TrueTheaterHD/Motion on PowerDVD:Just an upscaler and blend?

[kurkosdr]

Ok, first of all, I would like to thank the VLC community for giving the people an outstanding quality open source player that plays everything, on every OS, without problems.

Now, I 've just visited the Cyberlink website to look for a software bluray player. Then, I noticed that these guys promise to provide some kind of super awesome upscaling technology that will make your ordinary DVDs appear like Blurays, along with some kind of super awesome de-interlace filter that will provide perfect motion. They call these technologies TrueTheater HD and TrueTheater Motion accordingly.

Now, I am not easily convinced by Cyberlink's marketing departnent, as most of their "technologies" are nothing but ordinary stuff. For example the "magic music" of their PowerDirector is just a set of prerecorded music tracks. Their Eagle Vision technology, well I was never able to tell what exactly does, and their TrueTheater Stretch just ignores the aspect ratio and fills the screen (can you say "pan and scan"?).

However, I carefully examined the pictures they provide on their site for the TrueTheater™ HD and TrueTheater™ Motion technologies, and yes, it makes a difference. If VLC is the picture on the left, and PowerDVD is the picture on the right, then they 've done some awesome work on their software (some kind of line doubler perhaps? Farudja on software?). The same applies for the their de-interlacing filter (some kind of advanced blend de-interlace filter? a new kind of de-interlace filter?).

Unless of course the picture on the left is a DVD player with a "drop" de-interlace, so all the above assumptions are false.

So, here you get it: Can VLC provide the same picture as PowerDVD for DVDs? Is the picture of PowerDVD superior to VLC, or they provide similar quality?

Does VLC upscales and de-interlaces as good as PowerDVD?

I don't have PowerDVD9 yet, so I 'll appreciate any comparisons before I make a 100$ purchase. (blu ray playback is not high priority for me right now, but I would totally like to make my DVDs look better).

Thanks in advance,
kurkosdr.

[Arite]

Presumably you are referring to the image comparisons and features described here:
http://www.cyberlink.com/products/power ... en_US.html

TrueTheater HD just looks like a sharpen filter alongside some colour enhancement. VLC can do this. As a comparison (using VLC 1.0.0-rc4) I thought I'd take a couple of snapshots from BSG:

No filters:



Image adjust filter (just increased the gamma a bit) and the sharpen filter:



OK perhaps I overdid it a bit with both the sharpen and gamma (mainly the sharpen), but hopefully you get the idea. Both can be adjusted accordingly.

You can also enable post-processing which can improve the video quality further.

As for TrueTheater Motion... that appears to just interpolate between frames to produce a *smoother* video. Not convinced that increasing the FPS to something greater than ~25fps actually makes any difference, however it might make some.

TrueTheater Stretch looks like nothing more than pan and scan like you said. TrueTheater lighting... well that looks like colour enhancement again, with some predefined profiles.

VLC's upscaling algorithm is pretty good, however you can change that in the preferences too.

So anyway try VLC out yourself and play around with the video filters. To do this when playing a video go to "Tools >> Effects and Filters" and click on the "Video Effects" tab etc.

Cheers, Arite.