DVD playback with the PC is getting more and more popular. And this way has some advantages compared with a standalone player. Apart of the fact that a DVD drive is much cheaper than a 'real' DVD player, you usually have less problems with things like region protection or Macrovision. Also there´s no DVD player that is able to play Divx ;-) CDs. BTW Divx ;-) is a new compression standard, which is so efficient, that you can store a whole movie on a single CD. The quality depends on the movie but is usually much better than the quality of a Video-CD, although a Video-CD needs two CDs.

But to get the real fun watching the movie you have to watch it on a big TV screen of course, which is why you need a graphics card with TV output. But can such a TV output offer the same great quality a standalone DVD player offers? To find that out I have made this test. To the candidates:

Standalone-Player:

The job of the real DVD player has a Yamakawa S715. It´s a real all-round talent which is able to play back DVDs, Video-CDs (also S-VCDs), MP3-CDs and standard CDs of course. Beyond that the Yamakawa is able to convert the TV standard, a NTSC movie can be played in PAL 50 for example.

Graphics card:

Against this all-round talent a TNT-2 graphics card with TV output has to prove its worth. It´s a card with a BT869 chip and on the PC TVTool is running of course. The tool is adjusted to PAL fullscreen size at 800x600. Naturally the DVD player software used is responsible for the result, too. In this test Cinemaster 99 has the job.

Test course:

At the beginning I want to get a first subjective impression of the picture quality of both candidates. To do that the PC and the Yamakawa are connected to a Sony TV (72cm, 100Hz) via S-VHS. The DVD used in the test is "The schakal", at least it´s the title in Germany.

The picture quality of both is very good and there´s no big difference between them. I have the feeling that the graphics cards produces a bit more noise in the picture. But for a proper comparison I had to watch both pictures on two TVs parallel. Since I don´t have a greater stock of TVs at the moment I will go another way:

First about ten minutes of DVD playback are recorded on Digital Video. That is done with a Sony DV-Camcorder (PC100), which has a S-VHS input. The recorded material is grabbed with Miro DC30+ at a datarate of 6MB/s. The DC30+ is a video grabber card, which uses Motion-JPEG compression and which offers broadcast quality (at least the manufacturer claims that). Then a few frames are cut out of the avi files. Now a precise comparison between both candidates can be made at the computer monitor.

The table shows three frames of each device (click it for big JPEG):

YAMAKAWA		TNT-2 with TVTOOL

Even at the thumbnails you notice that the contrast of the graphics card is better than the Yamakawa. You can see that very clearly at the black borders, which are more grey at the Yamakawa. But this difference is not that obvious at the TV than it seems on the monitor.

The magnification confirms the advantage of the card (right picture). Also you can see that the sharpness of the picture of the card is better, clearly seen at the border of the button.

The next pictures show a magnification of the DVD menu. Both candidates are close together again. This time the Yamakawa (left) seems to present us the sharper letters and background shadows. But on the other hand it has a little problem with MPEG artifacts which can be seen around the letters more clearly than at the picture of the card. I think these difference are more caused by the decompression algorithm used than by the quality of the TV output of the devices.

During the test I also noticed that Cinemaster has a little problem with the aspect ratio of 4:3. All pictures seem to be strechted vertically slightly. This effect is noticeable at the monitor, too, where you can solve the problem with the monitor adjustment. A short check showed that PowerDVD does not have this problem.

Conclusion:

I expected a good result for the graphics card but that the quality is even a bit better than the standalone DVD player with hardware decompression is amazing. I think that high class DVD player will offer even a better quality but the test shows that the low-priced PC solution for DVD playback is no compromise in picture quality. Of course the comfort of a standalone player with remote control and without any fan sounds is not reached yet.

This test is only representative for TNT and GeForce graphics cards with a BT868/869 and the program TVTool. I don´t know how the TV output of other cards is and if the manufacturers offer proper support for it. How that all look in NTSC mode will show another test in the next time.

(JB '2000)