ArcSoft Total Media Theatre vs. Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 Ultra

[wolfbane5]

Well, here's the deal: I've used both programs via the trials, but I don't know which is better for bluray movie playback. Anyone have any comments about which is better?

Also, recently I tried watching Band of Brothers on bluray via both programs and received errors like "arcsoft cannot play this disc" or "cyberlink cannot play this video and needs to close". I assumed that both players required updates since BoB on bluray was released on Nov 11, 2008 in NA at least. I found 1 update for each and updated but to no avail. Anyone know what the problem could be?

[Doom9]

Do you have AnyDVD HD running? I found that players tend to react somewhat different when dealing with the original unaltered discs - e.g. ripped Fox titles all come up with a message like that but you can go ahead and it plays fine anyway (that's in file mode for TMT at least).
I own all three major HD software players so here are my pros and cons:
PowerDVD:
+: seems the most stable of the bunch, actively supported, support for S3 cards (important if you have one)
-: Cyberlink bends over backwards to accomodate studios even where they wouldn't have to (e.g. removal of playback from HD, forced downsampling of audio), stutters when you unpause, no more HD DVD support (important if you have 100 discs..), rather unstable on the latest HD discs with BD+ (watching Firefly was impossible.. the player disappeared without notice at least twice per episode)
TMT:
+: supports both HD DVD and BD, plays from disc, HD and single files/playlist, stable on the latest BD titles, best support of intel's HD capable GFX chips (4500 series)
-: UI tends to freeze.. playback still goes on but you can stop/etc. anymore, moving the time slider tends to lead to choppyness (note that those might be hardware/software issues.. I haven't opened a case with their support yet)

WinDVD:
+: supports both HD DVD and BD
-: total failure on the latest BD+ discs I've tried, won't start up properly unless you allow to connect it to the Internet, doesn't even open high def files in file mode (and of course also no support for directories containing HD files).

If ArcSoft gets those two issues sorted, it would be my recommended player.. as it is now I begrudgingly recommend PowerDVD even though I'm not at all happy with Cyberlink (the removal of HD playback was a major kick into the nuts.. sure they offered that I could go for a refund but since my Japanese WinDVD8 didn't work anymore at all and couldn't be updated at the time this happened I simply had no option but to stick with PowerDVD).

[saint-francis]

I haven't used Arcsoft. I got the trial to tinker with eac3to and I got frustrated with how it insinuated itself into too many aspects of my system. I have a copy of PDVD and I haven't installed it since last spring. The reason is that I find demuxing a disk with eac3to and the remuxing as .mkv and playing in MPC HC gives easier and lighter playback. Also I don't watch movies form disk. I always use a backup. I rip the disk as soon as I get it and then it goes in the closet, on the top shelf. When PDVD decided to deny me the ability to play my movies from my HDD I was pretty upset. So maybe you don't need to buy either of the options and you can just go open source.

[CruNcher]

Arcsoft was recently updated and soon it will get Super Resolution via GPU most probably before Cyberlink :) also in my last test Arcsofts Blu-Ray Java Engine was much more performant :)
They also have their own Main Profile H.264 Encoder (not Mainconcept SDK based)

Arcsoft is slowly driving ahead of Cyberlink this Chinese company really evolved with their products out of the past in terms of R&D, if Cyberlink doesn't get back on track Arcsoft will surpass them
really soon :)
Though if CoreCodec would finally enter this market all of them Cyberlink, Arcsoft, Corel(Intervideo) would look OLD really OLD ;)

[wolfbane5]

Do you have AnyDVD HD running? I found that players tend to react somewhat different when dealing with the original unaltered discs.

Didn't have AnyDVD HD running at the time. By the way, what's an S3 card?

Is it possible that Band of Brothers could be using the new BD+ protection, hence why the players were having problems?

[Doom9]

Is it possible that Band of Brothers could be using the new BD+ protection, hence why the players were having problems? Is there a BDSVM Folder on the disc? If not, it has no BD+.
And S3 is a maker of GFX chipsets.. just like ATI or nVidia or intel.