I'd like to view images (and slideshows) on my HDTV's, but haven't been able to get decent quality. My D3 has HDMI output, but here again, the quality on the screen is poor. I have to admit that I don't understand the technology, and am hoping for a shortcut to success.
I processed a few RAW files and displayed them as full sized JPG's, but ugg!
Is there a device that will do the job? Thanks for your help, Bob
I have a dedicated Media PC connected to my 40" 1920x1080 Sony Bravia X series LCD TV and my pictures look fabulous (well, as fabulous as they will ever look) on it. When I process my raw files I try to crop to a 16:9 format, so long as the aesthetics are not harmed by doing that. After all, 16:9 is no more right or wrong than 3:2 or 4:3 etc.. When I output my files to JPEG I pick pixel dimensions that will fit exactly to the screen edge(s). That means there will be no second phase of interpolation/scaling to make them fit when the display software gets its mucky paws on them. In fact, if I am able, I actually crop the files from my 40D to exactly 3840x2160 so that it requires an exact 50% resize to fit the screen. It might be my imagination, but I find I get slightly better sharpness this way than by leaving them at 3888x2592 and resizing them to 41.67% which would otherwise be required.
The PC is connected to the TV by HDMI at 1080p60. I run Vista Home Premium but have found that IQ is not very good at all when running a slide show within Media Centre or the slideshow feature spawned from Windows Explorer. I get great results by using Zoombrowser to display the images. The TV is set up for 0 overscan, so everything fits exactly to the screen on a 1:1 pixel ratio. Lovely :)
Of course, a laptop with an HDMI output should do the job equally well. As with all monitors you should also consider calibration, certainly for black/white levels, and gamma and colour if you can. I also have all the image enhancement gubbins turned off - no stupid dynamic contrast or noise reduction or any other similar garbage. Just keep it all clean and pure, with you in control - just like shooting in manual :) I tried calibration on my TV with my Spyder2Pro but did not like the results, so I've made do with setting the TV up manually using test images such as those produced by the TiReal software - http://tireal.com/index.php?page=etft
Holy smokes Tim, G R E A T information, thank you! I think I may purchase a dedicated PC to do the job. I looked at the Dell lineup and there are a few that would suit the bill, and not break the bank.
Also, thanks for the link to TIREAL, and the Zoombrowser suggestion. When I get up and running, I'll re-post or PM you - Best Regards, Bob
Glad to be of help. My current Media PC is a Dell XPS 420 with an Intel quad core processor, 3GB RAM and nVidia 8800GT graphics. I bought it in January this year, to give an idea of vintage.
Prior to that I had a home built Shuttle with far more modest specs, including a single core AMD processor, 1GB RAM and a humble ATI Radeon 9600 GFX card. In terms of photographic IQ that produced an equally pleasurable experience. You don't need high powered GFX to display a static image for several seconds at a time, even in High Def. That said, if you were to use Vista's own slideshow software, Vista required a beefy GFX card to enable the full media experience. Unbelievably, Vista would not even display a slideshow at full resolution with the 8600 card, even though the desktop itself was displayed perfectly well at 1920x1080. The output resolution to the TV was actually dynamically altered by Vista so that it could output a smaller image for slideshows, and if you wanted fancy transition effects it was pitiful to watch. That is a joke. Zoombrowser worked just fine on that machine, outputting at full HD resolution.
Of course, the new machine handles anything I throw at it with ease. :)
By the way, my current laptop is a Dell XPS M1710, bought in January last year. I popped in extra RAM several months ago, and recently a larger, faster hard drive, to cope with images from my new 50D and it is going great guns. I'm running Vista Home Premium X64 on the laptop. My previous two laptops, bought in 1998 and 2001 were both Dells as well. I have no problem with Dell :)
Viewing images on an HDTV screen
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