Watch DVD movies on iMac - or TV?

If the DVD player has HDMI output, then it will do the upscaling.

I have a 55" HDTV connected to my Mac Pro and am very happy with the picture from DVD Player. Often don't notice that it is not HD. It depends on the DVD. I have Deinterlace set to "Optimal Quality" in its View menu.

I can also play DVDs with VLC.

http://www.videolan.org

It has "Deinterlace mode" and "Post processing" settings in its Video menu.

I can also play DVDs with Mac Blu-ray Player Pro. (The DVD drive died and I replaced it with a Blu-ray drive.)

https://macblurayplayer.com/macgo-mac-bluray-menu-player-pro.htm

They all look about the same to me, but there might be differences if the DVD is not high quality.

Gary,

What I do is I use my AppleTV and stream the movies from my iMac to my big screen TV. I've been doing this for years and it works extremely well. If you haven't considered that option I'd strongly recommend it!

TV - Apple

a pixel is a pixel a dvd will 720x480 resolution and when displayed on any screen with a higher pixel rate be upscaled

changing the resolution on a lcd display will not help you at all

a pixel is a pixel

if your amount of pixels are 720*480 it will be one to one

if your amount of pixels are 1440*960 it will be 4 to one

if your amount of pixels are not a modulus 2 of 720*480 it will have to estimate what each pixel display compared to the source that often cause blur

this will hold true for both your iMac and a tv

Click the link I provided in my initial post and you will find the additional benefits an Apple TV has in addition to just watching a DVD. In your vision is limited to only watching a DVD then you're right you can simply connect a cable between your iMac and TV and off you go. However, if you are interested in experiencing more and removing all cables then you can have much better user experience. I like the idea of viewing photos on my tv, listening to my music on my home theater system (which includes my tv), the additional programming available, and all of it being wireless. Also, if you happen to enjoy gaming (I don't but you may like them) the Apple TV is designed for that too. In short the Apple TV has a LOT more capability than just watching a DVD.

DVDs are better from a DVD player to a TV (than a computer) and, as already mentioned, once you make pixels larger ("upscaling"), they will get fuzzy and, at worst, the pic will be totally pixelated. So, if the DVDs are of a lower quality, then try to adjust them on the TV (mine has a "pic size" button which occasionally helps if we want to watch a very old movie).

I'd go with a TV and a player.

Gary Wright4 wrote:

Does anyone know if a stand-alone DVD player connected to a 22" TV will look better, worse, or about the same as a DVD movie playing on my 21.5" iMac?

FWIW I doubt they would look much different with SD DVDs. What will look somewhat better is a smaller screen. The smaller the screen the less noticeable the picture degradation. 12" to 15" should be okay.

DVDs are inherently standard definition 480p, and since you have a DVD drive built in to the computer I can understand how convenient that is, but you will always lack image quality compared to other streaming options on the iMac. The newer high-definition physical optical disc is BluRay. You can get new BluRay/DVD combo pack movies these days, but that does not help with your existing DVD collection. However, I have noticed in playing standard DVDs in my XBOX's BluRay player connected via HDMI to the 1080p TV set, the upsampling is a better quality than a conventional DVD set-top player to TV with the standard-definition RCA-connectors. Since BluRay players can play the standard DVDs you might consider one of those for the TV to be able to play the old library of DVDs and new BluRays you might buy in the future. I guess the point I would make is that if you are going to invest in a new HD TV, do not invest in a Standard Definition DVD player to go with it, get an HD BluRay disc player.

My 27" 2010 iMac is larger than my TV and has higher resolution 2560x1440. However, watching a DVD in my iMac in full screen does not look as good as playing the same DVD in the BluRay player via the XBOX HDMI to the 1080p TV at the same viewing distance. Streaming video in HD looks way better on either device, i.e. Netflix, etc, than DVDs, if you can find the titles you are interested in watching.

Gary Wright4 wrote:

Finally, when using the DVD Player App on my iMac, I can either tell the DVD Player app to go to Full Screen at the monitor's native resolution (1920 x 1080) - or, using the Display Preferences, I can change the monitor resolution to 1280x720 first. Any reason why one method should be an advantage over the other?

Leave the display at native resolution and set DVD Player to full screen mode. The software upscaling will work better if it knows the actual screen resolution. HD TVs also do software upscaling, which may or may not be better than DVD Player's, but will probably look better because you are not so close to the screen.

DVD discs are best viewed from a DVD player to a decent quality TV screen, not to a computer screen.

Its also the cheapest option:

Panasonic DVD player £30-00

HDMI cable £4-00