Problem with Widescreen clarity on E1705

Greetings, folks! **** glad to be here. I just got a new Inspiron E1705 and I have a monitor question.

Intel Core T2300 1.66Ghz
Ultrasharp True Life Wide-Screen WUXGA
2 GB DDR2 533Mhz


I put a DVD in tonight to see how good the monitor is and I was disappointed to see that in "full" screen the picture was grainy and not sharp. However, when I minimized the frame the video was crystal clear and beautiful, but that is what looks like a 3inx3in format.

So I tried to adjust the resolution. Dropping the pixels does nothing but make all the icons and everything else larger. How can I get that same crisp, clear, sharp picture in "full" screen mode. And by "full" screen I mean every inch of the monitor is taken up with the DVD I'm playing.

Thanks!

 

Come on. 11 views and no one has any suggestions?

 

Have you checked your Secondary IDE Channel transfer mode? At one point (after a scratched CD software install) I played a DVD and there were lots of scan lines in the video with choppy playback. The DVD player was in PIO mode. Verify your DVD player on the Secondary IDE channel is in Ultra DMA mode.

Long shot, but worth a check.

 

Ah, I'm not so technical, as this is my first notebook. Could you maybe give me directions of how to check that?

You said longshot. Tell me, does running a DVD in full screen compromise picture quality? I can't imagine why it would. My TV picture quality is great. Why would a 17inch notebook monitor look grainy. Please understand, it's not horrible, but when the screen is minimized the picture quality is outstanding. But then I blow it up to full size and. . . well, not crisp, not vivd, not true life.

 

I witnessed this on a friend's e1705. I asked him why the video was all grainy and he denied it ever being grainy. But to get to the settings BatBoy described.

Go to start>run. Type "devmgmt.msc" without the quotations. Click OK.
Click on the plus sign beside IDE controllers. (May have ATAPI in the name). Right-click on secondary IDE channel. Click on advanced or advanced settings. Change the transfer mode to DMA or DMA if available.

Oh yeah, and that probably won't be anything other than DMA if available. So it most likely won't fix your issue.

 

Okay, so I'll ask again: why is this happening? A DVD is digital. The picture quality should be superb - not to mention the hardware it's playing on is brand new.

Not to mention that the screen looks amazing while minimized, but when the screen is clicked to full, it's is not as clear.

 

Try lowering the resolution. Maybe DVD video isn't supposed to be played at that high of a resolution.

Edit: What's WUXGA on 17inch anyway? Something crazy like 2000x1400?

 

Ah, ha! Now we are getting somewhere. Well, I did mess with the resolution a bit and it didn't seem to help. I'll try Ninja's idea and tweak the resolution. I only tried two DVD's and they both were not crisp in full screen mode.

Anybody else got an ideas?

 

Did you verify the DMA setting?

Max res shouldnt be an issue - on my E1705 DVD playback (full screen) is fine (1920x1200).

You could always call DHell support

 

Batboy, I'm at work and the laptop is at home. I'll try your suggestion tomorrow.

 

You are going to get lots of diffrent answers here and they might be right but I would suggest you call dell suport

 

where did you get the dvds? video output is only as good as the source file. when i'm viewing a dvd on my WUXGA 15.4", it's perfect, crisp, and clear at full screen or not as long as i'm watching a real dvd. are the dvds copies or cams? what dvds are they? have you watched them with another software player on your computer or watched them on another computer to compare?

 

Hey, Drum.

It's a new DVD (David Gilmour in Concert.) I also tried another one that is a legit DVD - not a copy. Good old original porn, LOL! Dell support is recommending installing new video drivers from their support site.

I just got the laptop last week, so I'm not sure why they think the drivers require updating, but I'll try it.

They said if that didn't work to call them back.

 

Also, Batboy. Secondary IDE channel is good to go. I checked it following your instructions. That is not the problem, sadly.

 

DVD's are only 480P resolution, your 17" dispaly is 1920x1200. So you will see some image degredation at full screen within arms length of the screen. If you have HDTV and watch an HD channel you will notice it is much clearer than when you watch a DVD...same concept. HD-DVD's will give you HD resolution when they become mainstream.

There is software out there that will upconvert 480P dvd video to 720p/1080i (HD resolutions), but it is never close to as clear as a native HD stream, it also takes up more processing power.

Jack

EDIT: Then again, if you don't have drivers properly installed it could result in extra ****py un-encoding of your DVD's. You can try installing different codec's too. I've purchased Nvidia's Pureview codecs adn they work great if you do a lot of video work / DVD work.