Archive: WinDVD Reviews
Original Page URL: http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/archive_windvd_review_page1.html
Author/Publisher: DVDGuy
Date Added: Mar 26, 2008
Date Updated: Nov 8, 2006
This is an archive of all reviews of Intervideo/Corel WinDVD. There is a separate page where you can read the latest review of WinDVD.
Please use the page select drop down menu above, or the article navigation links below to select an archive WinDVD review to read.
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
To see a complete review of the the latest version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
Finally, InterVideo has done away with the boring interface of it WinDVD 1.2.xx player, and has put in a futuristic design. The buttons are well laid out and the display is bright and clear. The setup properties diaglog boxes are still in the boring "grey" color scheme, but that doesn't really matter. The decoder seems to be a tad newer than the 1.2.99 version, but I couldn't find any changes.
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
To see a complete review of the the latest version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
- Zoom support has been added and in a way it is both superior and inferior to the implementation in PowerDVD. The zoom feature can be accessed by holding down the left mouse button and dragging an area around the screen in which you want to zoom to. To restore to the original size, you'll have to access WinDVD's main console, expand the console by pressing on the ">" button located just below the "power" button, and click on the "zoom" button. There is also a "pan" button located there to allow you to, again using the left mouse button, to pan the picture in any direction.
This zooming feature is superior to that of PowerDVD because it allows a variable zoom, meaning that you can eve zoom down to the smallest pixel, whereas PowerDVD only allows a certain level of zoom, controlled by a "zoom in" and "zoom out" command. It is also inferior because, unlike PowerDVD, there are no presets for zooming, meaning that if you want to watch a widescreen movie as a fullscreen one (as many often want to), then you'll have to drag out the area everytime you want to watch it. This feature also isn't documented very well, and as a result, many people are not aware of this new feature.
Both implementations by Intervideo and Cyberlink do not allow proper zooming of 16:9 enhanced DVDs that has the "keep aspect ratio" option turned on. The zoom will occur, but it will only occur within the bounds of the set letterbox area, not the full screen - this means that 16:9 enhanced titles will not be able to be zoomed to fullscreen, without destroying the aspect ratio (ie. everything appears tall).
- This feature should be familiar to those used to playing DVDs with PowerDVD. WinDVD 2000 v2.1 has added this feature, although again like the zoom feature above, it is almost undocumented - in fact, there isn't even a button on the console to do this. Instead, you'll have to press the "P" key during playback, and a .bmp file would be been written to your WinDVD\Capture directory. This implementation is definetely inferior to that of PowerDVD because PowerDVD also allows you to select where you want the capture to go to (eg. to clipboard, to a file, or even use the capture as your Windows background picture).
Both PowerDVD and WinDVD's capture implementation capture to the default resolution of the DVD, not the desktop.
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
To see a complete review of the the latest version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
- Finally, ATI Rage128 IDCT/HWMC DVD acceleration has been added to a product that is not based on the Cinemaster decoder. The people at Ravisent are probably not going to be very happy at this, but this has finally meant that ATI Rage 128 owners finally have some choice in terms of which DVD player they can use to have full acceleration.
- Speaking of graphics adapter support, Intervideo has now tweaked it's NVIDIA support somewhat. First of all, there is now support for NV15, or better known as the GeForce2 GTS. Also added is multi-monitor support for the NV10, otherwise known as the GeForce256. WinDVD is fastly turning into a "NVIDIA enhanced" player, much like how Cinemaster is a "Cinemaster enhanced" player.
- There are quite a few important bug fixes, which has been addressed in this release :
* The infamous The Matrix "white rabbit" pausing problem has now been fixed.
* Pink line at bottom of display with NVIDIA chipset at 256 color - this has been fixed.
* Disabled registration of the MPEG-1 video support - in other words, stop WinDVD
screwing up your MPEG playback (eg. with Windows Media Player)
- Not really related to WinDVD 2000 2.2, but Intervideo has released a few skins (at least on their Taiwanese site), below is the "WinDVD Pro" skin - follow the link below to download some more skins.
WinDVD Pro skin - download more here
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
To see a complete review of the the latest version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
To see a complete review of the this version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
This is very much a service release (that's why it is also available as a free upgrade for owners of the retail version), so we'll basically just list all of the changes below :
* Added WinCinema skin
* HTML Help file is now available in 24 languages
* Added mouse pointer function
* Interlace mode with nVIDIA chips has been improved
* Added hotkeys for:
o: Open Properties page
u: Unzoom
k: Bookmark
* Improved protection of SPDIF mode changing
* Applied the tearing fix on NT4.0 for different graphics card (detect graphics card)
* Added bookmark to the menu
* Improved performance with extended play
* Supported mixed video packets and audio packets in a pack (iCompression)
* WinDVD supports SVCD.
* Slider (seek) no longer hangs, freezes, or jumps back
* Mute no longer produces clicking sound when switching chapters
* On NVDIA GEFORCE 2GTS, frame no longer drops
* Eliminated bug that caused some chapters on DVDs with subtitles to crash after looping
* Eliminated pausing bug in DVD, "The Matrix" (all regions)
* Fast Forward no longer causes crash on Windows NT when playing audio CD
* Fixed mixed mode CD playback.
"WinDVD Plus" skin included with WinDVD 2000 v2.3 - download other skins here
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
This decoder is still less efficient than Cyberlink PowerDVD 3.0's decoder, although WinDVD makes up for it in greater quality visuals and audio and this performance/efficiency gap is getting smaller with every release of WinDVD. With the 2.1 version, CPU usage on my slow Celeron 333a test system was always at 100% during playback, and any action on my behalf (like righ-clicking to bring out the menu) would mean serious skipping of the picture - the 2.0 version didn't seem to be this bad - and now in version 2.3, the situation seems to have been fixed, and CPU usage is back down to around 90%, similar to PowerDVD's 85%.
Video quality is extremely high and I would say the best so far, although PowerDVD isn't far behind. Of course, this is dependent on your graphics card and settings, rather than directly on the Video decoder. Some people might actually experience better quality on PowerDVD, but most should be able to get the highest quality from WinDVD (at the expense of performance, of course). WinDVD does seem to be less blurry than PowerDVD in full screen mode, which is related to scaling and how each software DVD player implements it.
The graphics acceleration supported has not been documented, so it isn't easy to say which card is supported. I would expect most forms of Motion Compensation and some forms of iDCT are supported, along the lines of PowerDVD. Version 2.2 added iDCT support for ATI cards, which is not yet present in PowerDVD.
Audio volume is better than that of PowerDVD, although not by much now since PowerDVD 3.0 has been relased with a new audio decoder, and LFE decoding is supported, meaning better bass if your speaker can handle it. Unfortunately, not as many sound card models are supported (for 4/6 speaker and Digital audio output) compared to PowerDVD, but it is getting better, as the new version adds quite a few more cards that are compatible with it. From the current Intervideo FAQs, not as many 6 channel sound cards are supported as in PowerDVD 3.0, but this could just mean that the FAQ hasn't been updated.
WinDVD supports both closed captions and subtitles - subtitles can also be displayed at the same time as closed captions. Closed captions are available as white text on black background, which enhances visibilty (PowerDVD 3.0 implements closed captions as white text with a transparent background, which isn't as clear).
Still frame capture allows a user to capture a single frame of the movie, which cannot be achieved with the usual "Print-screen" key, as DVD players use a special overlay which cannot be captured normally. WinDVD's capture support is pretty limited - basically it will capture into a BMP file into the "capture" directory under WinDVD's installed directory once you press the capture hotkey or button. Unlike PowerDVD's implementation, you do not have the ability to capture to clipboard, instead of a file, nor do you have the ability to specify a location to store the captured file.
Zoom support has been added in version 2.1 and in a way it is both superior and inferior to the implementation in PowerDVD. The zoom feature can be accessed by holding down the left mouse button and dragging an area around the screen in which you want to zoom to. To restore to the original size, you'll have to access WinDVD's main console, expand the console by pressing on the ">" button located just below the "power" button, and click on the "zoom" button. There is also a "pan" button located there to allow you to, again using the left mouse button, to pan the picture in any direction.
Personally, I believe PowerDVD's interface is much more friendlier than that of WinDVD. The buttons on the WinDVD console are small, and not easy to use, especially the 3x5 pixel slider button, which is very hard to see/control for those using high resolutions or with notebook type display screen. The different skins does add a little bit of user friendliness, but still lacks easy access to the frequently used functions - whereas PowerDVD skins tend to be too big, WinDVD skins tend to be too small. The "extended control panel" ("WinDVD Plus" skin's control panel shown above) is a comfortable size, but too many of the important functions are in this hidden (by default) extended control panel, and not on the main console it self, which can be confusing to new users.
Intervideo seems to have tweaked the decoder somewhat, and at first, it refused to function properly on my test system. This was quickly fixed by tweaking my graphics card's DirectX settings - so the problem has to lie partly, if not fully, with my graphics card's drivers - this was not an issue with the previous version of WinDVD. When I first installed this software over an older version, and did not do the recommended "reinstall", the player crashed on me, which only a hard reset would fix - my bad =)
PowerDVD has it's I-Power internet support, which allows your main PowerDVD screen to be turned into an HTML browser using the IE engine. The web-support feature of WinDVD is not as sophisticated, and basically puts a button on the main control panel to allow you to access some internet short-cuts (by opening a new IE window). If you were familiar with HTML, you can in fact alter the default I-Power screen for PowerDVD, where as here, you cannot alter the default short-cuts. PowerDVD wins out here. Personally, I don't really see why DVD players should have internet support, especially the half-assed effort shown here by Intervideo - I would have preferred they exchanged that button with a button for still capture - it would have been much more useful.
WinDVD is supported under a wide range of Windows version, including 98, Me and 2000, as well as NT 4.0. Because of the limitations of driver/multimedia support under NT/2000, not all of the enhanced features (like acceleration support) will be available. For a full list of the limitations, please refer to Intervideo's Operating Systems FAQ
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
To see a complete review of the the latest version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
To see a complete review of the this version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
Some of the highlights:
Short on time, but want
to finish that movie tonight? Use Time Stretching to play a 2 hour movie
in 1.5 hours!
You can adjust the playback speed from half-speed to double-speed while maintaining
natural audio quality.
Mark your favorite scenes
by creating your own bookmarks.
Thumbnail previews make it easy to select exactly what you want to watch.
And your bookmarks are remembered for each DVD, so they will be there next
time you watch the movie.
Previously available in
the WinDVD 2000M version, full 5.1 Dolby Digital decoding is now standard.
Delivering incredible sound with 5.1 channel systems, advanced audio processing
also provides optimum sound with 4-channel gaming speakers and 3D enhancements
for 2-channel systems
In addition to Dolby Digital
5.1 decoding for multi-channel speaker system, WinDVD 3.0 adds Dolby Headphone surround. Using a sophisticated
model of the way human hearing determines direction, Dolby Headphone
combines the 5.1 surround signals to create an amazingly vivid surround environment
on headphones. It's ideal for private listening - at home or on the road.
Regarded by many as the
best-sounding movie surround format, DTS sound tracks are available on many DVD titles.
Enjoy the difference with the advanced audio decoding capabilities of WinDVD-DTS.
You can even play back DTS-encoded, multi-channel CDs!
Whether you are learning
another language or just have a multi-lingual audience for your movies, this
new feature lets you show up to 4 different subtitles simultaneously (limited
by the number of subtitles on the DVD).
In addition to DVD-Video,
VCD, SVCD and CD Audio, WinDVD 3.0 plays back the new VR (Video Recording)
format for DVD-RW and DVD-RAM media. The VR format is being used by major
Consumer Electronics manufacturers for their next generation of set-top recorders
and camcorders.
WinDVD 3.0 is fully compatible
with the up-coming Windows XP operating system, and takes advantage of the
new DXVA video acceleration architecture for the best performance and compatibility
available.
If you like, WinDVD can
automatically check for updates and maintenance releases on web-connected
machines. Any updates made available by InterVideo can be automatically
installed for you. Staying up-to-date has never been easier!
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
With modern CPU, the efficiency of the decoder is becoming less of a problem. On 1000 MHz systems, there is almost no difference between WinDVD 3.0 and Cyberlink PowerDVD 3.0's decoder, however, on lower end systems, PowerDVD still comes out ahead efficiency wise. WinDVD does makes up for it's greater CPU usage in greater quality visuals, especially picture sharpness - but this will greatly depend on your graphics hardware, as each decode is optimized for different types of graphics card.
Video quality is extremely high and I would say the best so far, although PowerDVD isn't far behind. Of course, this is dependent on your graphics card and settings, rather than directly on the Video decoder. Some people might actually experience better quality on PowerDVD, but most should be able to get the highest quality from WinDVD (at the expense of performance, of course). WinDVD does seem to be less blurry than PowerDVD in full screen mode, which is related to scaling and how each software DVD player implements it. Contrast also seems to be better in WinDVD.
The graphics acceleration supported has not been documented, so it isn't easy to say which card is supported. I would expect most forms of Motion Compensation and some forms of iDCT are supported, along the lines of PowerDVD. Version 2.2 added iDCT support for ATI cards, which is not yet present in PowerDVD.
Audio volume is better than that of PowerDVD, although not by much now since PowerDVD 3.0 has been relased with a new audio decoder, and LFE decoding is supported, meaning better bass if your speaker can handle it. Unfortunately, not as many sound card models are supported (for 4/6 speaker and Digital audio output) compared to PowerDVD, but it is getting better, as the new version adds quite a few more cards that are compatible with it. From the current Intervideo FAQs, not as many 6 channel sound cards are supported as in PowerDVD 3.0, but this could just mean that the FAQ hasn't been updated.
WinDVD now also has a DTS version that adds DTS decoding - this means you can actually now hear your DTS CD/DVDs on your computer. No other software DVD player, to date, has this support yet.
WinDVD supports both closed captions and subtitles - subtitles can also be displayed at the same time as closed captions. Closed captions are available as white text on black background, which enhances visibilty (PowerDVD 3.0 implements closed captions as white text with a transparent background, which isn't as clear).
WinDVD 3.0 now also adds multiple subtitle support (4 subtitles to be exactly, double that of PowerDVD 3.0 - although only a few people would really need to have 4 subtitles on screen at a time).
Still frame capture allows a user to capture a single frame of the movie, which cannot be achieved with the usual "Print-screen" key, as DVD players use a special overlay which cannot be captured normally. WinDVD's capture support is pretty limited - basically it will capture into a BMP file into the "capture" directory under WinDVD's installed directory once you press the capture hotkey or button. Unlike PowerDVD's implementation, you do not have the ability to capture to clipboard, instead of a file, nor do you have the ability to specify a location to store the captured file. There hasn't been any change to the capture feature in WinDVD 3.0, which is a shame, since this is one area that PowerDVD 3.0 still has the winning edge.
Zoom support has been added in version 2.1 and in a way it is both superior and inferior to the implementation in PowerDVD. The zoom feature can be accessed by holding down the left mouse button and dragging an area around the screen in which you want to zoom to. WinDVD 3.0 has now added a zooming option in the right-click menu, so now you can easily un-zoom without opening up the main console.
A popular feature is to convert widescreen movies into full screen ones, and WinDVD 3.0 has sort of added such support, again, accessible by using the right-click menu (under the "display" sub-section). With 2.35:1 non-anamorphic DVDs, I could drag out a square area and zoom into this area, and use the "pan" function (only available on main console), to drag it around to "emulate" PowerDVD 3.0's widescreen->fullscreen function. However, with 2.35:1 anamorphic DVDs, I was not able to drag out a square area unless I turned off the "keep aspect ratio" option - if I do this and zoom, the picture will fill the whole screen, but the aspect ratio will be wrong (ie. objects appear to be too tall). If I turn on "keep aspect ratio", I can only zoom to a widescreen area (holding the "shift" key would mean that I can drag any area, but the aspect ratio may be wrong), not full screen. To WinDVD's credit, they have included a "pan & scan" preset, which does the "zooming" for you (no dragging needed), but again, I could not get a full screen video from a 2.35:1 DVD. With 1.85:1 DVDs, however, I was able to get a full screen video by using the "pan & scan" option, just like in PowerDVD.
So to sum up in WinDVD 3.0, non-anamorphic DVDs require you hand-drag the area to zoom into (the "pan & scan" option does not work). With 2.35:1 anamorphic DVDs, you can use the "pan & scan" option to zoom in, but it won't be full screen. Only 1.85:1 anamorphic DVDs will zoom in completely to a full screen title (with the "pan & scan" option). With PowerDVD 3.0, however, all 3 kinds of titles are able to be zoomed to full screen with the built in "pan & scan" option. Panning is also more difficult in WinDVD, as you'll need to access the main console to do it (whereas in PowerDVD, you just drag the screen around with the mouse), but then again, WinDVD does offer you the option to zoom into any area you want (no matter how small the area is), but PowerDVD limits you to only a few pre-selected zooming options (eg. 4x, 9x). It seems that some work still needs to be done in WinDVD, in order to get the zooming feature to work flawlessly.
Not much has changed from the previous major version of WinDVD, but there has been a few small tweaks that have helped. First of all, the playlist gets a much needed work over. The previous playlist would always try to access my floppy drive everytime I opened it, but the new one does not. The old one also required you to select between "file" and "disc" mode but defaults at the "disc" selection, which was quite annoying (since most people use playlists to open "files", not "discs") - the new playlist now by default selects "file" mode. Networked drives are also now easy to access within WinDVD. Overall, I like the new playlist very much.
Personally, I believe PowerDVD's interface is much more friendlier than that of WinDVD, but that may be because I use PowerDVD more often than WinDVD. The buttons on the WinDVD console are not as small as before, and the slider button, is now more visible and easier to control. The different skins does add a little bit of user friendliness, but still lacks easy access to the frequently used functions - whereas PowerDVD skins tend to be too big, WinDVD skins tend to be too small. The "extended control panel" ("WinDVD Plus" skin's control panel shown above) is a comfortable size, but too many of the important functions are in this hidden (by default) extended control panel (eg. panning, capture - but zooming support has definetely improved, as mentioned earlier), and not on the main console it self, which can be confusing to new users.
Changing skins is also not easy to beginners, since it is not in the WinDVD Configuration/Properties area (you'll have to right click on the main WinDVD console to select skins). Overall, I found the WinDVD Ex skin to be the most comfortable, and the user friendliness of WinDVD 3.0 better than previous versions.
There was no problem installing and running WinDVD 3.0. WinDVD is now also compatible with DirectX Video Acceleration Application Programmers Interface (Dx VA), which means that it will be compatible with Windows XP, when it is eventually released. This is not new, however, as PowerDVD is the first DVD player to have received Microsoft WHQL Certification for DirectX VA. But it does mean that even before Windows XP is released, we are already guaranteed two very competent DVD players. WinDVD 3.0 also plays back the new VR (Video Recording) format for DVD-RW and DVD-RAM media. The VR format is being used by major Consumer Electronics manufacturers for their next generation of set-top recorders and camcorders.
PowerDVD has it's I-Power internet support, which allows your main PowerDVD screen to be turned into an HTML browser using the IE engine. The web-support feature of WinDVD is not as sophisticated, and basically puts a button on the main control panel to allow you to access some internet short-cuts (by opening a new IE window). If you were familiar with HTML, you can in fact alter the default I-Power screen for PowerDVD, where as here, you cannot alter the default short-cuts. PowerDVD wins out here. Personally, I don't really see why DVD players should have internet support, especially the half-assed effort shown here by Intervideo - I would have preferred they exchanged that button with a button for still capture - it would have been much more useful.
WinDVD is supported under a wide range of Windows version, including 98, Me, 2000, XP, as well as NT 4.0. Because of the limitations of driver/multimedia support under NT/2000, not all of the enhanced features (like acceleration support) will be available.
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
Click here to read the official WinDVD 4 What's New page.
This page tries to list all the significant new features of WinDVD 4 - if you want to see a complete review of the latest version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
Index :
There are 2 major versions of WinDVD, just like with WinDVD 3.0, a standard version and a Plus version that has all the extras such as Dolby Pro Logic II, Dolby EX, DTS ES matrix support, and some additional gamma/color adjustments.
WinDVD 3.0 was first to introduce DTS decoding, and WinDVD 4 Plus retains this quite useful feature. PowerDVD 4.0 also introduced Dolby EX and DTS ES, as well as Dolby Pro Logic II support, and so it is no surprise that WinDVD 4 Plus also features support for all of these audio formats.
2/4/5.1/6.1 and even 7.1 audio is now supported, for those lucky enough to have the required soundcard and all those speakers.
Dolby Pro-Logic II decoding has been added, which allows you to enjoy multi-channel audio from a standard 2-channel track.
The reverse is also true in that the new SRS TruSurround XT support means that multi-channel audio tracks can be outputed through 2 speakers, and the surround sound "simulated" by using audio effects (by tricking your brain into thinking the sound is coming from all sides - similar to what Dolby Headphone does with stereo headphones). There is also SRS "Dialog Clarity" and "TruBass", which improves the diaglog clarity, and increases overall bass. There is even a "speaker size" option, which allows you to set how powerful your speakers are and how much bass WinDVD should send to them (otherwise, it will probably go to your subwoofer, if you have one).
Last, but not least, there are a whole range of Audio Effects like ones normally found on home theatre receivers, such as "Hall", "Soft", "Echo" ... there are also environmental effects such as "Theatre" and "Late Night". There are also karaoke settings, such as pitch control, found on many karaoke enabled standalone DVD players.
WinDVD's video decoder is known to be the best quality, so any improvement here would be a bonus. I could not find any changes from the previous version, which is not a bad thing considering the previous version has very good video quality.
What is new, however, is the host of brightness/contrast/color adjustments, which has been simplified somewhat from previous versions. The Plus version of WinDVD also has GAMMA correction.
The video capturing functions in previous version of WinDVD was a major dissapointment, but WinDVD has done the exact opposite here and made video capture one of the highlights of this new version. There is now a dedicated "Capturing Browser", which allows you to capture multiple frames and preview/delete/save them here with ease.
There is also a similar "Bookmark Browser", which allows you to bookmark certain scenes and come back to them at later time.
Following PowerDVD 4's lead in bringing ripped DVD playback support (play ripped DVDs off your hard-drive), WinDVD 4 has added the same function in its "DVD From Folder" function.
There is also a new mode called "PAL TruSpeed", which as the name suggests, plays back PAL DVDs at their true speed, rather than the slightly off speed in most software DVD players. The actual difference is quite small, so most of you would not have noticed it if I didn't mention it.
Last, but not least, is the new "Video Window" options, which includes the much needed "Always On Top" feature, and the new "Video Desktop" feature. "Video Desktop" actually allows you to playback the DVD as the background image of your Windows desktop.
The skin has been changed for WinDVD 4, although this appears to be done due to functional changes, rather than just a cosmetic change.
Subpanels have been introduced to control the most frequently accessed functions. The system setup/configuration section has also been changed, but most other features remain similar to the previous version.
All Windows versions, except for Windows 95, are supported by this WinDVD version.
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
Below is a review for the latest version of WinDVD.
Below is the specs for the test system used :
Pentium-III 1000
512 MB PC-133 CAS-2 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce2 Ultra
SB-Live Platinum 5.1
Pioneer A05 16X DVD-ROM drive
Windows 98 SE
WinDVD 4 Plus
Index :
Video quality remains high, just like the previous version of WinDVD. Of course, this is dependent on your graphics card and settings, rather than directly on the Video decoder. Some people might actually experience better quality on PowerDVD, but most should be able to get the highest quality from WinDVD (at the expense of performance, of course). WinDVD does seem to be less blurry than PowerDVD in full screen mode, which is related to scaling and how each software DVD player implements it. Contrast also seems to be better in WinDVD.
A+
A+
With modern CPU, the efficiency of the decoder is becoming less of a problem. On 1000 MHz systems, there is almost no difference between WinDVD 4 and Cyberlink PowerDVD 4.0's decoder, however, on lower end systems, PowerDVD still comes out ahead efficiency wise. WinDVD does makes up for it's greater CPU usage in greater quality visuals, especially picture sharpness - but this will greatly depend on your graphics hardware, as each decode is optimized for different types of graphics card.
A
A
The graphics acceleration support documentation has not been updated (eg. it does not include GeForce4), so it isn't easy to say which card is supported. I would expect most forms of Motion Compensation and some forms of iDCT are supported, along the lines of PowerDVD.
"Always on top" mode has been added, which was one of those options a lot of people requested. There is also the new and exciting "Video Desktop" mode, which allows you to playback the DVD as the background image of your Windows desktop - so for those who have called for animated Windows desktop backgrounds, your wish has (sort of) come true. "Video Desktop" may not be very practical (if you have multiple windows open, your desktop is most likely blocked out), but at the very least it makes an interesting screensaver/desktop background.
As previously mentioned in the What's New page, there is also a new playback mode called "PAL TruSpeed", which plays back PAL DVDs at their right speed. When NTSC (US) movies are transferred from film to PAL DVDs, the playback speed will actually be 4% faster than normal (NTSC 30 FPS converted to 24 FPS using 3/2 pulldown, and this 24 FPS movie is played back at 25 FPS - hence the 4% speed increase).
A similar feature that was previously available in WinDVD 3.0 is time stretching playback, which allows you to playback a movie either faster or slower, but with the audio's pitch unchanged (just the playback speed) - you'll have to see it to believe it, but it works quite well.
Gamma correction and color adjustments are only available in WinDVD 4 Plus.
B+
A
(updated 9 December 2002)
Audio quality has been improved with the addition of SRS "Dialog Clarity" and "TruBass" processing. 4, 6 and now 8 channels of audio are supported, although one 8 channel card is supported (also because there aren't that many 8 channels cards on the market yet). Most Creative sound cards, which are still the most popular consumer level sound cards, are supported.
There are also DSP effects, which are like the type of effects you get on home theatre amp/receivers (eg. Hall, Soft, Echo). There are also environment processing options, such as the late night mode, also a favorite of home theatre amp/receivers.
Karaoke features are also included for karaoke-fans, with pitch control, as well as the standard vocal options - a lot of standalone DVD players that have karaoke functions have these features as well.
To compare with PowerDVD, both player's audio support are about equal, while WinDVD just slightly edges PowerDVD in terms of audio quality.
There does appear to be a bug, in that my Soundblaster Live 5.1 Platinum card was only recognised as a "2 channel DirectSound device", and so I could not select 4/6 channel audio (which should be supported). Hopefully, this bug may be just isolated to my system, and hopefully, it will be ironed out soon in a patch.
6 June Update : After talking with Intervideo's tech-support gurus, I have determined the reason why 4/6/8 speaker audio was not selected. In order to select 4/6/8 speaker audio, your Windows audio setting must be set correctly to the required number of speakers, otherwise WinDVD will prevent you from selecting the proper audio mode. WinDVD actually checks your Windows system speaker settings to determine which output mode it should allow you to select, as opposed to PowerDVD giving you all available options, regardless of whether your sound card supports it or not.
To make sure your speakers are setup properly in Windows (note that different versions of Windows may have slightly different instructions/names for the settings below) :
- Go to the Windows Control Panel
- Access "Multimedia" or "Sound and Multimedia"
- Select the "Audio Tab"
- Click on the "Advanced" or "Advanced Properties" button for audio playback
- In the "Speaker Setup" section, select the number of speakers that matches your system (eg. under Windows 98, "Quadraphonic Speakers" equals 4 channel audio, whereas "Surround Sound Speakers" equals 5.1 channel audio)
- Make sure your sound card's setup is also properly configured (eg. if you have SB-Live, you should use the "Surround Mixer" application to ensure 4/5.1 channel audio is selected)
3 June Update : I've been informed by Intervideo that the build of WinDVD that I tested is not the same as the retail build, and so it should not have the same problems as I experienced. I am currently in the process of obtaining the retail build for further testing.
1 June Update : You can enable 4/6/8 speaker audio using the third party WinDVD Tweaker tool. I find disabling the DirectSound options (see top part of picture below) helps.
A+
B
A+
A
(updated 9 December 2002)
Both subtitles and captions are supported here, although interestingly, it isn't as full featured as WinDVD 3.0. Only one set of subtitle/captions are supported at a time (WinDVD 3.0 could display up to four different subtitles at the same time), as opposed to the two different subtitles that PowerDVD can display at the same time. Granted, having multiple subtitles on screen is pretty useless for most situations, although it is odd to remove a feature that was already present, even if it is not that useful.
Closed captions are available as white text on black background, which enhances visibilty (PowerDVD implements closed captions as white text with a transparent background, which isn't as clear).
Neither PowerDVD nor WinDVD allows you to change the position of the subtitle/captions, which if possible, would be a good feature to consider for the future.
B+
B+
There is now a dedicated "Capturing Browser", which allows you to capture multiple frames and preview/delete/save them here with ease. It's one of those "why didn't I think of it" features that just make life a whole lot easier (if your life revolved around capturing still frames from DVDs, that is).
Video capturing has always been one of WinDVD's weakpoints, but this is no longer, as I believe the "Capture Browser" is better than how PowerDVD manages still captures.
A
A
(updated 9 December 2002)
As mentioned before, WinDVD 4's interface has been completely re-designed, apparently from the ground up.
The first thing you notice is the new skin, which I am glad to say, is quite well designed with clear and large buttons, as well as a large numerical display.
WinDVD 4 also introduces the subpanel. There are a total of seven different subpanels, offering functions ranging from the standard navigation (select up/down left/right, titles, chapters ...) to language selection (audio/subtitle), and quite a few audio subpanels. I quite like subpanels, since it allows you to get to important functions quickly and easily, as opposed to navigating page after page of configuration panels, or menu options.
WinDVD 4 has also simplified it's single file opening feature, which is now separated to the "Open File..." option, as opposed to going through the playlist all the time.
A
A
(updated 9 December 2002)
WinDVD supports all Windows versions, although functionality depends much on your video/audio drivers.
A+
A+
Zooming in WinDVD 4 seems to have gone a little backwards compared to WinDVD 3.0. You are limited to zooming into a fixed area, which is at the same aspect ratio as the current movie. The way to specify where to zoom is actually quite good. Once you enter zoom mode by pressing the zoom button, you can select the area to which you want to zoom to using a white rectangle shown on the screen - you can click the left mouse button to zoom in to this area. You can repeat this several times, before the zoom is cancelled. Once zoomed into an area, you can right click to bring up the zoom menu, and select the panning option to pan the zoomed area.
The new widescreen mode allows you to change a fullscreen movie into a widescreen one, and more importantly, change a widescreen movie to a fullscreen one.
A
A
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
Click here to read the official WinDVD Platinum What's New page.
This page tries to list all the significant new features of WinDVD Platinum (as compared to WinDVD Plus 4.0) - if you want to see a complete review of the latest version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
Index :
WinDVD Platinum is actually an extension to the existing WinDVD 4.0 line, not really replacing the existing WinDVD 4.0 products (which is still the only WinDVD players for the Windows 98/Me market). However, two more products have been added to use the WinDVD product name, WinDVD Creator and WinDVD Recorder. While both share the WinDVD name, both are more focused on their new video capturing and DVD/CD authoring capabilities. In fact, WinDVD Creator does not even have DVD playback features, while WinDVD Recorder has exactly the same playback features as WinDVD Platinum. This review only covers WinDVD Platinum.
WinDVD Plus 4.0 had a very complete feature-set in terms of audio support, and so it would be difficult for WinDVD Platinum to add anything that is new.
WinDVD Platinum does in fact feature several new audio features.
First of all, Dolby Virtual Speaker support has been added. What this does is to simulate 5.1 channel audio using only 2 speakers, by using techniques that "trick" your senses into believing that there are infact more than 2 speakers.
See Large Image
Next up is SRS TruSurround XT Headphone support. WinDVD Plus 4.0 first added SRS TruSurround XT support, which is similar to Dolby Virtual Speaker support (simulating multi-channel audio using 2 speakers). SRS TruSurround XT Headphone is similar to Dolby Headphones, which simulates multi-channel audio using a standard headphone. In addition, SRS TruSurround XT Headphone creates 3D spatial audio from standard mono or stereo sources.
Rounding up the major new audio features is 96 kHz/24 Bit Audio Decoding, which is unique to WinDVD at the moment.
WinDVD Platinum adds a new unique feature called Video Effects. This is basically a realtime video filter that changes the way the played back video looks.
LanguageMate is a new sub-option of WinDVD Platinum's repeat options. What LanguageMate does is allow you to repeat a segement, at either 6, 12 or 18 second intervals. This can be used, for example, when learning a new language by continously repeating the same segement and listening and practicing speaking in the new language. LanguageMate is basically just a variation of the standard A-B repeat function.
Video Docking is a new user interface feature. What this basically means is that the WinDVD main console can now be docked with the playback window to form one single GUI component (the same applies in Window or Fullscreen playback modes).
Only Windows 2000 and XP are supported under WinDVD Platinum.
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
Below is a review for the latest version of WinDVD.
Below is the specs for the test system used :
Pentium-III 1000
512 MB PC-133 CAS-2 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce2 Ultra
SB-Live Platinum 5.1
Pioneer A05 16X DVD-ROM drive
Windows 2000
WinDVD Platinum
Index :
Video quality has not noticeably changed (for good or bad) since WinDVD 4.0 already had excellent video quality - I guess it's just a matter of "if it ain't broken".
Video quality remains high, just like the previous version of WinDVD. Of course, this is dependent on your graphics card and settings, rather than directly on the Video decoder. Some people might actually experience better quality on PowerDVD, but most should be able to get the highest quality from WinDVD (at the expense of performance, of course). WinDVD does seem to be less blurry than PowerDVD in full screen mode, which is related to scaling and how each software DVD player implements it. Contrast also seems to be better in WinDVD.
As mentioned in the "What's New" page, WinDVD Platinum adds a video effects option. What this option does it basically apply realtime filters to the video, making the video negative, for example. There is a video effects mode called "movieffects", which generally improves the color of the movie, making it more vibrant. The video effects also allows you to apply the effect to only half of the movie screen, allowing you to compare the video with and without the effect - nice!!
A
(updated 2 July 2003)
With modern CPU, the efficiency of the decoder is becoming less of a problem. On 1000 MHz systems, there is almost no difference between WinDVD Platinum and Cyberlink PowerDVD 4.0's decoder, however, on lower end systems, PowerDVD still comes out ahead efficiency wise. WinDVD does makes up for it's greater CPU usage in greater quality visuals, especially picture sharpness - but this will greatly depend on your graphics hardware, as each decode is optimized for different types of graphics card.
CPU usage does increase if any of the optional playback features, such as SRS effects or video effects, are turned on, but only by about 10%.
A+
(updated 2 July 2003)
The graphics acceleration support documentation has not been updated (eg. it does not include GeForce4), so it isn't easy to say which card is supported. I would expect most forms of Motion Compensation and some forms of iDCT are supported, along the lines of PowerDVD.
"Always on top" mode is available, as with NVDVD, which was one of those options a lot of people requested. As with WinDVD 4, there is a "Video Desktop" mode, which allows you to playback the DVD as the background image of your Windows desktop - so for those who have called for animated Windows desktop backgrounds, your wish has (sort of) come true. "Video Desktop" may not be very practical (if you have multiple windows open, your desktop is most likely blocked out), but at the very least it makes an interesting screensaver/desktop background.
Interestingly, WinDVD 4's new "PAL TruSpeed" playback mode, which plays back PAL DVDs at their right speed, is not present in WinDVD Platinum, or at least I was not able to find it in the configurations. When NTSC (US) movies are transferred from film to PAL DVDs, the playback speed will actually be 4% faster than normal (NTSC 30 FPS converted to 24 FPS using 3/2 pulldown, and this 24 FPS movie is played back at 25 FPS - hence the 4% speed increase).
A similar feature that was previously available in WinDVD 3/4 is time stretching playback, which allows you to playback a movie either faster or slower, but with the audio's pitch unchanged (just the playback speed) - you'll have to see it to believe it, but it works quite well.
As mentioned previously, new Video Effects filters are available to change how the playback picture looks, and while not entirely useful (although the "Movieffector" filter does make the color look more vibrant), it does add something new.
There is also DivX playback support, although I could not find much documentation on this support.
A+
For the most part, audio quality in WinDVD Platinum remains the same as WinDVD 4. The only new addition which may improve audio quality is the 96 kHz/24 Bit audio decoding mode, which should improve audio quality - although the quality of your sound card/speakers will determine how much of a difference you experience. As mentioned in the What's new page, Dolby Virtual Speakers and more headphone support (for both Dolby and SRS) have been added. I played around with the Dolby Virtual Speakers, and while it will probably never replace my 5.1 setup, it certainly does come up useful if you are limited to only 2 speakers.
The following paragraphs are taken directly from the WinDVD 4 Plus review, which can be used to describe the current audio features in WinDVD Platinum as well.
Audio quality has been improved with the addition of SRS "Dialog Clarity" and "TruBass" processing. 4, 6 and now 8 channels of audio are supported, although one 8 channel card is supported (also because there aren't that many 8 channels cards on the market yet). Most Creative sound cards, which are still the most popular consumer level sound cards, are supported.
There are also DSP effects, which are like the type of effects you get on home theatre amp/receivers (eg. Hall, Soft, Echo). There are also environment processing options, such as the late night mode, also a favorite of home theatre amp/receivers.
Karaoke features are also included for karaoke-fans, with pitch control, as well as the standard vocal options - a lot of standalone DVD players that have karaoke functions have these features as well.
To compare with PowerDVD, both player's audio support are about equal, while WinDVD just slightly edges PowerDVD in terms of audio quality.
A+
Both subtitles and captions are supported here, the same as WinDVD 4. Only one set of subtitle/captions are supported at a time (WinDVD 3.0 could display up to four different subtitles at the same time), as opposed to the two different subtitles that PowerDVD can display at the same time. Granted, having multiple subtitles on screen is pretty useless for most situations, although it is odd to remove a feature that was already present, even if it is not that useful.
Closed captions are available as white text on black background, which enhances visibility (PowerDVD implements closed captions as white text with a transparent background, which isn't as clear).
Neither PowerDVD nor WinDVD allows you to change the position of the subtitle/captions, which if possible, would be a good feature to consider for the future.
B+
(updated 2 July 2003)
WinDVD Platinum builds upon WinDVD 4's "Capture Browser", and now has integrated it with the bookmarking function. "Capturing Browser" allows you to capture multiple frames and preview/delete/save them here with ease - captured frames can be viewed as thumbnails, or as a plain text list. It's one of those "why didn't I think of it" features that just make life a whole lot easier (if your life revolved around capturing still frames from DVDs, that is). This allows for multiple captures at the same time.
One disappointing exclusion is the option to specify which directory captured files are saved to.
NVDVD has introduced audio capturing, and so both WinDVD and PowerDVD will have to catch up in this area, and so the rating for this section has dropped since the last time WinDVD was reviewed (when NVDVD wasn't yet available).
B+
(updated 2 July 2003)
WinDVD Platinum's interface is similar to that of WinDVD 4, although the skin used has been completely re-designed, and improved in most areas.
The first thing you notice is the new skin, which I am glad to say, is quite well designed with clear and large buttons, as well as a large numerical display.
WinDVD Platinum continues with WinDVD 4's subpanel idea. There are now a total of eight different subpanels, offering functions ranging from the standard navigation (select up/down left/right, titles, chapters ...) to language selection (audio/subtitle), and quite a few audio subpanels. I quite like subpanels, since it allows you to get to important functions quickly and easily, as opposed to navigating page after page of configuration panels, or menu options.
The other new interface feature, which I'm glad to say, it a much welcomed one. Intervideo calls it "Video docking", but basically, it is a new feature which allows you to attach and detach the main control console with the playback window. For those that read my NVDVD review, I mentioned that the NVDVD's docked style interface (the controls are attached to the playback window) was a nice feature that makes moving the window around much easier, although it really depends on personal taste. With WinDVD Platinum's "Video docking", you can now have the best of both worlds.
I should also mention WinDVD's "Play DVD from folder" option, which allows you to playback ripped DVDs from your hard-drive directly. I found this superior to PowerDVD's "Open DVD Files on Hard Drive" option. PowerDVD only allows you to select the ripped DVD's IFO file for playback, while WinDVD only requires you to select the folder that the ripped files are stored in. With WinDVD's ripped playback mode, everything from the original DVD was present, even the copyright notices at the start of the DVD, whereas PowerDVD's option may mean some features that were on the original DVD are not available (eg. the copyright notices aren't shown).
A+
WinDVD Platinum only supports Windows 2000 and XP. Support fow Windows 98/Me may be added at a later time.
A
Zooming in WinDVD Platinum mostly remains the same as in WinDVD 4, which is actually a little disappointing. As you may remember, the zooming in WinDVD 4 seems to have gone a little backwards compared to WinDVD 3.0. You are not limited to zooming into a fixed area, which is at the same aspect ratio as the current movie. The way to specify where to zoom is actually quite good. Once you enter zoom mode by pressing the zoom button, you can select the area to which you want to zoom to using a white rectangle shown on the screen - you can click the left mouse button to zoom in to this area. You can repeat this several times, before the zoom is cancelled. Once zoomed into an area, you can right click to bring up the zoom menu, and select the panning option to pan the zoomed area.
However, WinDVD Platinum now does have a function which allows you to turn a widescreen movie into a fullscreen one, which is one of the most requested features. Fortunately, this feature is easy to access, and does not require tricky configuration as with some other DVD players. All one needs to do to activate this feature is to go to the "Display" sub-panel, and change the "Widescreen" option to "Pan & Scan" (this option is only available in fullscreen mode).
B+
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
Click here to read the official WinDVD 5.0's What's New page.
This page tries to list all the significant new features of WinDVD 5.0 (as compared to WinDVD Platinum 1.0) - if you want to see a complete review of the latest version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
Index :
WinDVD 5.0 is available in two main versions : Gold and Platinum. Gold is the "cut-down" version of Platinum, and the features that are unique to the Platinum version are :
- Progressive Deinterlacing (New)
- DivX Support
- Preset Optimized Settings (New)
- Dolby Digital/EX/Pro-Logic II/Virtual Speakers/Headphones
- High Resolution (96 KHz/24 bit) Audio decoding
- Multi-Channel Mp3 Playback
- InterVideo Channel Expansion
More explanation for some of the above features later on.
New in 5.0 is the notion of add-on packs. There are two available add-ons, the "Audio Booster Pack" and the "Mobile Technology Pack". More details about these packs later on, but note that some of the features previously included with the top-of-the-range WinDVD version (like DTS decoding, SRS audio support) has been moved to these packs, while some of the new features are only available by purchasing one of the add-on packs. These add-on packs can be applied to both the Gold and Platinum versions.
New in the Platinum version of WinDVD is "Progressive De-interlacing". This is a new de-interlacing technology for interlaced content, which aims to minimize interlacing artifacts on progressive screens, such as PC monitors.
"Video Effects" was introduced in the previous version of WinDVD, and the new version of WinDVD (both Platinum and Gold) builds upon this by adding "Stackable Video Effects". This effectively means that you can apply multiple video effects to the picture at the same time (eg. Sharpness + Cinema Enhancement + Negative).
WinDVD Platinum 5.0 also features "Preset Optimized Settings". These are basically a set of preset brightness/contrast/color settings optimized for use with different display devices, such as CRT, LCD, TV and Projector.
Gamma control has been improved as well.
All of the following new audio features are in the separately purchased "Audio Booster Pack" add-on.
First up is the ability to adjust each speaker/channel's volume and delay.
The Audio Booster Pack also adds in an equalizer.
And just like the stackable Video Effects, Audio Effects are now stackable as well.
Apart from the new skin, the first thing you notice are the controls on the top of the main playback screen. These controls allow you to select the source of playback, and access Zoom, Audio Booster, Capture Browser, Bookmark Browser and the Playlist.
Other enhancements include a new playlist editor, which is now integrated with the capture and bookmark browsers. All consoles can be docked or undocked with the main playback screen.
A new internet based feature in WinDVD 5.0 is the "Movie Encyclopedia" feature. This feature allows you to search the movie database and retrieve information about the currently playing movie, or any movie you specify in the search function.
All of the following new mobile features are in the separately purchased "Mobile Technology Pack" add-on.
The "Mobile Technology Pack" adds several functions are are designed for mobile devices, such as notebooks.
All these settings are designed to increase battery life by minimizing power usage.
The previous version of WinDVD, WinDVD Platinum, only supports Windows 2000 and XP. The new WinDVD 5.0 has been released for all versions of Windows, including Windows 98SE, Me, 2000 and XP.
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
Below is a review for the latest version of WinDVD. Please take into account the fact that all ratings are for WinDVD Platinum 5.0 with Audio Booster Pack and Mobile Technology Pack, and so not all the features may be available in all versions of WinDVD.
Below is the specs for the test system used :
Pentium-III 1000
512 MB PC-133 CAS-2 SDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce2 Ultra
SB-Live Platinum 5.1
Pioneer A05 16X DVD-ROM drive
Windows 98SE and 2000
WinDVD Platinum 5.0 with Audio Booster Pack and Mobile Technology Pack
Index :
Video quality has not noticeably changed (for good or bad) since the previous version of WinDVD (WinDVD Platinum 1.0). The unprocessed (all display settings at default, no additional video filters/effects) picture is brighter than that of PowerDVD, which gives the impression of superior quality. The picture also appears sharper.
However, upon closer inspection, one could tell that the extra brightness/contrast and sharpness does yield just slightly more artifacts.
Notice in the comparison above the extra definition of the fur for WinDVD 5.0 over PowerDVD 5.0, but notice that when zoomed in, the same area presents more artifacts. It certainly looks like a sharpness filter (notice the bright edge around the two strands of hair in the lower comparison) has been applied in WinDVD 5.0's case. On a computer monitor, the extra sharpness and brightness of WinDVD 5.0 does give a better looking picture, but on a larger display, the artifacts would be quite noticeable. The artifacts are even more noticeable when there are patches of color, like the blue sky background. On this occasion, while WinDVD's sharpness impressed me, I prefer PowerDVD's lack of artifacts, as I am more inclined to playback DVDs on a large screen (where the sharpness is lost, but the artifacts are amplified). If you mainly playback DVDs on your PC monitor, than WinDVD's picture quality will not disappoint. Call it a tie.
A
Decoder efficiency was tested with 2 channel decoding turned on and all other filters/effects turned off. With modern CPUs, there is almost no difference between the performance of PowerDVD and WinDVD, so efficiency is becoming less of a problem all the time. PowerDVD does seem to have a more volatile CPU usage (eg. going from 26% to 38%, while WinDVD hovered around 33-35%) - this won't be a problem unless you have an older CPU (eg. a PIII-500). I doubt efficiency can be increased without sacrificing quality, not that it matters all that much with today's range of CPUs.
A+
The graphics acceleration support documentation has not been updated (eg. it does not include GeForce4), so it isn't easy to say which card is supported. I would expect most forms of Motion Compensation and some forms of iDCT are supported, along the lines of PowerDVD.
PAL TruSpeed is present again, I am pleased to say (I was a little upset when the previous version of WinDVD accidentally left out this option). PAL TruSpeed, for those that don't know, is for correcting the playback speed of PAL movie DVDs, which unfortunately, play a little faster than the original movie frame-rate of 23.976 FPS (PAL plays at 25 FPS). NTSC DVDs do not suffer from this problem, and this is why if you look at the running length of PAL movies, they are always shorter than the NTSC equivalent.
"Always on top" mode is available, as with NVDVD, which was one of those options a lot of people requested. As with WinDVD 4/Platinum 1.0, there is a "Video Desktop" mode, which allows you to playback the DVD as the background image of your Windows desktop - so for those who have called for animated Windows desktop backgrounds, your wish has (sort of) come true. "Video Desktop" may not be very practical (if you have multiple windows open, your desktop is most likely blocked out), but at the very least it makes an interesting screensaver/desktop background.
A similar feature that was previously available in WinDVD 4/Platinum is time stretching playback, which allows you to playback a movie either faster or slower, but with the audio's pitch unchanged (just the playback speed) - you'll have to see it to believe it, but it works quite well. WinDVD 5.0 has added a slider bar for adjusting the playback speed, which makes speed control slightly easier.
One of the new features exclusive to the top-of-the-range Platinum version of WinDVD is Progressive De-Interlacing.
To test the de-interlacing filter, I got out what I believe to be a classic example of interlaced content - the "Making of The X-Files Movie" feature from the original R1 The X-Files Movie DVD (the one with non 16:9 enhanced video). I wasn't able to get a good screen capture of Progressive De-Interlacing in action, but I was able to capture both force weave mode (interlacing at full glory) and force bob (the normal de-interlacing algorithm).
Note the interlacing lines on the weave capture, and the blurry outline of the bob capture. Normal bob de-interlacing removes the interlacing lines from the first capture but adds the blurry glowing effect, but progressive de-interlacing removes the blurry outline from the bob capture. Note that you can only notice these effects during fast moving shots, so the difference between bob and progressive de-interlacing is hard to tell sometimes, but should be much more visible on larger screens.
As mentioned in the "What's New" page, Video Effects are now stackable. I am not totally convinced about the necessity to apply effects to the video in the first place, let alone multiple effects at the same time, so while it does add something new, it's not a feature on the top of my wishlist.
Like PowerDVD, there is a range of brightness, contrast, color and gamma controls. The Platinum version of WinDVD 5.0 provide a few presets for these controls designed for different types of display devices (monitor, LCD, TV, Projector), and can be useful if your computer is connected frequently to different devices.
A+
For the most part, audio quality in WinDVD 5.0 remains the same as WinDVD 4/Platinum 1.0.
The last release of WinDVD added 96 kHz/24 Bit audio decoding mode, Dolby Virtual Speakers and more headphone support (for both Dolby and SRS). Previous releases added 4/6/8 speaker support, SRS enhancements, Karaoke options and tons of DSP effects. There is also the late night mode, which is just another way of saying dynamic compression (which is what PowerDVD calls it). This brings PowerDVD and WinDVD practically equal in terms of both audio quality and support - I guess that tend to happen after 5 generations of continued competition. If you need your sound to be loud, clear and adjustable, then either PowerDVD or WinDVD will be more than adequate.
What differentiates PowerDVD and WinDVD eventually is WinDVD's support for DSP modes, and with the Audio Booster add-on pack, an equalizer. DSP effects include Hall, Soft, Echo, Rock, Vocal, Classic ... The Audio Booster pack also adds individual speaker adjustments (volume and delay), which is actually quite a useful feature, essential if you have non matching speakers in non uniform distances from the listener.
To compare with PowerDVD, both player's audio quality are about equal, while WinDVD 5.0 has just pulled ahead of PowerDVD in terms of audio support. Note that PowerDVD's audio support is still quite extensive, and more than enough for most people - WinDVD just happens to have more :)
A+
A+
Nothing really has changed in this area over the previous version of WinDVD, and you can read what I wrote for the previous version below :
Both subtitles and captions are supported here, the same as WinDVD 4. Only one set of subtitle/captions are supported at a time (WinDVD 3.0 could display up to four different subtitles at the same time), as opposed to the two different subtitles that PowerDVD can display at the same time. Granted, having multiple subtitles on screen is pretty useless for most situations, although it is odd to remove a feature that was already present, even if it is not that useful.
Closed captions are available as white text on black background, which enhances visibility (PowerDVD implements closed captions as white text with a transparent background, which isn't as clear).
Neither PowerDVD nor WinDVD allows you to change the position of the subtitle/captions, which if possible, would be a good feature to consider for the future.
B+
WinDVD 5.0's capture facility is similar to that of WinDVD 4/Platinum's. The capture browser allows you to capture multiple frames and preview/delete/save them here with ease - captured frames can be viewed as thumbnails, or as a plain text list. It's one of those "why didn't I think of it" features that just make life a whole lot easier (if your life revolved around capturing still frames from DVDs, that is). This allows for multiple captures at the same time and preview them before saving. New in 5.0 is the ability to select which format to save the capture under, either as JPG or BMP. It also adds email integration, which automatically launches your email client with the captured image as the attachment.
One disappointing exclusion in the previous version of WinDVD is the option to specify which directory captured files are saved to. Thankfully, this has been addressed, and you can now specify the capture/bookmark directory in the setup section.
For a reviewer, the ability to capture to the clipboard would have been a nice options to include as well. Overall, both PowerDVD and WinDVD's capture facilities are about the same. WinDVD has the ability to preview captures before saving, select between JPG/BMP and email integration. PowerDVD, on the other hand, has custom resolutions captures and clipboard capturing.
NVDVD has introduced audio capturing, and so both WinDVD and PowerDVD will have to catch up in this area.
A
WinDVD 5.0's interface extends upon the interface found in WinDVD Platinum 1.0, although the skin used has been completely re-designed, and improved in most areas.
The first thing you notice is the new skin, which I am glad to say, is quite well designed with clear and large buttons, as well as a large numerical display.
The subpanel way of organising options continues. There are less subpanels than the previous version, with some of the audio subpanels being moved to the Audio Booster interface (there is a configurable option in the setup section that allows you to move them back to the subpanels), offering functions ranging from the standard navigation (select up/down left/right, titles, chapters ...) to language selection (audio/subtitle). I quite like subpanels, since it allows you to get to important functions quickly and easily, as opposed to navigating page after page of configuration panels, or menu options.
The time stretching functions have been moved from the main console to one of the subpanels, which is better since it is now easier to make the playback speed adjustments.
As mentioned previously on the "What's New" page, there are now controls on the top of the main playback screen. These controls allow you to select the source of playback, and access Zoom, Audio Booster, Capture Browser, Bookmark Browser and the Playlist. This is a nice touch, although these controls can only be accessed when using WinDVD in windowed mode, not in fullscreen mode.
"Video docking" is still supported - it is a feature which allows you to attach and detach the main control console with the playback window. For those that read my NVDVD review, I mentioned that the NVDVD's docked style interface (the controls are attached to the playback window) was a nice feature that makes moving the window around much easier, although it really depends on personal taste. With WinDVD "Video docking", you can now have the best of both worlds. In WinDVD 5.0, more component can now be docked, including the capture/bookmark browser and the new playlist editor.
The new and improved playlist editor is now part of the capture/bookmark browser component. Buttons on the playlist editor allows you add/delete playlists and to load in individual files, or entire directories into these playlists. Playlists are saved whenever you exit the playlist window.
I should also mention WinDVD's "Play DVD from folder" option, which allows you to playback ripped DVDs from your hard-drive directly. PowerDVD 5.0 has improved its equivalent option by opening ripped folders, instead of opening the IFO file, and so both players have pretty much the same ripped playback support. However what I found a little annoying was the fact that WinDVD refused to remember that last opened ripped DVD folder, meaning that I have to locate the ripped folder each and every time I wanted to playback from it. The resume function does work with ripped DVDs, which is something PowerDVD doesn't seem to be able to do.
I guess this is as good a place to mention the DVD Movie Encyclopedia function, which allows you to search the net for information regarding the currently playing movie. I am not sure how useful this will be, considering one could just open a browser and search IMDB to get the same information, with greater detail as well.
A+
WinDVD 5.0 now supports all versions of Windows (98 SE, Me, 2000, XP), after WinDVD Platinum 1.0 was only released for Windows 2000 and XP. This is a good move, since while it may be hard for some of you to imagine, there are plenty of users that are satisfied with their Windows 9x/Me setups and excluding them would be unfair.
For mobile computing, power saving and other features are usually built into the OS. WinDVD 5.0 adds a Mobility Technology Pack which bundles mobile computing features (such as power saving profiles) into the DVD player itself, which is a good way of extending playback time, even if your OS does not have proper mobile technology support.
A+
This section describes zooming and aspect ratio issues.
Zooming in WinDVD 5.0 mostly remains the same as in WinDVD 4/Platinum, which is actually a little disappointing. As you may remember, the zooming in WinDVD 4 seems to have gone a little backwards compared to WinDVD 3.0. You are not limited to zooming into a fixed area, which is at the same aspect ratio as the current movie. The way to specify where to zoom is actually quite good. Once you enter zoom mode by pressing the zoom button, you can select the area to which you want to zoom to using a white rectangle shown on the screen - you can click the left mouse button to zoom in to this area. You can repeat this several times, before the zoom is cancelled. Once zoomed into an area, you can right click to bring up the zoom menu, and select the panning option to pan the zoomed area.
However, WinDVD does have a function which allows you to turn a widescreen movie into a fullscreen one, which is one of the most requested features. Fortunately, this feature is easy to access, and does not require tricky configuration as with some other DVD players. All one needs to do to activate this feature is to go to the "Display" sub-panel, and change the "Widescreen" option to "Pan & Scan" (this option is only available in fullscreen mode). This doesn't appear to work for non anamorphic enhanced title (such as The X-Files DVD I was testing progressive de-interlacing on). There is also a "widescreen" which is designed for widescreen TV output (using non square pixels). There is also a "Panorama Widescreen" mode, which I think coverts a 2.35:1 movie to 1:85:1.
Compared to PowerDVD 5.0, these zooming features does seem a little less featured. PowerDVD 5.0 has CLPV aspect ratio conversion and custom aspect ratios for secondary display. WinDVD does feature non square pixel support though and a point and click type zooming. What would make both players more attractive would be custom aspect ratio (eg. allowing the user to specify any random aspect ratio, like 19:6) - this would be very useful for people who connect their computers to widescreen displays (such as projectors) at non standard resolutions (eg. 1280x720). Again, a tie.
A
Update (7th November) : There has been a couple of updates to the pricing structure of WinDVD. First of all, WinDVD Platinum now includes the Mobile Technology Pack and has reduced the price by $10 to $69.95. The prices of the Audio Booster and Mobile Technology Pack (still available separately for users of WinDVD Gold) have also been dropped. The price of WinDVD Gold has gone up, however. There is also an additional DVD-Audio Pack (not reviewed in this review, but basically offers DVD-Audio playback for those with Creative Audigy 2 sound cards).
The combinations of WinDVD (not taking into account the DVD-Audio, Interactual and Remote Control add-ons) are now as follows :
- WinDVD Gold - $49.95
- WinDVD Gold with the Audio Booster Pack - $62.90
- WinDVD Gold with the Mobile Technology Pack - $69.90
- WinDVD Gold with the Audio Booster Pack + the Mobile Technology Pack - $82.85
- WinDVD Platinum (includes Mobile Technology Pack) - $69.95
- WinDVD Platinum (includes Mobile Technology Pack) with the Audio Booster Pack - $82.90
This represents a savings of almost $63 for WinDVD Platinum with the Audio Booster Pack (and the Mobile Technology Pack, which is now bundled with WinDVD 5 Platinum), and it's certainly a move in the right direction. With this in mind, WinDVD 5 is in a much better position to compete with PowerDVD in the value stakes, and the scoring in this section (and hence the review) has been updated accordingly.
Below is the original review :
WinDVD's new pricing structure is a little complicated. The "budget" version is known as the Gold version, while the "top-of-range" version is the Platinum version - nothing too complicated here. Unfortunately, the "top-of-the-range" version is not really the best version available, because you have the Audio Booster and Mobile Technology add-on packs. The complication arises when you consider both the Gold version and Platinum version can get upgraded with the add-on packs. This essentially creates 8 possible versions of WinDVD (let's not even consider the optional remote control), their prices (with the currently on offer discount coupons included) :
- WinDVD Gold - $39.95
- WinDVD Gold with the Audio Booster Pack - $64.90
- WinDVD Gold with the Mobile Technology Pack - $79.90
- WinDVD Gold with the Audio Booster Pack + the Mobile Technology Pack - $104.85
- WinDVD Platinum - $79.95
- WinDVD Platinum with the Audio Booster Pack - $104.90
- WinDVD Platinum with the Mobile Technology Pack - $119.90
- WinDVD Platinum with the Audio Booster Pack + the Mobile Technology Pack - $144.85
$144.85 is a lot to pay for a software DVD player, even when you consider the huge feature set (although I do believe the most essential features are already present in plain versions of WinDVD Gold/Platinum).
When you take into account the fact that PowerDVD Deluxe, the most featured version of PowerDVD, is only $69.95, the value of WinDVD 5.0 seems to be a little on the average side. PowerDVD Deluxe happens to have about 80% of the features found in the most expensive WinDVD version, including most of the audio and video support features, and of course, excellent audio and video quality. If you really need the mobility features, or the additional features found in the audio booster pack, the doubling in price is a little hard to explain.
That is not to say that WinDVD 5.0 isn't worth it - if you want something that is comparable to PowerDVD Deluxe, then WinDVD Gold with the Audio Booster Pack seems like a very good combination, and perhaps even better in value than PowerDVD Deluxe. The extra $40 for WinDVD Platinum over Gold hardly seems justified, and the $39.95 Mobility Pack, just like quite a lot of mobile technology today, is a little too expensive.
The rating for this section of the review, as are the other review ratings, is for the most expensive combination of WinDVD. While the feature scores are very high compared to PowerDVD Deluxe (and meant that the relative ratings of both NVDVD and PowerDVD have dropped), the value score takes a hit here. The added complication of 8 different combinations just makes things worse.
A
(updated 7 November 2003)
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
Click here to read the official WinDVD 6.0's What's New page.
This page tries to list all the significant new features of WinDVD 6.0 (as compared to WinDVD 5.0) - if you want to see a complete review of the latest version of WinDVD, please refer to this page.
Index :
WinDVD 6.0 is again available in two main versions : Gold and Platinum. Gold is the "cut-down" version of Platinum, and the features that are unique to the Platinum version are :
- WMV-HD Playback (New)
- DVD-Audio Support
- CPRM Support
- TrimensionDNM (New)
- MPEG-4/DivX Playback (New)
- High Definition Audio Support (New)
- DTS/SRS/Dolby EX/DRC/96-24 Support
More explanation for some of the above features later on.
There is now only one add-on pack, for Interactual content support. All the previous add-on packs have been integrated into the two versions (most likely the Platinum version).
The most touted new feature of WinDVD (Platinum) is Trimension™ DNM (Digital Natural Motion). This new feature aims to improve clarity in high motion scenes. It can only be selected when hardware acceleration is turned off.
Also new is the built-in support for high definition video playback - WinDVD will now playback WMV-HD files. WMV-HD is Microsoft's own high definition video format, and some DVDs already carry WMV-HD versions (eg. Terminator 2: Extreme Edition). Microsoft also provides a few sample clips that you can download and test out for yourself (you will need a fast CPU to playback these clips).
MPEG-4/DivX support is not built-in, meaning you no longer need to download a separate codec in order to playback these types of files.
Smooth reverse playback has also been introduced, meaning that rewinds will playback without frame skipping just like forwards.
Rounding out the new video features is animated GIF capture, or what Intervideo calls Quick Clips. This new feature allows you to capture a small low resolution motion clip of a DVD in animated GIF format, suitable for transfer through emails or on mobile/cellular phones.
WinDVD Platinum now comes with DVD-Audio playback built-in, as opposed to a separate add-on pack with the previous version. In addition, Intel's High-Definition Audio format is also now supported.
A new skin, based on the default one in the previous version, has been included. Most of the changes are cosmetic only.
The previous version of WinDVD, WinDVD Platinum, only supports Windows 2000 and XP. The new WinDVD 6.0 has been released for all versions of Windows, including Windows 98SE, Me, 2000 and XP.
Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD. For the latest review, please refer to this page.
Below is a review for the latest version of WinDVD. Please take into account the fact that all ratings are for WinDVD Platinum 6.0 with Audio Booster Pack and Mobile Technology Pack, and so not all the features may be available in all versions of WinDVD.
Below is the specs for the test system used :
Pentium-4 3.2 GHz
1GB DDR400 RAM
ATI Radeon 9800 XT
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro
Liteon 16x DVD-ROM
Windows XP Pro
WinDVD Platinum 6.0
Index :
In terms of video quality, not much has changed from the previous version. However, WinDVD 6.0 now features a new video mode called Trimension™ DNM (Digital Natural Motion). I don't know exactly how this new mode works, but turning it on does produce a smoother picture. I tested this mode on my copy of Ice Age, and there is a significant difference between turning this mode on and off. With this mode off, the video appears jerky during panning and movement, and with this mode on, the picture becomes much smoother, almost as if there are now more frames per second than before. Maybe it was just me, but the movement was so smooth that it felt as if the playback was at a faster speed than normal, and a bit unnatural because I have gotten used to the normal and slightly jerky version.
After re-evaluation, the rest of this section of the review remains unchanged from the 5.0 version.
Video quality has not noticeably changed (for good or bad) since the previous version of WinDVD (WinDVD Platinum 1.0). The unprocessed (all display settings at default, no additional video filters/effects) picture is brighter than that of PowerDVD, which gives the impression of superior quality. The picture also appears sharper.
However, upon closer inspection, one could tell that the extra brightness/contrast and sharpness does yield just slightly more artifacts.
Notice in the comparison above the extra definition of the fur for WinDVD 5.0 over PowerDVD 5.0, but notice that when zoomed in, the same area presents more artifacts. It certainly looks like a sharpness filter (notice the bright edge around the two strands of hair in the lower comparison) has been applied in WinDVD 5.0's case. On a computer monitor, the extra sharpness and brightness of WinDVD 5.0 does give a better looking picture, but on a larger display, the artifacts would be quite noticeable. The artifacts are even more noticeable when there are patches of color, like the blue sky background. On this occasion, while WinDVD's sharpness impressed me, I prefer PowerDVD's lack of artifacts, as I am more inclined to playback DVDs on a large screen (where the sharpness is lost, but the artifacts are amplified). If you mainly playback DVDs on your PC monitor, than WinDVD's picture quality will not disappoint.
Because of new Trimension™ DNM, the video quality rating has been increased.
A+
Decoder efficiency was tested with 2 channel decoding turned on and all other filters/effects turned off. With modern CPUs, there is almost no difference between the performance of PowerDVD and WinDVD, so efficiency is becoming less of a problem all the time. PowerDVD does seem to have a more volatile CPU usage (eg. going from 26% to 38%, while WinDVD hovered around 33-35%) - this won't be a problem unless you have an older CPU (eg. a PIII-500). I doubt efficiency can be increased without sacrificing quality, not that it matters all that much with today's range of CPUs.
A+
The graphics acceleration support documentation has not been updated (eg. it does not include GeForce4), so it isn't easy to say which card is supported. I would expect most forms of Motion Compensation and some forms of iDCT are supported, along the lines of PowerDVD.
PAL TruSpeed is present again, I am pleased to say (I was a little upset when the previous version of WinDVD accidentally left out this option). PAL TruSpeed, for those that don't know, is for correcting the playback speed of PAL movie DVDs, which unfortunately, play a little faster than the original movie frame-rate of 23.976 FPS (PAL plays at 25 FPS). NTSC DVDs do not suffer from this problem, and this is why if you look at the running length of PAL movies, they are always shorter than the NTSC equivalent.
"Always on top" mode is available, as with NVDVD, which was one of those options a lot of people requested. As with previous versions of WinDVD, there is a "Video Desktop" mode, which allows you to playback the DVD as the background image of your Windows desktop - so for those who have called for animated Windows desktop backgrounds, your wish has (sort of) come true. "Video Desktop" may not be very practical (if you have multiple windows open, your desktop is most likely blocked out), but at the very least it makes an interesting screensaver/desktop background.
A similar feature that was previously available in the previous version is time stretching playback, which allows you to playback a movie either faster or slower, but with the audio's pitch unchanged (just the playback speed) - you'll have to see it to believe it, but it works quite well. WinDVD 6.0 has added "Finish on time" (set the time of the day you wish to finish watching the movie, and the playback speed is automatically adjusted for you) and "Play on time" (set the time in hours and minutes you wish to finish watching the movie) buttons, that allows you to further customize the time stretching mode.
One of the new features exclusive to the top-of- |
