Summary:
Essential for those who want to watch a DVD or Blu-ray on his Windows PC, even though many other video players can play other video formats for free (and Windows includes the DVD from Vista), PowerDVD continues to evolve as its competitor WinDVD with the release of version 9. On the agenda: the upscaling of DVDs for optimized playback on HD screen, a new full screen interface to control the software with a remote control, a navigation style "CoverFlow" for the chapters, or integration with Windows Media Center ...
DVD playback on a PC is sometimes relegated to the radius "outdated" by some users. Just as we would do more for the idea to insert an audio CD into a computer other than to encode it to MP3, it is clear that the explosion of the capacity of external hard drives has limited interest for some to carry a stack of DVDs with her laptop. However, the reasons to prefer the physical media are still numerous: encode a movie in DiVX can be lengthy, the transaction needs to circumvent protection measures (both places his personal ethic where they wish, but you must know) and offers definitive and legal downloading of films are still poor. Moreover, more portable medium or high-end is equipped with a Blu-ray format now supported by software players like PowerDVD or WinDVD.
Reading in the lounge is also a problem to mention: besides the fact that a PC in the living room is not very elegant (even if there are boitiers Media Center for this purpose), there is often a gap between Software designed primarily for use in part to the mouse, nose on menus and configuration to use "fair." We will see that PowerDVD 9 offers several solutions for this ...
DVD read: improvements for HD
The main new feature in PowerDVD 9 on playing DVD's "classic" that has now upscaling technology, like the latest version of WinDVD. Democratization screen diagonal leads naturally a big problem: DVDs are increasingly blurred, as proposed in a resolution much lower resolutions to HD Ready or Full HD (720x576 PAL) to view a DVD on a screen 1080p, and we must "enlarge" the image around 5 times. To overcome this problem, we can apply treatments that accentuate the details of the image. It is this which is offered by the Playstation 3, Blu-ray plates, some TVs or DVD some decks that support upscaling. There are also upscaling technology in some video players like Media Player Classic.
PowerDVD 9 proposes three options for improving the image of the DVD to HD screens, meeting under the name TrueTheater. The first TrueTheater HD improves image sharpness in a very sensitive issue. Since the original material, it will obviously not possible to convert a DVD movie in high definition, "native". However, the image produced by the effect is rather satisfactory, and corrects the image significantly. However, if the effect is convincing for viewing at a reasonable distance from the screen, its use in the context of a reading on a laptop can have an effect against productive, then the image appears to be too noisy and aggressive. Two other settings are offered: TrueTheater Motion improves the fluidity of the DVD by passing the flow to 48 or 60 frames per second, and TrueTheater Lighting which enhances contrast. If TrueTheater Lighting also provides a real benefit, we had a little more difficult to determine the contribution of TrueTheater Motion, even if the effect is still significant.
The software can automatically adjust the settings, but the level of adjustment applied we felt a little timid in our tests. We prefer to fix it manually, especially as PowerDVD offers two modes for this display screen split in two. The first displays the left part of the scene without the effects TrueTheater and with the right effects. The second shows the same part of the image, with and without the effects. In both cases, the display is very useful to fine-tune the effects according to their preferences.
Playing Blu-ray: little improvement
If playback of DVD boasts significant improvements on the new Blu-ray are more rare. However, PowerDVD 9 now supports the HDMI 1.3 standard. The functionality of course require compatible equipment. Cyberlink announces improved performance in the reading of Blu-ray configurations on "average", a point that it is difficult to verify as the term "average configuration" is blurred. Our test configuration is equipped with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz, 2 GB of RAM and a graphics card ATI Radeon HD 2600 and the reading is carried out smoothly. We note however that playing a Blu-ray disables the Aero interface. More annoying: on the final version that was provided for the test (9.1510), we found many instabilities when playing Blu-ray, the software will often block the loading of a disc. As regards the compatibility of Blu-ray, no novelty is noted but the management is complete, including the reading of BD-R and BD-RE as well as standard bonus Bonus View and BD Live.
It points out that since version 8, PowerDVD will not play HD-DVD. It is obvious that Cyberlink has no interest in continuing support for a format dead and buried, but you may think that compatibility remains: after all, it is still possible to play Video CD on n ' what is platinum, while this format has been a monumental flop. Even if he has ever drilled, the HD-DVD has still lasted long enough for a large number of titles are published. Unless you have a platinum lounge, they will be doomed to dust. Moreover, the incompatibility of the latter is not very clear: the inclusion of a HD-DVD, PowerDVD 9 seems to recognize at first, although he refuses to read ... We'll see if the next version of WinDVD also abandons the format. In terms of file formats supported, because Power DVD can also play formats dematerialized, the software always reads files H264, WMV-HD, MPEG2-HD, and VC1. DVDs in the AVCHD format is also compatible.
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