Cyberlink was kind enough to let me evaluate the latest version of their PowerDVD Ultra product - about a year ago. Yet I procrastinated. Now, a year later I found myself in posession of a brand-new Media Center machine (does the phrase "Dude, you are getting a Dell" sound familiar?), which is connected to a brand new 1080P Samsung LCD TV. I've slightly upgraded it with an LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray/HD-DVD Reader and realized, how close I to being finally able to watch HD DVDs on a Media Center machine (instead of Xbox 360). This is where I remembered about Cyberlink generous offer.
After a painless 100MB download (you can buy all of the Cyberlink products electronically, directly on their web site, and depending on the speed of your connection, you will get to install it in 5-10 min), I ran the setup and was shortly rewarded with the activation dialog. I am not big fan of software activation (Windows or any other), but as far as the activation experiences go, this one was seamless and easy.
PowerDVD comes with a companion application called BluRay Advisor (there is also nearly identical HD DVD Advisor). This application checks your system for being ready to play HD content. The last time I ran it a year ago, I got a message saying that my display card was underpowered, my CPU - barely sufficient (P IV 3.6GHz) and my TV entirely unsuitable due to the lack of HDCP support. This time I had a green light on every item, except the video driver - the Advisor did not recognize the driver version and indicated the status as unknown.
My TV uses so called 10' setup, meaning that normally there is no keyboard or mouse connected to it (well, there is a Media Center keyboard, just in case, but I rarely use it). Earlier versions of PowerDVD did not fare well with the Media Center remote, but the current one does not seem to have any problems. I was able to control it perfectly well, except of going into settings and such. For day-to-day needs, such as watching DVD MCE Remote gives you all control you need.
PowerDVD fully supports HD DVD menu system. My experience with it did not differ from Xbox 360 one.
There are few minor annoyances - nothing critical, but I have to mention them:
- when starting playback, Vista pops a message saying that the application is not compatible with Windows Aero and that Windows will switch into basic mode.
- I was not able to figure out how to select the disk to play. The machine has a regular DVD drive, an HD DVD drive and a DVD changer. By default the player picks the first of them. I'm sure there is a setting somewhere, but I wish it were more accessible. As it is I have to open Computer window and select the disc I want to play
- The status overlay that's shown in the upper right corner when you are controlling volume, is way too small. From the couch it is nearly impossible to read.
I want to emphasize, that the above list is of really minor issues. The application is very good in every way and does the job of playing DVDs and HD DVDs nearly perfectly. The picture quality is superb, there are no artifacts or playback delays, missed frames and other unpleasant occurences that might mire your viewing experience.
In conclusion I wanted to mention the auto update feature. It is not something new - Microsoft, Adobe, Intel and quite a few others have it. Nevertheless it is gratifying to know that you don't have to check the web site for updates constantly (and who doesn't love updates) - it's done for you.