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View Full Version : Congratulations to PowerDVD Developers


CruNcher
30th July 2007, 14:35
PowerDVD has become a very interesting Player over the years it seemes to use some techniques that no other OpenSource/Freeware/Commercial (Windows) Player is useing (Ofcourse it's useing also some OpenSource stuff like Pthreads).
Fact is that it plays much more then WinDVD for example wich has very bad (buggy) File Playing support and this ugly based ActiveX interface concept (urgh Corel should do a redesign fast).
The PowerDVD devs definately know what their doing and improved the Player over the last years (could also bee seen in their continues Decoder Development).
At the moment it's the only all in one Player (working File Playing via DS) that Supports all widely spread Standards DVD,HD-DVD,Blu-Ray and can make use of every Hardware accelleration from every Vendor possible under Windows)

A year ago i wouldn't have talked this way about PowerDVD as it wasn't that far (File Playing support, Hardware accelleration problems) as it now is in version 7 compared to WinDVD it looks like the WinDVD devs did nothing to enhance their application core over the years (very sad) im almost sure only CorePlayer (saw a very early tech preview no DVD,HD-DVD or Blu-Ray only File Playing) is gonna be able to gain some popularity over PowerDVD in the next year.

I just had to write this because i often questioned PowerDVD and WinDVD in the past (looks like at least someone from Cyberlink read that ;) ) so some people might think my Party is OpenSource and for sure it is, but i never attacked those applications just said what i think about them, so see this as an status update of my opinion on the mentioned applications.

And yes i don't mention Showtime here as it still is hmm a player that acts on his own (choses Overlay Renderer but i don't wan't it this way Hardware accelleration via DXVA can't work never figured out also not with JohnV his Help) and i never got Hardware accelleration to work with it not even for Mpeg-2 despite for H.264 :P, but yes it shows similaritys in comfort to PowerDVD (as a File Player).

stanleyhuang
31st July 2007, 05:45
I don't see a reason to favor a closed-source commercial software.

ByeByeBluRay
31st July 2007, 09:47
I don't see a reason to favor a closed-source commercial software.

Nor me. Especially one that (for me at least) has decided to change the language of the UI to French on my XP box and Japanese on my Vista one, with no way to change it back (the language selection box contains only the one wrong langauge, even though there are several in the installation folder).

Maccara
31st July 2007, 14:11
I just wish they would fix the installer on their latest version so that it would work on XP x64 also, so I could decide myself if I like it or not. ;)

(as a side note, if someone has a workaround, let me know)

mitsubishi
31st July 2007, 15:22
I wouldn't thank the CyberLink application developers for anything. The codecs are fine, but the apps suck. After being stuck with PowerCinema for some time because of one of my TV cards, 30% CPU in graphedit, 60%(!) in PC and the abysmal options and U, I don't rate them highly at all.

Delerue
31st July 2007, 19:27
I wouldn't thank the CyberLink application developers for anything. The codecs are fine, but the apps suck. After being stuck with PowerCinema for some time because of one of my TV cards, 30% CPU in graphedit, 60%(!) in PC and the abysmal options and U, I don't rate them highly at all.

I think that even the codecs aren't OK. MPEG2, for example, has a weird behavior with some interlaced material (gray line at left and a wrong deinterlacing method). In an early article, Anandtech reported another bug, in this case with H.264 codecs and ATI cards.

PowerDVD isn't bad, but of course it could be better, much better. The interface is an issue, IMO. The lack of advanced configurations is another. The sad thing is that WinDVD (its closer competitor) also has a lot of problems.

Carpo
31st July 2007, 21:14
have used powerdvd since v4 - and its done what its had to but there are better players about, and they dont have all the so called bells and whistles, but if its a choice of closed-source and sometimes buggy app over free and open source (mpc mplayer etc) then i have to go with them.

Powerdvd is getting better but not as good as it should or could be

Manbearpig
1st August 2007, 14:50
I wish it had some subtitles support.
And so far is the only software i can use to play hd-dvd and blu-ray on my pc, so i cant complain much.

arfster
1st August 2007, 19:14
It's OK. Obviously they win on BD/HDDVD playback at present, mainly from lack of competition. They have the best h264 decoder around. There are also nice control options over deinterlacing, so you can select specific modes - even hardware deinterlacing without acceleration (useful if your graphics card is maxxed out). They also use EVR nowadays, so in Vista there are no more tearing or weird colour problems.

Still, if you exclude the proprietary/copyright factors limiting the number of BD/HDDVD players, most of the above can be done with the likes of MPC. Use the Cyberlink codecs and EVR, and you get the same picture.