Alternatives to Powerdvd 8?

[FirstBorg]

Hi!
Currently I am using Powerdvd 8 to play my Blu Ray Discs. But with some Discs, especially those where BD Live seems to be more important than the Movie, Pdvd either wont play, or freezes in at some scenes. Examples are Hancock, Hulk, The Mummy 3... In Hancock and Mummy, there are scenes, every time the same scene, where the picture stops, the sound continues for some seconds, and then it crashes too, most of the time leading to a crash of the entire system. Hulk wont even start, it shows the loading sign, and thats it.
So, naturaly Im looking for other players now...
I know of Nero Showtime. Is it good? Does it show any problems? Are there more players out there capable of playing Blurays and HDDVDs (still got some of those).

Or is the PDVD problem known and is there a solution?
Thx.

[Kado]

Is it the latest version? Also is the video being decoded using dxva?

[FirstBorg]

Should be the latest... a click on "check for update" shows nothing new.

dxva? where do I check this?

[Doom9]

Are you playing those titles with AnyDVD running? In my experience with PowerDVD (I have over 200 titles) the more interactive they get, the more likely you'll get an issue while AnyDVD HD is running. I do have the two alternative players (TMT, WinDVD9) but they have their own issues... TMT has on occasion froze but the movie went on.. just the UI disappeared and there was no way to control playback. Also, TMT tends to start stuttering if you move along the timeline... use the chapter buttons and it works fine, but move the slider on the timeline and things tend to get bad... move it around and eventually it's okay again. And WinDVD9 phones home on every start (or comes in in a way that you cannot get it to work if you block that mechanism) so I haven't really spent too much time with it.
Both TMT and WinDVD should play HD DVDs.. PowerDVD8 needs some trickery (I posted details once in my news.. and there's also quite a bit about this in the Slysoft forums) to play HD DVDs - I've never tried that out even though I saved the files from my PowerDVD7 installation before a reinstall so that I could get HD DVD playback as well.