Playing DVDs on a laptop

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I don't know if it's just me, but when I play DVDs on my laptop (using Windows Media Player) the picture quality does not look all that great.

Is this an issue with my graphics card or with Windows Media Player or both?

Also, I can play protected DVDs, but I cannot seem to be able to play unprotected DVDs on my laptop using autoplay (although I can open up the folder and then open the individual vob files using Windows Media Player).

Any idea how to get round this?

Plus, if you copy and paste the entire folder from an unprotected DVD to a hard drive, is it then possible to use a piece of media streaming hardware to play the whole lot continuously, or would it be better to rip the whole DVD into an iso file?

Re: image quality, you could try getting the latest video drivers for your system.

For playing 'raw' DVD video files, VLC works nicely. By raw I mean the .ipo, .vob, and other files I forget. You can also get programs that will rip these files from any DVD - DVD Decrypter works nicely and is free. It is no longer 'officially' supported so you'll want to disable the 'auto update' feature or else you'll get 'updated' to a program that doesn't rip protected DVDs.

The unprotected autoplay DVD issue is quite odd and I wonder if your DVD drive is somehow faulty, although that is a weird fault. I think it's most likely outdated video drivers that Windows isn't trusting thanks to DMCA and HDCP blah blah etc, although even then the issue is odd.

Another thing - you can use VLC to play protected DVDs as well, so you can try it and see if the quality is any better.

As far as your unprotected autoplay issue, I wonder if it isn't actually a faulty disc type/file type association in Windows.. when you install VLC you can probably have it associate VLC with autoplaying DVDs.. if you want.. Windows Media Player probably has similar options somewhere, if you click and unclick the box and hit OK it should reassociate

Well, my take is this.

I don't see the video card ever being the issue. DVD is not that high a quality or new a technology that it should matter.

What I do notice is that the LCD display of a laptop, while high enough in resolution, does have limitations compared to CRT and plasma TVs.

In short, I've noticed graininess in the image, and since the MPEG encoding basically refreshes what changes frame-to-frame and not the whole frame every frame, the LCD display makes these encoding quirks more noticeable. In contrast, an LCD TV does not make the quirks that noticeable until you push beyond the 30" size where the quirks are enlarged to the point of being somewhat obvious.

In theory, the same could be said about Blu-Ray, but the much higher resolution of Blu-Ray enables the quirks to be much less noticeable.

Before HDTV, typical PC CRT monitors could display shows with better clarity and sharpness than any TV, and probably as well or better than current HDTV. DVDs were displaying visual information just slightly better than original TV standards, IIRC. On modern LCD monitors or HDTV, the limits of the DVD encoding technology become more noticeable.

I agree, that is a good point that on modern displays DVDs do not look as impressive as they once did. DVD resolution is actually exactly the same as that of non-HD TV. I find the interlacing particularly noticeable - the alternating horizontal lines every frame.. there are techniques to try to minimize it but they don't really work.

After watching BluRay or similar HD content, DVDs/standard def just can't compare. DVDs are still vastly better than VHS, though.

Ultimately, the original poster will need to try varying different things and see what (s)he discovers.