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Review
The DVD format is now unavoidable when it comes to watching videos; it would be unthinkable to turn back to the old school VHS format. With improved video and audio quality and many bonuses included on blockbuster DVDs, this format has become a new standard. The Taiwanese software developer, Cyberlink, has quickly understood this and has proposed to us the well known product PowerDVD. PowerDVD is software that playbacks DVDs on computers that are equipped with a DVD-Rom drive. With today’s powerful computers, hardware DVD decoders are totally useless and software like PowerDVD is definitely the ideal solution to watch DVDs on your PC.
When you launch the application the user interface will appear. Initially there is only a single style to choose (although many more are available for download), so easily accessible are all the various options.
A lot of thoughts has obviously gone into the ergonomic design of the interface, which to a degree resembles the front of a simple editing console, so that full control of your DVD viewing experience is literally at your fingertips. A nice touch is that it’s possible to use one of the many mousewheel configuration options to select how many seconds forward or back each rotation will take; very handy when watching a long movie on a disc without a plethora of chapter stops. If desired, the console can be minimized to leave just the playing options available but in ‘full’ mode all the relevant important information can be snatched at a glance. One particular facet of the good design is that the type of audio track on the disc being used and the PC’s current speaker configuration are displayed in the console. In this way, it’s not only easy to see that the correct speaker settings are employed for the disc in question but also, should the disc possess both, that the correct Dolby Digital 5.1 or DTS track according to the viewer’s preference has been selected.
If I had a criticism of PowerDVD XP 4.0, I would say that it does lack a little in bass reproduction as compared with rivals, in particular WinDVD. Bear in mind, that’s a big if. Choose to discount this and PowerDVD 4.0 inherently emerges as the leading solution for all the requirements of a home theatre PC and laptop users who don’t wish to scrimp on audio quality when they are traveling to work. |
- Very complete.
- Read many types of multimedia files.
- Good image and audio quality.
- Customizable skins.
- Intuitive.
- Easy controls.
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- Average bass reproduction.
- Isn't free.
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Reviewed by: Daniel Zambrano Reviewer rating:  |
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Screenshots
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