Problems getting true HD on my new PC

I recently built a new PC and bought a Gateway FHD2401 24" HD monitor. The specs on the monitor says that it has a resolution of 1920x1200 and supports 1080p.

All of the hardware is brand new and fairly powerful (Asus P5Q, E8500 dual core, 2 gigs ram, Radeon 4890 HD) so I don't believe it's a hardware problem.

I haven't yet bought a Blu-Ray reader, but I have a few HD quality blu-ray rips and clips on my PC but whenever I play them they never look like true HD quality.

This makes me believe that it's a software problem that I'm having. Am I not playing the files with the right program. To date I've tried VLC, media player classic, and smplayer. I also installed a codec pack called CoreAVC.

The files that I am trying to play are in *.mkv and *.ts formats. Now all of the files will play with one (if not all) of the programs above, but the problem I'm having is that it never looks like true HD quality.

Does anybody have any advice on other things/programs that I should try?

Thanks. Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

I recently built a new PC and bought a Gateway FHD2401 24" HD monitor. The specs on the monitor says that it has a resolution of 1920x1200 and supports 1080p.

All of the hardware is brand new and fairly powerful (Asus P5Q, E8500 dual core, 2 gigs ram, Radeon 4890 HD) so I don't believe it's a hardware problem.

I haven't yet bought a Blu-Ray reader, but I have a few HD quality blu-ray rips and clips on my PC but whenever I play them they never look like true HD quality.

This makes me believe that it's a software problem that I'm having. Am I not playing the files with the right program. To date I've tried VLC, media player classic, and smplayer. I also installed a codec pack called CoreAVC.

The files that I am trying to play are in *.mkv and *.ts formats. Now all of the files will play with one (if not all) of the programs above, but the problem I'm having is that it never looks like true HD quality.

Does anybody have any advice on other things/programs that I should try?

Thanks. Any and all advice would be greatly appreciated.

First of all, just what do you mean by true HD?

Secondly, 1920x1200 is a 4:3 format and not widescreen so unless you instruct your player, whatever that may be to play in the original aspect ratio, things will not look as good as they could.

The highest current resolution available for HD is 1920x1080

By true HD I mean 1080p.

I've played around with the aspect ratio's but it doesn't make any difference with respect to the quality of the video. So i don't think the aspect ratio is my problem.

What software does everyone else use to play HD (blu-ray rip) files?

Obviously vlc, media player classic, and smplayer are not doing the trick but there must be other programs that people use to play these files (*.ts and *.mkv)!

Maybe there is some sort of conversion I need to do to the files before they will play in HD? If so, what program should I use?

1920x1200 = 16:10

1920x1200 = 16:10

My bad, you are correct.

To the OP Power DVD should play those files and Blu-ray discs just fine (if you have a Blu-ray player).

By true HD I mean 1080p.

I've played around with the aspect ratio's but it doesn't make any difference with respect to the quality of the video. So i don't think the aspect ratio is my problem.

What software does everyone else use to play HD (blu-ray rip) files?

Obviously vlc, media player classic, and smplayer are not doing the trick but there must be other programs that people use to play these files (*.ts and *.mkv)!

Maybe there is some sort of conversion I need to do to the files before they will play in HD? If so, what program should I use?What software was used to rip the Blu-ray files? And were they ripped by you or did you download them from the internet? If these were downloaded, there are a lot of junk files out there. They may be HD in terms of resolution, but at very low bit rates which makes a very poor video. You can make some determination of this by looking at the file size. Good HD with 1920x1080 resolution recorded at 9 mbps using h.264 should be in the range of 3-4 Gbytes per hour. For example I recorded City Slickers today and the movie is 1 hour 54 minutes. The file size is 8.016 Gbytes.

It may be these are not very good files you are using.

What software was used to rip the Blu-ray files? And were they ripped by you or did you download them from the internet? If these were downloaded, there are a lot of junk files out there. They may be HD in terms of resolution, but at very low bit rates which makes a very poor video. You can make some determination of this by looking at the file size. Good HD with 1920x1080 resolution recorded at 9 mbps using h.264 should be in the range of 3-4 Gbytes per hour. For example I recorded City Slickers today and the movie is 1 hour 54 minutes. The file size is 8.016 Gbytes.

It may be these are not very good files you are using.

Excellent point...

If it came from the internet, there's no way to really prove that it's "true" HD. I've downloaded a couple of shows that said they were HD quality, but looked nothing compared to the actual show on my HDTV

If it came from the internet, there's no way to really prove that it's "true" HD. I've downloaded a couple of shows that said they were HD quality, but looked nothing compared to the actual show on my HDTVWhat is the time length and what is the file size?