Articles - > WinDVD Review

Title:	WinDVD Review
Description:	A comprehensive review of Intervideo/Corel WinDVD, one of the world's most popular DVD player software
Author/Publisher:	Digital Digest
Ease of use:	Beginners
Software Used:	WinDVD
Page Viewed:	289135 times

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muchfedup: I upgraded last year from preinstalled...
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Page 2 of 4: What's new in WinDVD 9

Click here to read the official WinDVD 9's version comparison page.

This page tries to list all the significant new features of WinDVD 9 (as compared to WinDVD 8.0) - the actual review of WinDVD is on the next page.
Index :

New Product Versions
New Video Features
New Audio Features
New Interface Features
Other Features

New Product Versions

WinDVD is now available in 3 versions: Standard, Plus and "Plus Blu-ray" (which also includes HD DVD playback). The features listed in bold are new to WinDVD 9.

The Plus version adds the following to the Standard version:

All2HD - SD DVD to HD upscaling
AVCHD support
H.264 and VC-1 decoding support
Dolby Digital EX decoding
Dolby Prologic IIX processing
DTS Neo 6 support
DTS 96K/24bit decoding
DTS 6ch decoding

WinDVD "Plus Blu-ray" then adds these following additional features on top of WinDVD Plus:

HD DVD playback
Blu-ray playback
Blu-ray "BonusView" Profile 1.1 compatibility
Dolby Digital Plus 2ch
Dolby Digital Plus multi-channel
Dolby TrueHD 2ch
Dolby TrueHD multi-channel
DTS-HD 2ch
DTS-HD multi-channel

New Video Features

The most obvious new video feature of WinDVD 9 is the "All2HD" mode. This is basically a DVD upscaling engine that upscales DVD to HD resolutions with some processing thrown in the make everything look better. The review on the next page will examine this feature in more detail, including frame by frame comparisons.

For even lower resolution video, there are the new "de-block" and "de-snow" filters to improve picture quality.

AVCHD is now supported as well in the Plus versions of WinDVD. AVCHD is a format based on Blu-ray that allows MPEG-4 AVC audio and PCM or AC3 audio, and for DVD to be used as storage. Some HD camcorders also use this format for video storage.

And of course, in the "Plus-Blu-ray" version of WinDVD, both Blu-ray and HD DVD playback are supported, with full interactivity up to Blu-ray Profile 1.1 standards. More about the high bitrate audio support that both of these formats use below.

New Audio Features

The Plus version now includes DTS Neo:6. Neo:6 is a matrixed sound technology, which basically means it can artificially turn mono or stereo audio into multi-channel audio. Also new in the Plus version is DTS 96K/24bit decoding.

The rest of the new audio features are Blu-ray and HD DVD related. Support for both 2 channel and multi-channel Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD are present.

New Interface Features

The interface of WinDVD 9 has been given a complete overhaul. Below are some sample screenshots of the new interface:

Pressing the "Q" button or the icon at the top can introduce the "Show Viewing Area Only" mode, which removes the top (source, audio, video ...) and bottom playback controls to show only the title bar and the playback area.

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Article Navigation:

Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: What's new in WinDVD 9 <--
Page 3: Full Review of WinDVD 9
Page 4: WinDVD 9 Review Conclusions/Ratings

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User Comments:

I upgraded last year from preinstalled WinDVD 5 to WinDVD 7 Platinum on a brand new Toshiba Qosmio player W pro SP2 MCE. Wasn't too impressed as the program only starts when it wants. Sometimes ok, sometimes I get nothing at all on double click. Support never replied. This year, I decided to write over this failed install and upgraded to WinDVD 8 Platinum. The install process went fine, wrote over a perfectly fine, registered and up to date version of Quick Time. the installer then downloaded a newer(...) version of Windows installer, went through the install process and left me at the end with an error 1628 failed installation. I can see WinDVD 8 in c/program file but if i click on the exe file, it first sends me to a registration page, then asks me if i would like to take part into some kind of online survey and then I get a Windows error, would you like to send the file to Microsoft. I repeated the same full process several times emptying the temp file every time. No program icon has been created, no short cut in the start menu, no entry in the "add remove program". Arghhhhhhh. How do I get rid of it. I tried contacting support @ intervideo through their automated link and received an email bak: user unknown. I tried "sales" with the same result. Their agent in the UK doesn't answer the phone. I finally managed to send an email to "billing" and await a reply. I have lost a lot of time and money. No way to contact the company and my computer is now clustered with a useless program impossible to remove. Shame there is no 0 rating.

muchfedup: This support document from InstallShield might help your situation: http://consumer.installshield.com/kb.asp?id=Q108464

I am absolutely disappointed by WinDVD 8. As as producer of DVD-Audio disks, up to now I used and recommended to my customers older versions of Inter Video WinDVD to play DVD-Audio Disks. I recently tried to update to WinDVD 8 and was not anymore able to play DVD-A's, not even my own disks. Apparently this feature was deliberately omitted in Win DVD 8 without any notice to potential customers. Fortunately Cyberlink's PowerDVD and Creative's DVD-A Player still work with DVD-A's. Don't ever update programs if not absolutely necessary! Gregor Antes, www.laborantes.com

laboraudio: WinDVD 8 does not have DVD-Audio playback due to issues that relates to people using it to rip the DVD-Audio discs. Our review did not really cover DVD-Audio in extensive detail, but I will be sure to update it to reflect this in the future.

WinDVD9 is a big disappointment for me. It completely removed DSP playback of MP3's. Even the equalizer is disabled. WinDVD's digital signal processing of mp3's is unrivaled. This has been the best reason why I use WinDVD and Corel completely ripped it off! The other complete disappointment is that WinDVD9 is memory hungry. It will drain most of your computer resources if you run it on an old system. It will keep crashing if you force it to play something and poke around the settings. I'm reinstalling back WinDVD7, the most stable so far.