OS X Needs a DVD Player Update

[Veljo]

That's what I think. What Apple have provided us is a basic DVD player application with no features. It only plays Dolby Digital, leaving discs encoded with DTS to be played silently and then the frame rate to run at 3fps. Where is the pan and scan? If a movie is in the aspect ration 2.35:1, I prefer to pan and scan it so that it fills up a 16:9 monitor. Where is that? Where is the digital zoom? There's plenty of features Apple could add; use PowerDVD XP 4.0 for PC as an example. It has everything. One thing I've also noticed is that with the Apple DVD Player if things move fast the picture breaks up slightly (lines). If anyone has Blade II there is a perfect example.

 

[hulkaros]

Originally posted by Veljo
That's what I think. What Apple have provided us is a basic DVD player application with no features. It only plays Dolby Digital, leaving discs encoded with DTS to be played silently and then the frame rate to run at 3fps. Where is the pan and scan? If a movie is in the aspect ration 2.35:1, I prefer to pan and scan it so that it fills up a 16:9 monitor. Where is that? Where is the digital zoom? There's plenty of features Apple could add; use PowerDVD XP 4.0 for PC as an example. It has everything. One thing I've also noticed is that with the Apple DVD Player if things move fast the picture breaks up slightly (lines). If anyone has Blade II there is a perfect example.

You are 100% right and then some

If you feel like expressing things that you would like to see in Panther or any other future OS X updates here we have a nice thread going on:
http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29548

Let your keyboard burn!

 

[symphonix]

I was thinking the same thing the other day... DVD Player.app is nice and it does the job well, but there a lot of features that really should be added.
And yes, I've seen the image break up into horizontal lines, as you describe ... it tend to show up worst on traditional animation (where the colours are flat and the action a little less than smooth) but you can notice it in all kinds of movies.

 

[ex2bot]

I agree. It'd be nice to have a more robust DVD Player.

Isn't the image break-up (horizontal lines) a problem with LCD monitors' slow refresh rate? I don't think it's a software problem.

Doug

 

[Veljo]

dktrickey,
I know what you're talking about with the whole LCD slow redraw thing but I don't think this is true. You can see examples of this when playing Otto Matic or whatever, what the slow LCD screen redraw looks more like one chunk of the screen off center a bit. The DVD Player I've noticed has another problem: there will be a portion of the screen (say 15 pixels) and every second row of pixels will not be aligned properly or will be the total wrong colour. I don't think this has anythign to do with the LCD screen because my teacher has his flat panel iMac connected to a projector at school and the same thing happens so I'm guessing it's the app.

 

[moav]

Hmm, I think it is a combination of software and the monitor. on my ibook 800mhz i do notice some fight sequences where it will pixelate. However, on both of my powermacs (connected to sony flat CRTs not LCDs) we don't have that problem at all. Heck it's a lot better then their first attempt.

It's kind of ironic how the world and politics work. Everyone wants everything fixed right the first time. bills, laws, software... So, we spend countless years not even allowing something with some bugs because it has a flaw. When in fact if we would have let that flawed bill or software through that was the first baby step towards a solution we whould be so much further in every aspect of life. Like Healthcare. 8 years ago they could have passed a flawed healthcare solution for our society and over the years it could have been polished and the bugs worked out (but a few screamed no way, it's not perfect) So, now we sit idle) Just like every software that is realeased should never be gold master sofware is constantly changing... Apple nor Microsoft never would have existed if they waited to release their products until every single know bug was found and every scenario run.

I say throw those not quite ripe products out to the public becuase over the years that product will be so much more usefull with users input then the product that has been in house being polished up until it shines like the sun.