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Ever since I got a computer, I've felt that there is something inherently better in watching movies on one, than in watching them in any other way in a home environment. Back then, however, I didn't have enough knowledge to take advantage of that. I was limited to a fairly small CRT screen, and I had virtually no knowledge or experience needed to improve my movie watching experience.
Today, I have an old 5:4 Samsung LCD screen (which, despite the fact that it was manufactured in 2004, is still actually better than most reasonably priced LED screens of today), a widescreen HD Ready Sharp LCD TV, a considerably beefier PC, and since I've spent most of my life in front of one, the ability to continuously enhance my little, private multimedia kingdom.
I know for a fact that a computer can give you, if used properly, better quality than anything else that fits inside a room. Yet, people choose to use their TVs' internal player to watch movies from pendrives, others use DVD players or blu-ray players. You know... all of that stuff is rather expensive. Of course, it's still cheaper than buying a computer, you might say. But then, you already have one, mind you. If not a powerful desktop, then at least a banged-up laptop.
There is a number of points why you should save up the money you'd normally spend on the various peripherals for your TV and turn your PC into a media center instead:
1. Resolution. If you use your TV's internal player then that's not an issue but in many other cases, it is. Especially when it comes to DVD players (Particularly those which aren't exactly brand new anymore).
Back in the day, when you had a VCR and a CRT TV, a thing called "resolution" was a meaningless word for your average bread-eater. CRT TVs don't have the so called "native resolution". Whatever signal came into the TV looked good when displayed. The quality of the picture was the result of the quality of the hardware itself and the VHS tape.
Today's displays and TVs are more picky than that, sadly. They have a set amount of perfectly square pixels. The only way to achieve the best, sharpest picture they can handle is to make sure that the input resolution is set exactly to the resolution of the display. Otherwise, the image will get blurred and distorted. You might not notice it at first, but come closer to your TV and you will.
Why is that a problem with DVD players? Well, they don't normally do very high resolutions, while your TV is probably 1080p or, at least what they call "HD ready" (1366x768). Some people claim that DVDs look better, upscaled when played on blu-ray players. They are both right, and wrong. That's because blu-ray players actually do high resolutions. It is very likely that the resolution of your player is the same as your TVs. So, the DVDs aren't really upscaled. They are actually exactly how they are supposed to be.
DVD players don't normally allow the users to adjust the resolution. They are fixed at what the hardware can handle and that's it. With a computer, you can set it to whatever is right for your display.
2. Price. You might ask: "Well, if a blu-ray player outputs the resolution my TV needs, why don't I just buy that?". Like I said, you probably already have a computer laying around somewhere. Use that, don't spend money you don't need to spend. Also, the 4k display technology is going to become popular over the coming years. So when you buy your 4k TV, your blu-ray player will remain at 1080p.
Of course, if you want to be able to play blu-rays on your PC, you will still need to buy a blu-ray drive. But buying a drive for a desktop PC is way cheaper than buying a standalone player. That's because standalone players also come with hardware which provides the processing power needed to display FullHD video. With a drive, you only buy the ability to read the disc itself. The processing power is in your computer already.
3. Sound quality. You are probably saying: "well, my DVD player can do surround sound and it sounds just fine." Let me tell you, it sounds fine up to the point when you get to listen to a proper computer sound card (by proper I mean either a SoundBlaster or a Xonar). They are admittedly, quite pricey, but you do get your money's worth.
The first thing you need to look at when judging quality of sound is... no sound. That's right. Make sure there are no other noises in your room (preferably at night), plug in a decent set of headphones into your TV or your DVD player or what have you, turn up the volume and listen. Chances are, unless you bought really, really good hardware, that there will be some noise. I'm using a Xonar DX sound card in my computer. I can turn up the volume to 100% and there is absolutely zero noise. If you care at all about sound, that's something you will appreciate if you decide to buy a sound card like that.
Then there's bit depth and sample rate. My soundcard can do 24 bit and 192 KHz in stereo and 96 KHz in surround sound. Any proper, modern soundcard is capable of this. What do you think your DVD player is capable of? Of course, bit depth and sample rate is not all that important. After all, even if your sound card can do all that, it all depends on the source media. Even most blu-rays don't go over 24 bits and 48 KHz. BUT... then there are a few that do. And who knows what audio standards will become in the future (which is also an important point).
Forget numbers, though. You will hear a difference in general sound quality. That's guaranteed, and that's what matters. Also, output power is something to consider. Dedicated sound cards have quite a formidable output power. This is important especially for users of big headphones, as they tend to require quite a lot of juice to get you proper volume.
You might argue that even the integrated sound chips in netbooks can power even the biggest of headphones enough to have proper volume when, say, listening to music, or playing games. That's right. But the volume slider at that point will probably be somewhere around 60% depending on the hardware. Remember we are talking movies and they are often recorded at considerably lower volumes than music. So to get the same volume with them, you will sometimes have to double or triple the volume. With integrated sound cards, and with the jack outputs on your TVs and players, you might run out of the volume slider, while with a dedicated soundcard, there's plenty of volume to go around.
And yes, sometimes the outputs on your player or TV will be amplified which provides ample volume. But then remember that the manufacturer wants to save as much money as possible so it will be a low-quality amplifier which will generate noise.
If you need amplified output, some sound cards do have built-in amplifiers, and when they do, they are properly good. For those that don't you can buy an external amp. That way, you will have both the power and the best quality you can have.
With DVD players and all that stuff, you are stuck with whatever the manufacturer put in. You can buy a sound card of your choice and replace it later if you need to do it for some reason.
And one last thing regarding sound; with proper sound cards often come cool technologies. My Xonar, for example, comes with various Dolby features. I'm not so much into those as I'm a sound purist and I like it unmodified, but if you want to, for example, feel like there's a 7.1 set of speakers surrounding you when in fact you're wearing headphones, that's the only way to go. And no, the "3D sound" feature on your TV will not do it in a way that's even remotely as good as Dolby stuff.
4. Future-proof. Parts of your computer, such as the disc drives, hard drives, sound cards, etc. can be replaced one at a time. If you want to go from a DVD player to a blu-ray player, you need to buy the whole thing.
5. Customization. For me that's the most important thing of all. With standalone players you get to adjust a few basic things. With a computer, you can do absolutely everything you set your mind to. There's a plethora of various players, settings, filters, codecs, rendering engines. You can make your movie watching experience exactly how you want to experience it.
If you're watching a foreign film and you need to use subtitles, you can make sure that they are just the right size, the right font, and that they are displayed exactly where you want them on the screen. You can make the spaces between the lines bigger or smaller, even the spaces between the letters. You can adjust the display timing of the subtitles on-the-go if they happen to be out of sync with the movie.
You can use advanced rendering engines (such as MadVR) to enhance your video even further. You can sharpen the picture, you can adjust the color range, you can remove the noise. If there's something you can think of that you'd like to do to the video or audio, the option to do it is probably in there somewhere. All you need to do is look for it.
6. Versatility. You can play only a specific range of video and audio formats with standalone players. A computer will play everything. It's just a matter of installing a proper codec.
There's only one thing that I have to admit that works in favor of using standalone players rather than computers: the effort. Let's face it, your PC probably isn't ready on the hardware and software level to just simply be plugged into your TV and do all I listed above just like that.
Most people use integrated audio chips in their computers. They are utterly useless. You will need to get a proper, dedicated one. And yes, they are expensive, which, you might think, defeats the purpose of using a computer in order to save money, but think of it this way: you buy the sound card once, and if you've chosen well, it will last you a decade before the audio standards on it become obsolete. And even then there won't be an actual need to replace it because the audio quality will still be great.
If you are using a laptop, don't worry. There are external USB sound cards (although I would really recommend a dedicated one for a desktop computer instead, for various reasons.)
Unless your TV is right next to your PC, you will also need a pretty long video cable. (HDMI is overpriced, by the way, you will be fine with a good D-Sub or DVI cable.) You will also likely need an extension cable for your headphones or speakers. And if you don't like the sight of cables laying on the floor by the wall, you will probably want to obscure them somehow and that can be a lot of work depending on your setup.
You will need to install proper software on your computer to make all the magic happen. If you think Windows Media Player will provide you with the customizability you want, you're wrong. You want something like KMplayer or Media Player Classic or, at the very least, VLC (although last time I checked, you could not change the renderer on that one).
And you will also need to get proper codecs. I recommend FFDshow for a reasonably modern PC and CoreAVC (paid) for low-end and old ones. CoreAVC + Overlay Mixer renderer + KMplayer/Media Player Classic is the only way you will be able to play 1080p content on a netbook without any stutter, by the way, but it can be done, which shows that you don't need a next-gen gaming powerhouse of a PC.
And, of course, after you've installed all that, you will need to spend some time adjusting the settings and testing them.
However, when it's all done, you will have the ultimate multimedia player which will be able to humiliate even the most expensive of standalone players, and you will never again feel a need to buy one. That's food for thought right there.
Today, I have an old 5:4 Samsung LCD screen (which, despite the fact that it was manufactured in 2004, is still actually better than most reasonably priced LED screens of today), a widescreen HD Ready Sharp LCD TV, a considerably beefier PC, and since I've spent most of my life in front of one, the ability to continuously enhance my little, private multimedia kingdom.
I know for a fact that a computer can give you, if used properly, better quality than anything else that fits inside a room. Yet, people choose to use their TVs' internal player to watch movies from pendrives, others use DVD players or blu-ray players. You know... all of that stuff is rather expensive. Of course, it's still cheaper than buying a computer, you might say. But then, you already have one, mind you. If not a powerful desktop, then at least a banged-up laptop.
There is a number of points why you should save up the money you'd normally spend on the various peripherals for your TV and turn your PC into a media center instead:
1. Resolution. If you use your TV's internal player then that's not an issue but in many other cases, it is. Especially when it comes to DVD players (Particularly those which aren't exactly brand new anymore).
Back in the day, when you had a VCR and a CRT TV, a thing called "resolution" was a meaningless word for your average bread-eater. CRT TVs don't have the so called "native resolution". Whatever signal came into the TV looked good when displayed. The quality of the picture was the result of the quality of the hardware itself and the VHS tape.
Today's displays and TVs are more picky than that, sadly. They have a set amount of perfectly square pixels. The only way to achieve the best, sharpest picture they can handle is to make sure that the input resolution is set exactly to the resolution of the display. Otherwise, the image will get blurred and distorted. You might not notice it at first, but come closer to your TV and you will.
Why is that a problem with DVD players? Well, they don't normally do very high resolutions, while your TV is probably 1080p or, at least what they call "HD ready" (1366x768). Some people claim that DVDs look better, upscaled when played on blu-ray players. They are both right, and wrong. That's because blu-ray players actually do high resolutions. It is very likely that the resolution of your player is the same as your TVs. So, the DVDs aren't really upscaled. They are actually exactly how they are supposed to be.
DVD players don't normally allow the users to adjust the resolution. They are fixed at what the hardware can handle and that's it. With a computer, you can set it to whatever is right for your display.
2. Price. You might ask: "Well, if a blu-ray player outputs the resolution my TV needs, why don't I just buy that?". Like I said, you probably already have a computer laying around somewhere. Use that, don't spend money you don't need to spend. Also, the 4k display technology is going to become popular over the coming years. So when you buy your 4k TV, your blu-ray player will remain at 1080p.
Of course, if you want to be able to play blu-rays on your PC, you will still need to buy a blu-ray drive. But buying a drive for a desktop PC is way cheaper than buying a standalone player. That's because standalone players also come with hardware which provides the processing power needed to display FullHD video. With a drive, you only buy the ability to read the disc itself. The processing power is in your computer already.
3. Sound quality. You are probably saying: "well, my DVD player can do surround sound and it sounds just fine." Let me tell you, it sounds fine up to the point when you get to listen to a proper computer sound card (by proper I mean either a SoundBlaster or a Xonar). They are admittedly, quite pricey, but you do get your money's worth.
The first thing you need to look at when judging quality of sound is... no sound. That's right. Make sure there are no other noises in your room (preferably at night), plug in a decent set of headphones into your TV or your DVD player or what have you, turn up the volume and listen. Chances are, unless you bought really, really good hardware, that there will be some noise. I'm using a Xonar DX sound card in my computer. I can turn up the volume to 100% and there is absolutely zero noise. If you care at all about sound, that's something you will appreciate if you decide to buy a sound card like that.
Then there's bit depth and sample rate. My soundcard can do 24 bit and 192 KHz in stereo and 96 KHz in surround sound. Any proper, modern soundcard is capable of this. What do you think your DVD player is capable of? Of course, bit depth and sample rate is not all that important. After all, even if your sound card can do all that, it all depends on the source media. Even most blu-rays don't go over 24 bits and 48 KHz. BUT... then there are a few that do. And who knows what audio standards will become in the future (which is also an important point).
Forget numbers, though. You will hear a difference in general sound quality. That's guaranteed, and that's what matters. Also, output power is something to consider. Dedicated sound cards have quite a formidable output power. This is important especially for users of big headphones, as they tend to require quite a lot of juice to get you proper volume.
You might argue that even the integrated sound chips in netbooks can power even the biggest of headphones enough to have proper volume when, say, listening to music, or playing games. That's right. But the volume slider at that point will probably be somewhere around 60% depending on the hardware. Remember we are talking movies and they are often recorded at considerably lower volumes than music. So to get the same volume with them, you will sometimes have to double or triple the volume. With integrated sound cards, and with the jack outputs on your TVs and players, you might run out of the volume slider, while with a dedicated soundcard, there's plenty of volume to go around.
And yes, sometimes the outputs on your player or TV will be amplified which provides ample volume. But then remember that the manufacturer wants to save as much money as possible so it will be a low-quality amplifier which will generate noise.
If you need amplified output, some sound cards do have built-in amplifiers, and when they do, they are properly good. For those that don't you can buy an external amp. That way, you will have both the power and the best quality you can have.
With DVD players and all that stuff, you are stuck with whatever the manufacturer put in. You can buy a sound card of your choice and replace it later if you need to do it for some reason.
And one last thing regarding sound; with proper sound cards often come cool technologies. My Xonar, for example, comes with various Dolby features. I'm not so much into those as I'm a sound purist and I like it unmodified, but if you want to, for example, feel like there's a 7.1 set of speakers surrounding you when in fact you're wearing headphones, that's the only way to go. And no, the "3D sound" feature on your TV will not do it in a way that's even remotely as good as Dolby stuff.
4. Future-proof. Parts of your computer, such as the disc drives, hard drives, sound cards, etc. can be replaced one at a time. If you want to go from a DVD player to a blu-ray player, you need to buy the whole thing.
5. Customization. For me that's the most important thing of all. With standalone players you get to adjust a few basic things. With a computer, you can do absolutely everything you set your mind to. There's a plethora of various players, settings, filters, codecs, rendering engines. You can make your movie watching experience exactly how you want to experience it.
If you're watching a foreign film and you need to use subtitles, you can make sure that they are just the right size, the right font, and that they are displayed exactly where you want them on the screen. You can make the spaces between the lines bigger or smaller, even the spaces between the letters. You can adjust the display timing of the subtitles on-the-go if they happen to be out of sync with the movie.
You can use advanced rendering engines (such as MadVR) to enhance your video even further. You can sharpen the picture, you can adjust the color range, you can remove the noise. If there's something you can think of that you'd like to do to the video or audio, the option to do it is probably in there somewhere. All you need to do is look for it.
6. Versatility. You can play only a specific range of video and audio formats with standalone players. A computer will play everything. It's just a matter of installing a proper codec.
There's only one thing that I have to admit that works in favor of using standalone players rather than computers: the effort. Let's face it, your PC probably isn't ready on the hardware and software level to just simply be plugged into your TV and do all I listed above just like that.
Most people use integrated audio chips in their computers. They are utterly useless. You will need to get a proper, dedicated one. And yes, they are expensive, which, you might think, defeats the purpose of using a computer in order to save money, but think of it this way: you buy the sound card once, and if you've chosen well, it will last you a decade before the audio standards on it become obsolete. And even then there won't be an actual need to replace it because the audio quality will still be great.
If you are using a laptop, don't worry. There are external USB sound cards (although I would really recommend a dedicated one for a desktop computer instead, for various reasons.)
Unless your TV is right next to your PC, you will also need a pretty long video cable. (HDMI is overpriced, by the way, you will be fine with a good D-Sub or DVI cable.) You will also likely need an extension cable for your headphones or speakers. And if you don't like the sight of cables laying on the floor by the wall, you will probably want to obscure them somehow and that can be a lot of work depending on your setup.
You will need to install proper software on your computer to make all the magic happen. If you think Windows Media Player will provide you with the customizability you want, you're wrong. You want something like KMplayer or Media Player Classic or, at the very least, VLC (although last time I checked, you could not change the renderer on that one).
And you will also need to get proper codecs. I recommend FFDshow for a reasonably modern PC and CoreAVC (paid) for low-end and old ones. CoreAVC + Overlay Mixer renderer + KMplayer/Media Player Classic is the only way you will be able to play 1080p content on a netbook without any stutter, by the way, but it can be done, which shows that you don't need a next-gen gaming powerhouse of a PC.
And, of course, after you've installed all that, you will need to spend some time adjusting the settings and testing them.
However, when it's all done, you will have the ultimate multimedia player which will be able to humiliate even the most expensive of standalone players, and you will never again feel a need to buy one. That's food for thought right there.
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Check out my blog: Yasashii's Retro Game Playground
Check out my blog: Yasashii's Retro Game Playground