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Watching HD Videos On Your PC Is Wrong?

Posted 2 months ago at 3:26 pm. 0 comments

Someone a few days ago expressed to me their pet hate was people watching HD videos through their PC. Now I strongly disagree as I watch them through my PC all the time. I think maybe he was misguided since most people think it is hard to watch HD videos through your PC. Well I’m here to hopefully enlighten those people.

All you really need is a monitor that can output at a resolution at or above 1920×1080 or a HDTV with HDMI or DVI connectivity & a fairly recent graphics card, preferably with hardware acceleration for codecs such as VC-1 & H.264. Nvidia’s Purevideo is a good one & I have heard a few good things about ATI’s new HD hardware acceleration.

To set-up your HDTV with your computer you will need a DVI to DVI or DVI to HDMI cable depending on the connection on your TV or if you are lucky enough to have a graphics card with an HDMI connection and HDMI to HDMI connection. The way you set it up will depend on the graphics card type either Nvidia or ATI. I have a Nvidia card and you just pick the option in multiple displays to configure independently from each other. Then use the resolution settings to set up your HDTV for your max resolution, generally 1920×1080. Hopefully that makes sense but it should be in the driver documentation for your graphics card.

Then all you need is a media player. I use Zoom player which has a free version and the little tutorial I am going to do is for Zoom Player.

Next you need a codec to decode the video. Zoom Player will install these with it’s codec installer that runs after the installation of Zoom Player. I find that for most transport stream (.ts files) will play fine with the default codecs installed by Zoom Player, but I found that some Matroska (.mkv files) files, generally ones coverted from Blu-Ray discs have a few problems. To solve this I use the Coreavc codec which isn’t free but gives outstanding picture quality & fantasic performance even on computers without hardware acceleration for the H.264 codec. You can get it for about $9 and it’s well worth the money.

All you need to do is install it and the check Zoom Player has set it as it’s default decoder for H.264 videos. To do that just open Zoom Player, right click in the center, pick options and click the plus next to playback. Then pick smart play and choose the audio & video decoders tab. Find H.264 in the right hand window and select it, if the Filter in use box says CoreAVC Video Decoder (Registered) then congrats your ready to rock & roll.

If you have a better AC3 decoder then you can register that the same way. I just use the default though and find it works great.

I hope that helps a little with how to watch HD videos on your computer and get the best quality. Personally I still say using Blu-ray is the best way to watch in HD but still watching on your PC is another good way to get your HD fix.

Here are some pictures of the quality you can watch when watching and using HD video on your PC:
Images are copyright © to the respective film studios etc.

Transformers: