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
Latest Version:	for WinDVD 2010 (details)
OS Support:
Software Used:	WinDVD
Date Added:	Jul 2, 2000
Last Updated:	Nov 7, 2009
Page Viewed:	323071 times

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muchfedup: I upgraded last year from preinstalled...
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Categories:

Main Categories: DVD/SVCD/VCD (MPEG-1/2), High Definition (Blu-ray, HD DVD, HDTV), Play, Reviews
Sub Categories:
Playing Videos -> Blu-ray Playback
Playing Videos -> DVD Playback (Software Based)
Playing Videos -> HD DVD Playback

Introduction:

WinDVD 2010 has been released. The 10th generation of WinDVD also corresponds with the year 2010, and so the version number change is quite appropriate.

WinDVD 9 received a fairly high rating from Digital Digest, basically equal to that of PowerDVD 9 which was released about a month later. The 2010 version looks to build on the first fairly impressive outing from WinDVD's new owners, Corel, and it will be interesting as to how Corel has approached this new version, whether it's an incremental update, or a major overhaul. And with Windows 7 offering out of the box media playback (although not Blu-ray), WinDVD 2010 will have to do even more to convince customers that they need to buy it, especially for those not interested in Blu-ray.

Please refer to the WinDVD Review Archive if you want to read the review of WinDVD 9 and all earlier versions right up to WinDVD 2.0!

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Article Navigation:

Page 1: Introduction <--
Page 2: What's new in WinDVD 2010
Page 3: Full Review of WinDVD 2010
Page 4: WinDVD 2010 Review Conclusions/Ratings

Revision History:

Version for WinDVD 2010:

Date Updated: Nov 7, 2009
Updated review for WinDVD 2010

Version 9.0:

Date Updated: Mar 27, 2008
Updated review for WinDVD 9

Version 8.0:

Date Updated: Nov 16, 2006
Added review for WinDVD 8.0

Version 7.0:

Date Updated: Jun 28, 2005
Added review for WinDVD 7.0

User Rating:

	Average Rating:	Your Rating:
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Non-Registered Users:	(45 votes)

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.

As for me, the original (InterVideo) WinDVD8 Platinum is the best software DVD player so far, mostly due to appeal and Trimension technology. The main disadvantages of Corel WinDVD9 when compared to older version are: 1) The absence of "Pan&Scan" function (Zoom&Pan works quite different); 2) Every time started, the Trimension technology has to be enabled manually; 3) When enabled "all2hd" and/or Trimension, the brightness, contrast, saturation etc. can only be changed from graphics control panel - the appropriate sliders in WinDVD9 become disabled. 4) The absence of Video- and AudioCenter is disappointing. 5) The new skin is ugly (subjective).

WInDVD 9 can be a good product features-wise, it is just very unstable, especially on Vista 64 platform. Bluray and even regular DVD discs would play sometimes but vey inconsistent and then you would get the MFC error nag and the application closes. Meanwhile the code still runs on the background consuming tons of CPU resources. The SUPPORT for the producr is even more atrocious. I opened up a ticket and all I got back was this pre-canned, computer generated response. I am computer savvy (systems programmer) and tried eveything that I know and heeded known solution suggestions from the different web sites to no avail. All it did for me was plenty of headaches and a few sleepless nights. I will not recommend this product to anyone.t