Hello all. I bought a 20" Aluminum iMac yesterday. The one with the 2.4ghz C2D and ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO. I bought Transformers today and started playing it on the iMac and it looked terrible! I don't know what is wrong with it. I played it on my SR MBP, and it looked awesome! Can anyone tell me what is wrong? It is grainy and blacks look bad. It is, however, smooth and clear on the MBP. Also, does anyone know why Transformers is still letterboxed even though it is the widescreen edition? It is letterboxed on both the iMac and MBP. Thanks for any help!
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20" Alum iMac DVD's don't look good
- Thread starter KJdanReuben
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It's letterboxed because it's filmed in a different aspect ratio to your screen. I don't know of any film shot in 16:10. A lot of stuff is either 16:9 or 2.35:1 which would result in letterboxing no matter what computer monitor you watched it on. A 16:9 TV will show 16:9 content without letterboxing but it'll still box in anything filmed in theatrical widescreen (2.35:1)
Thanks! I thought that might have been it, but I wasn't sure so I figured I'd ask. Well, that is one question answered. Does anyone know what the problem with the poor quality is? Is it because it is gloss finish? But I've read stuff from other people saying that it is great watching movies on the new iMacs. Thanks for any help!
It's not a gloss finish, there is a physical pane of glass in front of the LCD. Never noticed any issues on ours, DVDs look pretty bloody good.
I dunno mate, if it looks dodgy then yeah. You guys have a bunch of Apple Stores over there, go try out the DVD on one of theirs and do a comparison.
You might want to look at changing the colour profile and/or calibrating the screen (there's several threads if you search). The default alu iMac calibration is terrible although it leaves DVDs looking washed out rather than grainy.
Actually, the iMac does has a glossy screen finish as well as the physical pane of glass!
As well as making everything else look awful. Changing the gamma makes the world of difference.
I think all DVDs look terrible on my 24" iMac - but I blame the low resolution of DVDs, not the iMac. When I download HD content to view, it looks spectacular. I'm used to watching DVDs on my analog TV set, and I think they look much better there. I think part of the problem there is that I'm sitting far away from the TV set, but when watching DVDs on a computer I'm right in front of it and can better observe the graininess.
Some of these movie trailers on apple's website are in HD:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/
Some of these movie trailers on apple's website are in HD:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/
Then there is the HD quicktime page.
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/guide/hd/
If those look horrible, something may be wrong.
Of course turning down the brightness may help if it is on full. Though calibrating is also a big help.
DVDs are at a lower resolution than the monitor, so the image has to be scaled up. You just won't have noticed it as much on a laptop screen.
I've calibrated the 20" screen and put it at max res 1680X1050 (the same as my MBP
), and DVD/videos look amazing in full screen. Also, watching the same movie on my 17" MBP is good too, but i definitely prefer the 20".
It's nothing but a resolution issue.
DVDs looked rough on my old PC with a 17" CRT monitor at 1024 x 768 resolution.
Step back a bit from the screen and you won't notice any blockiness or roughness though.
DVDs looked rough on my old PC with a 17" CRT monitor at 1024 x 768 resolution.
Step back a bit from the screen and you won't notice any blockiness or roughness though.