JPEG CD compatibility

I have made a regular CD with a number of JPEG images in different resolutions just to see if the player can recognize images in different resolutions. I started out with a JPEG picture at 1600x1200 pixels and converted it to the following resolutions:

2000 x 1500
1600 x 1200 (no conversion needed here)
1536 x 1024 (standard Kodak Picture CD format for 35 mm film)
1536 x 864 (standard Kodak Picture CD format for APS film)
1280 x 960
1024 x 768
800 x 600
640 x 480
400 x 300
320 x 240
200 x 150
160 x 120
100 x 75
80 x 60

I had to crop the 1536 x 1024 and 1536 x 864 a bit to preserv the aspect ratio.

I also made a 640 x 480 progressive JPEG to see if the player could show progressive JPEG.

This is the picture I started with (but this is in a much lower resolution, click on the picture if you want to see the original one (1.9MB)).

When I played the JPEG CD in the Denver DVD-176, I first got into a navigation menu:

In the navigation menu I have to choose which picture I want to start with.

I choosed "01_2000X1500" and the slide show started. Each picture is displayed about five seconds, and you can pause or press "NEXT" at any time. Here is what I got on the TV:

	2000 x 1500 pixels
	1600 x 1200 pixels
	1536 x 1024 pixels (standard Kodak Picture CD format for 35 mm film)
	1536 x 864 pixels (standard Kodak Picture CD format for APS film)
	1280 x 960 pixels
	1024 x 768 pixels
	800 x 600 pixels
	640 x 480 pixels
	400 x 300 pixels
	320 x 240 pixels
	200 x 150 pixels
	160 x 120 pixels
	100 x 75 pixels
	80 x 60 pixels
	640 x 480 progressive JPEG. The DVD-176 does not show how it "paints" the progressive picture. It seems to unpack the image in memory first and then displays the picture when it is all finished in memory.

The result of this test shows that the DVD-176 player seems to read any format of JPEG pictures, and resizes them to fit the TV screen. The DVD-176 does a better job than the 6620/6650 / 6632/6652 when it comes to take advantage of the whole screen. It also makes every picture the same size on the screen, regardless of its original resolution (if it has the same aspect ratio, of course).

It can also read progressive JPEG pictures without any problems.

I don't know which resolution that produces the best output, but I guess that if you go higher than 800 x 600, you wont see any difference in the picture quality. It's not really fair to compare the images above, since they are all at half resolution, and have passed a PC-TV card and an extra JPEG compression on the way to this web page. But they give you an idea of what to expect.

I also made a multi-session JPEG CD, and the player had no problem whatsoever to read pictures from all sessions, even if the CD wasn't "closed" (if you "close" a multi-session CD, you cannot write to again).

If you would like to burn your own CD's with JPEG-pictures so they start showing the pictures without you having to go through the "Smart Navi" menu, do like this:

Start your favorite CD burning software.
Create a directory called "pictures".
Put all your JPEG images in the "pictures" directory you just made.
Take this file an put in the root directory of the CD (an ordinary text-file with one line, "Disc = KODAK PICTURE CD" in it). The file must be namned "info.cd".
Burn your CD.

That's it! When you insert the CD in the Denver DVD-176 DVD-player, it will automatically start showing the pictures on the CD.

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