Low End Mac Reader Specials

TypeStyler For Mac OS X is Now Shipping! Download The Free Fully Functional 60 Day Tryout at www.typestyler.com

Poker Mac Don't install Parallels to play poker online! Poker Mac will show you how to download and install a native Mac poker application such as Full Tilt Poker Mac.

Laptop Hardware Provided by TechRestore - Overnight Mac & iPod Repairs.

Compare products like desktop computers, apple laptops, apple macs, and LCD Monitors side by side! All the information and reviews to make the best purchasing decision for new mobile phones, sat nav systems, or MP3 players. The Ciao online shopping community makes searching products easy for you.

Mac Musings

Is Video CD a Real Alternative to DVD?

25 May 2000 - Dan Knight - Tip Jar

You've probably seen the ads from CoolVCD.com and read the press releases: Video Compact Disc (VCD) lets you watch movies on Macs or PCs that don't have DVD drives.

Maybe you were skeptical. I certainly was. After all, DVD stores several gigabytes of data and provides output good enough for the new generation of digital TVs. CDs only store about 650 MB of information; how could they offer anywhere near the quality of DVD?

VCD doesn't claim to offer the same quality of DVD. It does claim to offer comparable quality to videotape. Most movies come on two VCDs, which means they are more compressed than DVD.

There's about a 04.1 difference in storage space between DVD and VCD, but that doesn't mean the quality is one-fourth that of DVD. It varies from film to film.

To test the quality of VCD, I obtained three movies from CoolVCD. I watched them on my DVD player (VCD is compatible with most DVD players) and also looked at them on my Umax SuperMac S900 with G3/333 processor and 8x CD-ROM drive. (CoolVCD recommends at least a 4x CD-ROM drive and a 604e processor along with a recent version of QuickTime. Some movies will also require CD-ROM Speed Tools. This is all covered on the CoolVCD site, along with requirements for Windows computers.)

Never Been Kissed

Never Been KissedThe first movie I watched was Never Been Kissed with Drew Barrymore and David Arquette. It's an enjoyable movie about a 25-year-old reporter going back to high school for her first undercover assignment.

Except for a scene in a dark club (right), the quality is quite good. Artifacts (a side-effect of JPEG and MPEG compression) are visible in this scene, but rarely noticeable in the rest of the film.

As for the claim that VCD offers comparable quality to VHS tapes, Never Been Kissed proves the point. I watched it twice to verify that.

Entrapment

Entrapment with Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta-Jones goes beyond that, offering quality comparable to the best THX mastered videotape. In fact, it was as close to DVD quality as I've ever seen.

Entrapment is a compelling tale of honor among thieves (or lack thereof) along with double- and triple-crosses that leave you guessing how things will end. You'll probably want to watch it a second time after you know how it ends - and you'll probably enjoy it every bit as much on the second pass.

I never saw this on the big screen or on DVD, but found the quality more than I expected.

The Avengers

Over the weekend I watched the third VCD, 1998's The Avengers with Uma Thurman, Ralph Fiennes, and Sean Connery. I'd seen the movie on DVD and find the VCD edition vastly inferior. (Unfortunately, I am unable to play The Avengers on my SuperMac at home, my G4 at work, or my wife's PowerBook G3, so I can't show an example.)

Part of the problem may be the movie itself, which I find so dry that it never becomes compelling. It's a shame, because there's a good story line and good special effects. But because the characters have so little depth, the story isn't as engaging as the above films.

Worse yet, from the opening credits throughout the movie you're constantly reminded that this is compressed video. Artifacts are the norm, not the exception as in Never Been Kissed. Given the choice, I'd take The Avengers on video tape instead of VCD.

Conclusion

Video Compact Disc lets you do something on an iBook, older iMac, and a lot of other Power Macs and PowerBooks that would otherwise be impossible without a DVD drive: watch movies.

Compressing movies with minimal quality loss is an art and a science. There are programs that can dynamically vary the level of compression for each scene to provide the best quality within available bandwidth. It's obvious those who mastered Never Been Kissed and Entrapment were concerned with a quality product, while it seems those responsible for translating The Avengers to VCD just wanted to get the job done.

It's easy to understand why in many Asian markets the compact, efficient VCD format has caught on. A pair of discs in a case takes up a lot less room than a VHS tape, quality will not degrade with repeated viewings, and the price is very attractive.

If anything, this bodes well for DVD. If VCD with its adequate but limited quality can do this well, it will be very easy for DVD players to displace VCD players, especially since most DVD players are also compatible with Video CD.

VCD provides a way to watch movies on computers that don't have DVD players and a way to own movies, such as Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, that are not yet available on DVD. LEM

  • Star Wars Trilogy on VCD, CoolVCD. Not yet available on DVD. First Video CDs mastered using THX process. Just US$26.88 plus shipping.

Dan Knight has been using Macs since 1986, sold Macs for several years, supported them for many more years, and has been publishing Low End Mac since April 1997. If you find Dan's articles helpful, please consider making a donation to his tip jar.

Recent Mac Musings

Links for the Day

Recent Content on Low End Mac

Recent Deals

About LEM | Support | Usage | Privacy | Contacts

Entire Low End Mac website copyright ©1997-2009 by Cobweb Publishing, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All rights reserved. Advice presented in good faith, but what works for one may not work for all. Please report errors to .
  LINKS: We allow and encourage links to any public page as long as the linked page does not appear within a frame that prevents bookmarking it.
  Access our RSS news feed at http://lowendmac.com/feed.xml.
  Email may be published at our discretion; email addresses will not be published without permission, and we will encrypt them in hopes of avoiding spammers. If you prefer your message not be published, mark it "not for publication." Letters may be edited for length, context, and to match house style.
  PRIVACY: We don't collect personal information unless you explicitly provide it. For more details, see our Terms of Use.
  Low End Mac is an independent publication and has not been authorized, sponsored, or otherwise approved by Apple Inc. Apple, the Apple logo, Macintosh, iBook, iMac, eMac, iPod, iPhone, PowerBook, MacBook, MagSafe, Mac Pro, Apple TV, and AirPort are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are hereby acknowledged.

Custom Search

Amazon.com

Navigation

Used Mac Dealers
Apple History
Video Cards
Email Lists

Favorite Sites

MacSurfer
MacMinute
MacInTouch
MyAppleMenu
InfoMac
Macs Only!
The Mac Observer
Accelerate Your Mac
RetroMacCast
PB Central
MacWindows
The Vintage Mac
   Museum
DealMac
DealsOnTheWeb
Mac2Sell
ramseeker
Mac Driver Museum
JAG's House
System 6 Heaven
System 7 Today
the pickle's Low-End
   Mac FAQ
Abandonware
   Petition
Mac vs. PC Info

Affiliates

The Apple Store
Mac Connection
B&H
MacMall
TechRestore
ExperCom
Crucial Memory
batteries.com

Advertise

All of our advertising is handled by BackBeat Media. For price quotes and advertising information, please contact at BackBeat Media (646-546-5194). This number is for advertising only.

Open Link

Problems viewing this page with Internet Explorer 5.5 or 6? It works fine in other browsers, including IE 7. We recommend Firefox for those using Windows, as it is standards based and more secure than IE 6 (and earlier). More LEM visitors use Firefox than any other browser.