't have those borders except for ep. 909 Gorgo. DAP doesn't have all the episodes, so you'll be forced to pick and choose between the various vendors for episodes they don't have in DVD format. Since the vendors I've used seem to all have that black bar issue, any of them should suffice. Couple more thoughts: 1. DAP has (as far as I know) all of the non-commercially available (i.e. kosher) episodes, so that shouldn't be considered a criticism 2. DAP's videos all have a special watermark at the beginning (at least in my experience) so they should be quite easy to identify.
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Post by pablum on Mar 20, 2009 1:02:47 GMT -5
For those wondering, the black bar issue is illustrated below. Admittedly the example here from DAP is pretty poor in resolution, but they're not all like that. Especially the Sci-Fi era material they have. This is just a black bar example from the DVDs that I could most quickly drag out. DAP DVDmst3kvideosmst3kguy
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Post by hugo on Mar 20, 2009 2:25:00 GMT -5
Interesting. The DAP clearly shows the most content (albeit by a pretty slim margin, and certainly not enough to justify any claims of "black bars") and in addition, seems to have the best color balance. But another question is, what is the source of all these frame grabs? Since DAP offers full-frame videos, which may even be from broadcast masters, they essentially show more content than a standard TV (i.e. the TV you had in the 90s) could ever show. In other words, they may contain video information outside of the "safe area." That being said, the extra cropping is indeed troubling. It could have been done in order to neaten up the borders (oftentimes what appears "black" on a video channel will not be "pure" black, so they use computers to add black borders, and hence cleaner edges.) But I hesitate to suggest that mst3Kvideos (or any other souce, really) are the origin of any "black bars" complaints. Let's face it, any time you show a 4:3 video on a 16:9 screen, something's gotta give. Just for giggles, here's a comparison between your DAP and mst3kvideos screenshots: The mst3kvideos version does indeed show some cropping, but on the other hand, has considerably better sharpness in the details. Take it for what it's worth to you.
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Post by pablum on Mar 20, 2009 12:09:31 GMT -5
My black bar examples were supposed to show that DAP is clearly the best when it comes to showing the full picture. The other two were the examples of the vendor black bars. Its prevalent in most recordings which is why I stated any online vendor should suffice since I doubt you'd find better samples than what I've come across. In most cases you do get a more detailed picture from vendors like mst3kvideos or mst3kguy (with a trade-off).
These days with PC monitors and HDTV having the ability to display no overscan, this extra black bar stuff becomes more apparent. Zooming in the picture to remove the bars is the option available as mentioned, but for some of us, its not what we're looking for.
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