Blu-Ray PC Software

[davmoo]

(I just posted this in my own journal, but since its HD related I'm going to copy it and vent here too. I will clean up the language, though :) )

It never ceases to amaze me how stupid some software companies can be.

I just put a Blu-Ray drive in my media PC. It came with an OEM copy of PowerDVD 7, but since its a couple of years and two versions behind its a load of crap. So I've been looking at other software.

The logical first choice to try was the current version, PowerDVD 9. It works okay and I could live with purchasing it. But they throw in a lot of fluff that I really don't need or want (online reviews and ratings when you pop in a disc, etc...I just want it to play the movie and get out of my way). It also has the annoying habit of automatically turning on subtitles on regular DVDs even when I've told it not to.

Then I thought I'd look at what appear to be the only two other packages that can play Blu-Ray...Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre and Corel WinDVD 9. So I looked at downloading trials of both.

Upon installing the trial of Arcsoft, it informs me that Dolby sound is disabled in the trial product. Duh! Since sound quality is a major point here, I immediately lost interest because I can't check the sound.

But at least they aren't as stupid and moronic as Corel. Not only do they make me set up an account just to download a trial, when I get to the actual download page it informs me that the trial version will not play Blu-Ray discs...you know, the discs that are the precise reason I'm looking at their software.

I could probably find pirate versions in "the usual places" to test them out. But folks, if your company is that blatantly effing stupid I'm not even going to waste my time to pirate your software to try it out.

It looks like next week after I get paid for a big job I'll be buying the current version of PowerDVD. At least their "full featured trial" really is a full featured trial.

[mic]

I just put a Blu-Ray drive in my media PC. It came with an OEM copy of PowerDVD 7, but since its a couple of years and two versions behind its a load of crap. So I've been looking at other software.

The logical first choice to try was the current version, PowerDVD 9. It works okay and I could live with purchasing it. But they throw in a lot of fluff that I really don't need or want (online reviews and ratings when you pop in a disc, etc...I just want it to play the movie and get out of my way). It also has the annoying habit of automatically turning on subtitles on regular DVDs even when I've told it not to.

I had a problem playing one DVD with PowerDVD 6. Thinking that possibly the problem was the older version (turns out it wasn't), I went with PowerDVD 9. Big mistake. At that time I wrote this:

The new CyberLink PowerDVD v9 is horrible. Not only has the GUI drastically changed, but due to the lack of available skins it's impossible to change it to something different. Certainly my old DVD player skin does not work. But the worst thing is this thing CyberLink calls "MoovieLive" and like the name implies, it's a cow. Not only that, but there is no way to turn the damn thing off. So, every time you start PowerDVD v9 to watch something, it wants to go on-line and download the "MoovieLive" interface. Yes, PowerDVD now has a useless built-in web browser.

Looking at the "MoovieLive" forum shows that not to many people are posting in them. One forum which has the most posts, has a total of 14 posts since 2008-04-05! Some have questioned CyberLink's decision to include this Mal-ware like feature that has no way to be disabled. Apparently complaints that dates back to PowerDVD v8 when it was first introduced. CyberLink appears to be good at listening to their customers, not.

Then there are the little things, like finding out after you have installed it that the path you picked wasn't good enough so it goes ahead and adds \PowerDVD9 to the end of the path. So you end up with \PowerDVD\PowerDVD9. Maybe you changed it to \PowerDVD because you didn't want the default \CyberLink parent directory. Well, to f-ing bad, because it still puts a \CyberLink directory in \Program Files irregardless. I had to un-install it just to install it in a directory that was close to what I had originally intended.

Did I mention version 9 installs a useless service? Yep, another service that isn't needed and has to be prevented from starting. Speaking of preventing from starting, it annoys you to death until you register or stop OLRStateCheck.exe and OLRSubmission.exe from running. And there are two other useless start-up programs that need to be prevented from starting. Including CLhelper.exe and Brc.exe (check spelling), which the latter is for Blu-ray. Don't have one, too f-ing bad because it's do damn lazy to check before running the damn thing every time.

When PowerDVD9.exe starts, it also starts PowerDVDCox.exe (make your own joke here). :D

Remember back when PowerDVD v6 was 28MB in size? Well, not any longer. PowerDVD v9 is 117MB and the patch to upgrade is 106 MBs! It's like they got nearly everything wrong in v9. Oh, and speaking of the patch, it causes the playback to stop working, regardless of the source material. There is much chatter in the CyberLink forums regarding this latest patch. Although, oddly the CyberLink employees seem to be silent. I wonder why? Maybe they are too busy gearing up to release the next mega-patch.

And like other bloated beyond their own good programs, PowerDVD v9 didn't un-install everything. Besides having to clean after the mess the cow left, it didn't even inform the user that a reboot was necessary until I looked in the reg/run area. And, even after rebooting the un-installer complained that it couldn't find the un-install information. No $hit, it was removed before the reboot.

There were leftover Registry entries, that I cleaned out. Orphaned install directory, that I deleted. Messed up associations, that I fixed. It was a good thing that I had created a Restore Point, which I ended up using.

All in all it was a bad experience that I hope I don't ever have to repeat. To bad, PowerDVD was a good player. Probably still is a good player if it didn't include all that junk. I'm sticking with PowerDVD v6, it has a small hoof print.

[davmoo]

Yeah, its all that MoovieLive crap that is really seriously majorly turning me off. Like I say, I just want to sit down and watch a movie, not write a novelization about it.

The other thing that turns me off on 9 is I noticed last night that if I pause a movie for a potty break, when I start it playing again it takes about 15 to 30 seconds for the video to stabilize and sync back up with the audio. That doesn't make for a very grand movie experience.

I loaded up the copy of PowerDVD 7 that came with the drive and am going to try that for a few days. It looks like my initial opinion was wrong and older may be better in this particular instance. I might decide that is sufficient for the time being. And it doesn't cost me any more money...in the words of Pat, I like that thought :D

[trilogy]

In the x86/cyberlink/powerdvd folder, find 2cMovie.dll, and rename it to 2cMovie.dll.old
That will get rid of MoovieLive.

[shamoun]

hi, i have tried all 3 solutions and ill give you the skinny.

Arcsoft total media theater 3. that's it, that's the best.

All 3 are way too bloated in my opinion, but arcsoft's solution is the least stupid looking. While every other application on the face of the earth is striving to achieve a native look and feel in all the operating systems that it runs in for some reason these 3 companies decided to create applications which look and feel completely out of place on the only platform it can run on. all of them take much longer to load and handle every type of media much more slowly than mpc-hc. in fact an unencrypted blu ray in a mkv can play back instantly and perfectly in mpc-hc. but enough with the ranting

WinDVD is the worst of the applications in that it makes no attempt to upscale dvds whatsoever, anyone who wants a solution for playing back dvds and blu rays will be very disappointed.

PowerDVD does DVD upscaling but it has its issues. In my experience PowerDVD loads discs faster than the other 2 applications, but only when it actually loads the disc. it would refuse to load many of my discs within a certain time frame after windows booted, after a few minutes it would usually load them, but the application would have to start and crash at least once before that happened. the splash screen with the girl's face is just... obnoxious. and some people (including myself) experience issues with the SPDIF audio dropping momentarilly every few minutes. and of course... moovielive, which is so stupid it has to be spelled with two os.

TMT 3 takes a while to load and the application is non responsive during these load times, but it will come around after a bit and it is not unbearable, about the load time a standalone player would take. it is the only one of these applications that can be trusted to work consistently and do what is expected..

[beaird]

Arcsoft total media theater 3. that's it, that's the best.

I too have tried both PowerDVD and Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 and can honestly say that TotalMedia beats PowerDVD hands down. It works with Media Center pretty seamlessly and even my WinTV media center remote control works with it.

[ghelyar]

Upon installing the trial of Arcsoft, it informs me that Dolby sound is disabled in the trial product. Duh! Since sound quality is a major point here, I immediately lost interest because I can't check the sound.

But at least they aren't as stupid and moronic as Corel. Not only do they make me set up an account just to download a trial, when I get to the actual download page it informs me that the trial version will not play Blu-Ray discs...you know, the discs that are the precise reason I'm looking at their software.

When will they get the idea that if a trial doesn't actually show you what you're interested in, you won't buy the full version?

I've had a trail before for something (a PIC programmer for my own hardware, so architecture is important) where they had a full featured 32 bit trial but refused to give a 64 bit trial at all, so I could not try it at all on any of my own machines. I used an alternate product then they twigged on 6 months later and sent me an email telling me the 64 bit trial is available, but I just told them it was too late to try selling it to me after that.