Top quality photos poor quality on CD-R. Why ???

[stephm]

Hi
I have a Pentax K-X dslr. My photos settings are set to super fine and the highest resolution.
Why is it when I burn them to a CD-R and play them on a DVD player the quality has reduced to blurry photos ?
I have burned them on to a sony cd-r and a tesco cd-r, both are exactly the same.
I have used Nero and a software called dvd photo slide. All come out the same poor quality.
When I view the photos on the computer on the same cd they still play of same poor quality.
When I play from the hard drive then obviously I get the quality back and are as clear as anything.
Clearly it not the quality of the photos but something else ?? Can anyone advise me please how to burn near HD photos on a CD when replicate the quality please ?

[paulmag]

images put on DVD are reduced in size to use on a dvd so are a lower quality to play back on a tv.

A TV resolution is pretty low so the software is making smaller files so you can view them

Maybe the settings can be tweaked

[tenchy]

Hi and welcome.

It is most likely because the pixel count on a TV is abysmal, even HD, compared to a PC and digital camera.
The best HD TV resolution is 2megapixel, available on phone camera many years ago!

Also, having done similar myself recently, actually getting the software to burn HD images is not easy as it seems. I gave up on Nero, it was rubbish.
I forget what I used now but I had to get a trial version of some decent software.
Even so, the images from my 450D looked pretty poor on the TV.
It may be prudent to resize the images in photoshop to the expected output size, as the program used to make the slideshow might reduce them poorly too (I didn’t try that)

[SeanNeedham]

Personally, I wouldn't use Nero or any other burning 'tool' to do it, but burn them directly off the hard drive on to the disk using best fit to 1280 x 1024 100% quality resizes of the original images; though not all DVD players could reproduce a disk like that.

The thing is, though, the best TV sets only have a resolution of 1280 x 1024, so if you are going to be putting a 4000 x 3000 (for the sake of simplicity) image on to that television, it is going to squash and look softer anyway, and more so the larger the television and / or the closer you are to the television.

The difference between a computer screen and a TV when it comes to viewing anything, a TV is designed to be viewed from a distance of X (can't remember what the factor is, but it's something for every extra 10" of diagonal, you need to be a metre further back to appreciate the image), where as a computer screen, even though it may be an identical pixel count is designed to be viewed at a maximum of 1.5 metres and therefore the sizing of the pixels are adjusted accordingly to the application of that panel.

[chaz]

Sean has explained it better than i could.