Customer Reviews

Corel WinDVD 9 Plus (Blu-ray)

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(37)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(34)

 

 

If I could give this product less than one star, I would. I have been a computer user since the early 80s and this is one of the worst software experiences that I've ever had. We're talking Windows Vista bad.

In the course of trying to get this software to work with my Blu-Ray / HD DVD drive, I've upgraded to 4GB of RAM, upgraded my processor from a 2.0 dual core to a 3.2 dual core, completely replaced my hard drive, un-installed and reinstalled the software 3 times, and spent countless hours on end user posting boards trying to get help from equally frustrated customers.

Why didn't I contact the company directly, you may ask? Well, there's no telephone support. I did send emails to their "support" address. However, they were about as helpful as trying to fix the software by pouring hot coffee on the computer tower. Once they sent me lengthy directions that didn't work and the second time I contacted them, they said that I should un-install and re-install my software.

While doing this, I discovered a downloadable patch, which made the software sort of work, sometimes. It played regular DVDs perfectly now, but it still got stuck on one still of a Blu-Ray movie and wouldn't advance the video although the audio track was still playing normally, and HD DVDs were a nightmare, most of them would load to the menu, play for 1 to 5 minutes then lock up and the computer would restart.

My third and 4th emails to support have yet to be answered 3 weeks later.

Do yourself a favor, if you want an easy program that lets you play Blu-rays with minimal hastle, DON'T buy this program.

In short, no telephone support, LOTS of compatibility issues, and enough frustration where I ended up buying a different software suite all together.

I am not someone who watches many DVDs on my computer (that's what my LCD is for). Currently I have Nero 8 on my PC (Dell 710 XPS H2C with dual 768mb graphics cards) and I have only been mildly pleased with it. The video quality never seemed very good (comparing to my LCD TV).

I was anxious to see what WinDVD would be like. Well, installation was smooth. Everything installed nicely. Upon completion I popped in a couple of DVDs and ran them through Nero and WinDVD. At best I was expecting them to be the same; I was in for a pleasent surprise. There was a definite improvement in the video quality with WinDVD, everything looked sharper.

I was having a problem with Nero not playing menu systems back properly. Many times the menus would have nasty green lines in them. This did not happen with WinDVD.

WinDVD is simple to use. The controls are straight forward. Using WinDVD was nothing but a pleasure and I would highly recommend it to everyone.

I have used many products to play DVDs over the years. Most have done the job adequately, however I never really saw the computer monitor as a replacement for watching a DVD on television. This has changed with WinDVD9, not only does it do a great job upscaling my DVDs, but it is actually a better Blu-ray player than my PS3. Since I have installed this software I have even removed my trusty old DVD software that I have been using for quite some time.

I bought this because it claims to support both HD DVD and BluRay playback. Since PowerDVD no longer plays HD DVD, I was looking for an alternative and found this.
Problems:
1) HD DVD playback has corrupted video, pixelization and eventually crashes display driver. The machine is way over the minimu requirements and have latest video driver available from ATI
2) Does not play BluRay disks, claiming region code mismatch (PowerDVD plays fine on the same machine)
3) Customer support rep was arrogant, rude and unhelpful
Returning the product as soon as I get to the post office

I have a Dell Inspiron 530 with dual core processor, 2-gigs of ram and Vista Home Premium, an after market video card with tons of video ram and an internal Blu-ray player.

The machine is only three months old, so I take it the Vista install is pretty much the latest going. The Win DVD install took just a few minutes and progressed with no issues.

The software played several of my Blu-ray disks with no problem. The picture was clear and true. I wont waste space here going over the same issues covered in other reviews and in the package description.

I do want to mention how impressed I was with the up-converting of standard DVDs by this package. I own an up-converting DVD deck and have never been very impressed with the picture quality it produced (in fact I really couldn't tell any difference).

There is a substantial increase in quality of picture with WinDVD's up-converter. It is really noticeable

I'm not sure the feature set here is worth the money, but if you think it's what you're looking for, WinDVD 9 plus does what the manufacturer says it will.

It plays well, it plays DVD blu-ray disks. I believe one of the problems for some of those that purchased this software is that without right clicking the shortcut icon for windvd and going into properties, then, compatability and checking the box for administrator permission this software will not play. Once you do this procedure, however, the software does what it was designed for. I rated it a 4 rather than a 5, one star for the fact that windows can not detect this software as a blu-ray player, you can't set this software to automatically load your movie(must manually select the software). The click on off of the player overlay is also different when playing dvd vs playing blu-ray. Regardless of dvd\hd\blu-ray mode this player does a fine job of playing content. This software did not contain any extras, such as burning or editing components, however, there is a feature that does a great job of playing dvds with better focus and clarity called All2HD. I played this software on Windows Vista x64. I built the system as follows: cpu e8400 3ghz/1333mhz fsb, Memory 4 gig patriot ddr2 667mhz in dual channel mode,logitec 540 5.1 speaker system\onboard hd sound, Asus P5Q p45 motherboard, liteon dvd\blu-ray player, corsair 650 psu, powercolor radeon HD 4850 vid card, Samsung toc 220 monitor.

I have to admit, I was not expecting much out of this. I feared the worse, such as error messages and my system freezing, etc... yes, I am a pessimist. But, I am quite surprised and pleased.

First of all, it plays anything. I was thinking this was disc only, but will support most every file format and can possibly replace any other media player you have enough to remove it... giving you more space.

Obviously the appeal to this version is the ability to play "Blu-Ray". But, I have to say, normal DVDs look a heck of a lot better and clearer. Everything looks better. You have better control of contrast, color etc. It really turns your computer into a great media-center.

I decided to dig up discs that just would not play on my laptop, and whatever this software did, I have no idea, but I can now run anything. So this actually resolves issues, and did not create them... that's a first!

There is no learning curve here, and you can buy without having to worry about anything technical. Just install it, and when you play your media, you will have full control of what you are doing or watching.

I am thinking the list price is a bit much. I would say about half the LIST price would be a good deal. So it's about 4.5 stars. But based on my personal result, it's worth 5. If it's at least 25% off list, I would say it's a good buy.

As an analyst I tend to take things apart and be critical of even the smallest things. Before I began looking at this product I read all the reviews to see if I could reproduce any of the problems others had encountered. None of the problems in other reviews manifested themselves. I am running a Dell system with Vista Ultimate, 4G of Ram, a 500GB HD and two LCD displays. One of the displays is HD and the other is not. I tested all features on both screens.

The application installed without a hitch. I did screen shots of each of the install screens, all feature menus and parts of some of the movies I viewed. The problem I found was that the screen shots of the movies were not as high quality as what I was seeing on screen so they were of little use. I found that the menu items were very intuitive and provided very nice options. I do not have a BluRay DVD drive so I was unable to test that aspect of the application. Once I get a BluRay drive I will post an evaluation of that feature. However I do have a BluRay DVD player on my LCD flat panel TV and tried to compare the output of the computer/WinDVD to the TV. The WinDVD produced a very high quality result and the interface was far better and faster than what Media Player produced. All in all I found this product to be high quality, stable (it did not crash, skip or lockup) and delivers what it claims.

Addendum: I have used the product for a while now and really love it. I have two flat screens a 22in non high def and a 24 inch HD so I have compared the output and done some other analysis and found the quality of the product to be first rate, The only problem I have had is when I am dragging the window from one screen to another it sometimes crashes the app. All that being said these things are probably machine based rather than software based.

ADDENDUM 2: I recently switched to Windows 7 and this product installed and worked well. It plays Blu-ray disks much better than Power DVD which was already on my system. ONe note. It appears that this application looks to find out if your displays can display 1080p and if it doesn't see it then it skips a bit. Once I set my displays to HD 1080P it worked great.

Plays DVDs ok, but sometimes freezes. Blu-ray? Well, you have to run as administrator to get it to even try - yeah, nice software design, and it hangs about half the time. When it does try to play, the playback pauses every few seconds. Every disc I have tried has this problem. Also, decrypted discs played from the HD do the same. My GPU is a Radeon HD 3200 IGP (780g MB), which is pretty common, so there isn't any excuse for incompatibility. Even after an HD reformat and clean windows install, it still doesn't work. I can blay BDs with powerDVD just fine on the same hardware.

I can't write this without mentioning Corel's tech support. Its almost comical, except I got the sense that I wasn't really talking to a helpless moron, but instead someone playing dumb and wasting my time so I would just go away, and probably laughing at me for being dumb enough to buy this program. One of them actually told me my problem was that I didn't actually have a blu-ray drive. I probably should have given up then.

The only positive thing Corel WinDVD 9 Plus provided in my experience was comic relief, because after hours of putting up with it's problems and inconsistencies, that's all I could do was laugh it off and give up. The customer support is a joke. You have to email them and the only responses you'll get are either a) download the patches or b) uninstall and reinstall the program. When neither of these works to fix all issues, you're left with the option of calling tech support at a cost of $15! Outrageous.
In the end, I am left with a program that works to play standard DVD's, will not play HD-DVD's at all, and freaks out at random spots when trying to play Blu-ray. A complete waste of time. The best advice I can give is to save your money and stay far, far away from this product.