CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra - The First Commercial HD/Blu-ray Player for Windows
Written: Jun 03 '07 (Updated Jul 04 '07)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: HD and Blu-Ray Playback, frequent updates, supports the latest video cards
Cons: High system requirements, iHD menu handling a little "clunky"
The Bottom Line: If you want to add HD or Blu-ray playback to your PC, PowerDVD Ultra should be first on your list.
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| nc10's Full Review: CyberLink PowerDVD Ultra |
Adding full Blu-ray or HD-DVD playback capability to a a home theater PC is more difficult than you might first expect. You’ll need state of the art technology, a HD or Blu-Ray DVD drive, a monitor or HDTV and video card that meets the requirements of the High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) standard and a software DVD player that is capable of decoding High Definition DVD’s. There are only a few software DVD players that claim to be capable of playing HD and Blu-ray DVD’s. Ahead offers a $25 plugin that adds HD and Blu-ray playback to Nero Showtime. Corel’s WinDVD 8 will be capable of playing high definition DVD’s "any day now". But the first commercially available software HD DVD/Blu-ray DVD player was CyberLink’s PowerDVD Ultra, a software DVD player that is unsurpassed in features, performance, and capability. (Note that at least initially, some disk manufacturers have given us a bit of a reprieve on HDCP requirements. You may be able to use a non HDCP enabled hardware if you use an analog video connection, ie, not DVI or HDMI. Most reports indicate DVD manufacturers aren’t degrading HD content through analog connections, at least for now, see the links at the end of this review.)
Installation
Installation of PowerDVD Ultra starts with comparing your system with the minimum requirements for HD playback. CyberLink recommends the following, though the minimum spec’s are a bit less than these:
Memory: 1GB
CPU: Pentium EE 840 3.2 GHz, Core Duo T2500, Core 2 Duo E6300 1.8 GHz, Athlon 64 X2 4200+ 2.2 GHz or better, Turion 64 X2 TL-60 2.0 GHz, or better.
Graphics: Nvidia: GeForce 7600 GT or better, ATI X1600 or better, with at least 256 MB ram, HDCP enabled graphics card and monitor or HDTV
The requirements are real. I tested PowerDVD on a couple of systems with lesser CPU’s one with a dual core 2.8 ghz Pentium D820 dual core cpu and 6800 GS video card, and one with a Pentium IV 3Ghz single core CPU and 7600 GS video card. Neither system was capable. Users can also download CyberLink’s CyberLink BD / HD Advisor (link at the end of this review) to determine if there system is capable of playing HD or Blu-ray disks.
I installed PowerDVD ultra on HP7674M PC with an Intel E6400 Core 2 Duo cpu, 2gb ram and a 256mb Sapphire X1950GT video card running Win XP. An Xbox 360 HD DVD drive and a Vizio 50” plasma HDTV was also connected to the PC. The TV was connected via a DVI (on the PC) to HDMI (on the TV) adapter cable. The sound card was connected to a Sony surround sound system. A Gyration wireless keyboard and mouse, and a HP media center remote was also connected to the PC, and I planned on using those to control PowerDVD.
After installing this hardware and software, PowerDVD Ultra initially wouldn’t run, locking up everytime I tried to play a HD DVD. But once I installed the latest ATI drivers for my video card, everything started working. Note that I’ve only used PowerDVD Ultra to view standard and HD-DVD’s, and have not viewed Blu-ray DVD’s.
Using PowerDVD
Using PowerDVD to view HD-DVD’s on my Vizio 50” plasma TV is a terrific experience. Dolby 5.1 audio is routed through the spdif output on my soundcard to a Sony Surround system, so the sound it great, also, even with my $200 Sony surround sound system. For the most part, PowerDVD Ultra handles HD DVD playback just as advertised. Playback on my system is very smooth, fast forward, next chapter and rewind work without a hitch. PowerDVD handles most of the interactive HD features pretty well on the disks I've tried, but there are a few wrinkles in the experience.
Starting PowerDVD brings up a "widescreen" aspect playback window, that takes up about 1/3 of screen on my 50” Vizio plasma TV, essentially a 1324X768 resolution monitor. Loading HD DVD’s from the XBOX HD DVD drive attached to my PC is really slow…. it takes almost a minute between the time you insert a DVD to the time it starts playing, though I’ve read that kind of delay is typical of HD-DVD players.
The playback controls are located in a control bar attached to the bottom of the playback window. The control bar can be “undocked” if desired. In full screen mode, the control bar disappears, sliding back in whenever you move your mouse. When used to view standard DVD’s, PowerDVD offers all the functions you’ll find in your standalone DVD players, and many more features than you wont find. After you use it a few times, you’ll miss being able to access most of those features with only the controls on your mouse, features like pan and zoom, screen capture, audio track selection on the fly, brightness/contrast/color presets for movies, sports, etc, and much more.
Viewing HD DVD’s using just a mouse or the media center remote that came with your PC is not quite as intuitive as viewing standard definition DVD's. A wireless media center mouse (like the Gyration Air Mouse or Logitech MediaPlay mouse) can be used watch DVD’s, and control all the the standard functions, pause, next chapter, etc. However, a mouse doesn’t handle the special features offered on some HD DVD’s as easily as I’d like. Only by using a combination of my mouse and a media center remote can I easily access all the features offered by some HD-DVD’s. For example…..
Navigating the HD menu’s (iHD menu - a transparent menu which you can call up while watching some HD-DVD’s to access special features) with the mouse is somewhat difficult. Neither the scroll wheel nor moving the mouse alone steps through the menu iHD menu options correctly. You have to “drag and drop” the pointer through the menu (ie hold the left button down while moving the mouse), and its fairly easy to make the wrong choice until you get used to how this works. Fortunately, I was able to navigate these menu’s easily with my media center remotes, and intuitively.
Some HD-DVD’s allow you to save bookmarks by pressing the “B” button on the remote. (A,B,C and D buttons are included on the remotes for HD-DVD players). Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to find a way to do that with the media center remote hooked to my PC. You also can't use PowerDVD Ultra to take "screen captures" of HD-DVD scenes (digital rights management), like you can with standard DVD's.
One other minor issue I noted was that PowerDVD Ultra didn’t handle the audio on “picture in picture” special features when using the digital audio spdif output. Some HD-DVD’s offer special features that play in a small window, providing commentary while a movie is playing. I wasn’t able to hear the audio on these features until I changed PowerDVD’s audio output from SPDIF to one of the analog options.
Summary
PowerDVD is a stable, configurable, software DVD player that handles HD DVD playback smoothly on systems that that meet the (fairly high) system requirements. It works with Vista and Windows XP. It was the first commercially available HD/Blu-ray software DVD player. CyberLink has already issued patches to address minor bugs, and you can expect CyberLink to keep improving PowerDVD Ultra as new hardware and new titles become available. I wish PowerDVD Ultra handled all the interactive features a little more intuitively, but at least they work on the discs I’ve played, King Kong, Serenity, and The Thing. No interactive features were available on the HD DVD version of Letters from Iwo Jima, although the main content and the extras were very good and look great in high definition. Letters from Iwo Jima is the first disk I've seen with both standard and HD versions of the movie on one disk.
References:
HD DVD and Blu-ray FAQ’s.
http://www.emedialive.com/articles/readarticle.aspx?articleid=11424
http://www.emedialive.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=11629
Cyberlink Advisor:
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/support/bdhd_support/diagnosis.jsp
Recommended:
Yes
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