Watching DVD Your Way:
Windows DVD Players
(Reviews
of CyberLink PowerDVD, InterVideo WinDVD,
Windows Media Player 9)
by
by Douglas Dixon, Manifest
Technology, www.manifest-tech.com
New Players
Microsoft
- Windows Media Player 9 Series for
Windows XP
Enhanced DVD
CyberLink
PowerDVD
InterVideo
WinDVD
DVD Your Way
References
How do you do DVD? Do you watch movies on
DVD on your family television? That's a
great experience for people with a
wide-screen display and surround-sound
audio, and actually a big driver for sales
of high-def televisions. Or do you prefer
watching DVDs on your PC? After all, your
latest PC may well have a sharper display
and better multi-channel audio than the old
TV in the living room.
Watching DVDs on a PC also has additional
advantages. For travelers, of course,
playing DVDs on a laptop lets you watch your
own movies on long airplane flights. For
movie fans, DVD player software lets you get
more from the DVD experience, stepping frame
by frame through interesting effects, and
mixing and matching audio tracks and
subtitles.
For tinkerers, PC-based players allow you
to enhance and customize the picture and
sound display, for example to brighten and
sharpen dark movies or to optimize the
surround-sound experience (even creating
virtual surround from stereo speakers or
headphones). And for creative types, video
editors, and people interested in DVD
authoring, these applications enable you to
explore and deconstruct the navigational
structure and design of commercial DVDs so
you can learn from the pros.
Of course, DVD player software is not
new, as products like CyberLink PowerDVD
and InterVideo WinDVD have been used
widely on Windows systems, and are bundled
with most new PC systems and add-in DVD
drives. The first half of 2003, however,
brought a new version 5 of each of these
applications, along with the Microsoft
Windows Media Player 9 for Windows XP.
While these new releases do not contain
dramatically different new capabilities,
they do provide a more refined interface for
controlling DVD playback, and a wider range
of options for customizing the
movie-watching experience.
In this article, we'll look at these
three tools for playing DVD movies on PCs,
showing how you can use them to explore DVDs
and customize your viewing experience. We'll
also look at some of the more interesting
new features of each product. While they
have much in common, each has different
focuses and strengths, so your favorite will
depend on what you want to do with them.
While you may think of Microsoft's Windows
Media Player as the built-in player for
video and audio files, it has evolved
significantly from its basic origins in
earlier versions of Windows. Media Player 9
Series, released in January 2003, is part of
a family of digital media tools and
technology, including the flagship Media
Player 9 for Windows XP. Media Player is now
an all-in-one player and organizer for music
and video, spanning CDs and DVDs, Internet
streaming and downloading to portable
devices (www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia).
You may be familiar with using Media
Player to play music CDs. Media Player makes
playing music more enjoyable by leveraging
the Internet to provide more information:
Just pop in the CD, and Media Player looks
up the CD information on the Internet and
then displays the album name and song
titles. The Now Playing Info Center view
displays the album cover, information and
reviews on the artist and album, and links
to other information including music and
video downloads and the artist website.
But Media Player is not just for music.
It provides the same kind of services when
playing DVDs. Insert the DVD, and Media
Player again can access the Internet to look
up information about the movie.
Media player has a profusion of display
and information options, accessible through
various menus, right-click menus, and tiny
buttons arrayed around the interface. Use
the View menu to select Now Playing Options,
Show Media Information to display
information about the movie, including the
cast and reviews.
Select Show Playlist to see a nice
hierarchical view of the Titles (sections)
and Chapters (scenes) on the DVD. Typically,
the main movie is under the first title on
the DVD, and the additional special features
such as "making of" documentaries,
deleted scenes, and trailers are organized
under the additional titles.
With the Playlist view, Movie Player
displays names and durations for the
chapters in the movie. You can explore the
navigational design of the disc, and
double-click to jump directly to your
favorite part of the movie, instead of
having to step through the Scene Selection
menus. This is actually a nicer interface
for exploring a disc than provided by
third-party players like PowerDVD and WinDVD,
although other forms of navigation are
clunkier in Media Player.
For example, instead of providing a
remote control-like push-button interface,
with Media Player you need to use the DVD
Features menu (under the View or right-click
menu) to movie through the DVD menus, and
use the Play menu to switch audio and
subtitle tracks.
Movie Player also provides additional
controls to enhance DVD playback, under
Enhancements, Show Enhancements (in the View
menu or the small pop-up menu at the bottom
left of the video window). The Enhancements
include Video Settings for Brightness and
Contrast, Play Speed Settings for Slow or
Fast playback, and audio Quiet Mode and
Graphic Equalizer.
CyberLink PowerDVD and InterVideo
WinDVD go beyond Media Player to provide
more options to customize your viewing
experience, with interactive playback
controls, browsing tools, video and audio
enhancements, and surround audio options.
They also provide screen grabbing functions
to capture still images from DVDs
(especially useful for studying menus or
writing reviews).
They also are general media players, for
playback of a variety of media formats
including DVD-Video movies, DVD-VR (from
set-top DVD recorders), Video CD (VCD 2.0)
and Super VCD (SVCD). You can play discs
from your DVD or CD drives, or from DVD
volumes on hard disk (especially useful to
test DVDs that you are authoring).
In addition, PowerDVD and WinDVD play
video and audio media files from hard disk,
now including built-in support for playing
DivX video files. You can create playlists
of files, or use variable-speed playback to
examine individual video files or audio
clips in detail. You also can set bookmarks
at favorite scenes, and even export them for
archiving.
Perhaps the best improvement in the new
versions of PowerDVD and WinDVD, however, is
in usability. The interfaces have been
streamlined and simplified, eschewing
sexy-looking skins with tiny and obscure
controls for less busy displays with more
straightforward and accessible buttons. Both
also provide extensive configuration
options, direct access to DVD playback
controls, and continuous feedback on the DVD
playback.
CyberLink PowerDVD 5, released in
June 2003, incorporates a bevy of new video
and audio playback technologies (www.gocyberlink.com)
with a more refined interface. PwoerDVD
displays two windows, the main video window
and the floating control panel.
The right side of the control panel
includes the main DVD playback controls, for
selecting the playback source (DVD, on-disk
volume, or media files), playing and
skipping through the video, jumping to the
DVD menus, and adjusting volume. It also has
a pop-out pad for menu navigation.
The left side of the control panel
includes a nice status display and a
navigational slider to show (and set) your
position in the movie, the audio volume
control, and a few buttons for direct access
to alternate streams and other features. The
Capture button now offers a more flexible
screen capture feature: right-click to
capture to wallpaper, the clipboard, or a
file, and even to select the capture size.
The last button displays the
Configuration dialog, to set up Player
Setting defaults, the Skin look, Video and
Audio enhancements, and Parental Control. It
also contains an Information tab that
displays interesting technical details about
your system player, display, audio, and
hardware.
The full capabilities of PowerDVD,
however, are best accessed through the
extensive right-click menu, which includes
28 main items, plus additional pop-out
submenu selections. By browsing through
these nested menus, you can explore the
structure and range of options authored into
the disc, including the Title and Chapter
structure and the available Audio Languages,
Subtitles, Viewing Angles, and Closed
Captioning. For learning languages, PowerDVD
provides the feature to not only mix and
match the audio soundtrack and subtitle
languages, but also to simultaneously
display a second subtitle (and the closed
captioning, while you are at it).
For exploring the disc further, you can
use the DVD Browser window to view the
hierarchical structure of the disc and then
jump to a different chapter. Unfortunately,
the browser closes each time you use it, and
the ability to jump arbitrarily within the
disc may be restricted by the disc's author.
PowerDVD also provides an alternate Viewer
display with thumbnails of each chapter
within the current title. Again, you can
click to jump directly to that chapter, but
the Viewer window then closes and must be
regenerated each time you use it.
For viewing your DVDs, PowerDVD includes
several new CyberLink video enhancement
technologies.
- CyberLink Eagle Vision (CLEV)
adaptively enhances video contrast and
colors across the scenes in a movie.
CyberLink cleverly offers a split-screen
mode so you can see how it can automatically
bring out more richness and detail,
especially in darker scenes. PowerDVD also
offers Video Profile profiles to tune the
movie look to your display, and Color Cast
controls to adjust bright or dark scenes.
- CyberLink Pano Vision (CLPV) is a
non-linear stretching technique that makes a
more natural looking image when displaying
widescreen movies on standard 4:3 displays
(and vice versa). The trick is to stretch
the edges of the image while not distorting
the main center portion, reducing the effect
of seeing very tall and thin people.
PowerDVD 5 also adds Multi-Channel
Environment Impression (CLMEI), which
creates multi-channel audio from two-channel
audio tracks, such as virtual surround sound
from stereo music. This joins technologies
like Dolby Headphone and Dolby Virtual
Speakers (DVS) for creating surround-sound
effects from stereo speakers, and SRS
TruSurround XT for virtual surround sound,
plus Dialog Clarity enhancements and TruBass
power adjustments.
PowerDVD 5 is available for download
directly from CyberLink and in a box edition
for retail sale. The download version is US
$49.95 for the Deluxe version, $69.95 for
the Standard version, and $29.95 for the
Express version. The Deluxe version includes
Dolby Virtual Speaker and DTS Digital
Surround. The Express version also omits
other surround-sound audio.
InterVideo WinDVD 5, released in
July 2003 includes a similar array of cool
functions for customizing your movie viewing
experience (www.intervideo.com).
These are nicely packaged as pop-out
subpanels on the right of the floating
control panel, plus a collection of add-on
booster packs. It also adds a basic Movie
Encyclopedia with links to more information
on the Web.
The main control panel contains the key
DVD remote control functions, including play
controls, position slider, menu selection,
and volume, along with playback status. The
pop-out subpanels then contain more advanced
controls: Navigation and Language for
titles, chapters, and streams; Display for
video format; and Color for display presets
and custom settings (TV, Monitor, LCD,
Projector). The Video Effect subpanel
provides a variety of useful (and fun)
enhancements including Cinema Enhancement
color and brightness boost, also with a
split-screen option. Even better, you can
enable multiple effects at once.
The final Time Stretching subpanel
provides a very clean interface for slowing
down or speeding up playback. Just click the
turtle or the rabbit icons to time stretch
from 1/2 speed to 2 X, still with
understandable audio. Along with the audio
and subtitle selection features, Time
Stretching is a great way to examine and
study video and audio clips in detail. The
LanguageMate feature under the Repeat menu
also can repeat a section for 6, 12, or 18
sections.
InterVideo offers additional functions
through add-ins. The Audio Booster Pack
($12.95) adds movie and music customizations
including surround sound, channel volume and
delay, and equalizer with sonic presets. The
Mobile Technology Pack ($19.95) provides
power schemes to extend play time and
control battery life for laptops. The
DVD-Audio Pack ($39.95) supports navigation
and playback of DVD-Audio music discs, and
the QSound Plug-in ($14.95) adds 3D audio
effects.
To browse a disc's contents, you can use
the right-click menu to jump to a chapter
with the current title. Or open the Bookmark
Browser panel to add and view thumbnails of
bookmarks that you have defined on the disc.
WinDVD also can scan the entire disc and
create thumbnails of each chapter in each
title on the DVD, which you can then use to
jump within the disc. However, this scanning
processes freezes playback for a minute or
two, the thumbnails can be less than useful
(black or repeated), and some discs do not
permit jumping to arbitrary chapters within
a disc. The Capture browser is displayed
under another tab, allowing you to make
quick screen captures to memory, and then
review and save them to disk.
WinDVD is available from InterVideo in
the Platinum edition for $69.95, with
high-resolution audio and surround-sound
technologies, or the Gold edition for
$49.95.
DVD on TV can be a great movie-watching
experience, with some interactivity in
jumping to chapters or setting audio and
subtitle playback options. But DVD on PC is
a much deeper and customized experience. You
can use the built-in Media Player 9 on
Windows XP to access movie information and
explore the title and chapter structure of
your discs, and to tweak the video and audio
settings. Or you use software players like
PowerDVD and WinDVD to dig deeper into your
discs and enhance the playback.
With PowerDVD and WinDVD, you can
optimize the video image to your display (or
multiple displays), and tune the
surround-sound audio playback for your
system's hardware. You can then browse the
contents of the disc, set bookmarks at
favorite points, and capture screenshots of
individual frames.
To help with your own DVD authoring, you
can deconstruct the content, navigational
structure, and the track and stream design,
using the control panels and nested
right-click menus to easily view the
available titles, chapters, audio and
subtitle streams, captions, and other DVD
features.
These tools are also general media
players that you can use to organize
playlists from DivX video to MP3 audio.
Whether watching a DVD or a video or audio
clip file, you can learn more by slowing
down the playback, stepping through
individual frames, and even repeating a
short section.
Your choice between these tools, or other
software players such as Sonic CinePlayer
(www.cineplayer.com),
will depend on your interface preferences
and the types of DVD content and hardware
components that you enjoy to use. To try
them out, download the Trial versions from
the company websites (albeit large
downloads, at 6 to 14 MB). The PowerDVD
Trial version runs for 14 days, and limits
the length of video and multi-channel audio
playback. InterVideo also offers a Trial CD
with all its products for $4.99.
Whether you love to watch movies, or want
to author your own DVDs, you will find these
new software players take your DVD
experience to another level.
Microsoft - Windows Media Player 9 Series
for Windows XP
www.microsoft.com/windowsmedia
CyberLink - PowerDVD
www.gocyberlink.com
InterVideo - WinDVD
www.intervideo.com
Sonic Solutions - CinePlayer
www.cineplayer.com
InterActual Technologies
www.interactual.com
Manifest
Technology®
Copyright 2004, Douglas
Dixon, All Rights Reserved
Manifest Technology is a
registered trademark of Douglas Dixon
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