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Epicurus.com - Corel WinDVD 9 Plus (Blu-ray)
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List Price: $99.99
Our Price: $89.99
Your Save: $ 10.00 ( 10% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Corel
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: Corel
EAN: 0735163120448
Feature: Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD playback (Blu-ray drive or HD DVD drive required)--Play high-definition commercial titles with interactive features, or recordable Blu-ray/HD DVD media
Format: CD-ROM
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Corel
Manufacturer: Corel
Model: WD9PLBDENPC
Platform: Windows Vista
Publisher: Corel
Release Date: 2008-03-28
Studio: Corel
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Features
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Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD playback (Blu-ray drive or HD DVD drive required)--Play high-definition commercial titles with interactive features, or recordable Blu-ray/HD DVD media
Supports all Blu-ray and HD DVD video encoding formats, such as MPEG-4-AVC (H.264), MPEG-2, and VC1
Supports HD Audio technologies from Dolby and DTS including Dolby Digital Plus, uncompressed Dolby TrueHD, and DTS HD for commercial Blu-ray and HD DVD movies
Plays video from recordable HD DVD or Blu-ray media such as HD DVD-R, BD-R and RE discs; play standard DVDs at HD resolution with unique upscaling and motion enhancement
Includes all the features and capabilites of the WinDVD 9 Plus
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Editorial Reviews:
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Does your PC have a Blu-ray DVD drive and you want to watch HD movies? Then use WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray, the ultimate DVD and video player for your PC. It plays Blu-ray, HD DVD and standard DVDs. Supports DVD-Video, DivX, RealPlayer, QuickTime, Windows Media, H.264 and AVI SD to HD Conversion De-snow and De-block Filters Unique All2HD Upscaling Technology DTS 96K/24bit Decoding
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Smooth Interface, Enhanced Playback
Comment: Corel WinDVD 9 Plus (Blu-ray)
WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray has been highly anticipated as Corel's answer to Blu-ray technology for DVD and video playback. I was skeptical because some reviews state problems running the program on Windows Vista machines, even though the program is designed to be compatible. Others mention skipping and location of controls.
Notwithstanding, I decided to test the program for myself. (I run Windows XP, Service Pack 3 on my desktop where I often watch DVDs while working on craft projects.)
Installation was extremely easy and fast, but the performance is what's really exciting. With WinDVD 9 it's possible to make a standard DVD play like High Definition. WinDVD's All2HD upscaling increases frame size to HD resolution and sharpens each image while maintaining clean, crisp edges. Even better, there's an anti-blur technology to ensure smooth action images.
Hook up your stand-alone speakers for real surround sound or for movies on the go, take your laptop with you. Battery optimization ensures you see the entire movie.
System requirements (for standard DVD and Video playback - higher for Blu-ray):
Windows XP, Service Pack 2 or later. (Note Windows Vista is listed as compatible, but check this out as some have had problems.) As a minimum requirement you'll need an Intel Pentium III with at least 800MHz or equivalent AMD Athlon, at least 512MB of RAM, 200MB of hard-disk space for installation, a wide-screen monitor and an on-board audio card.
WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray supports DVD-Video, DivX, RealPlayer, Quicktime, Windows Media, H.264 and AVI.
All in all, this is a neat program to enhance your standard DVD viewing, but there are less expensive Blu-ray playback products on the market. However, if you're a Corel fan as I am, this might be the product for you.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Needs some work
Comment: The program wouldn't run once installed. Click the app and no go. Click an associated file and nothing. No error message, no crash, just nothing. The install went smoothly, even followed the extra "read this before installing" instructions. So is it my PC with Windows XP Service Pack 2, I could try another PC to find out... but this is the PC I wanted it on. It seems from the numerous other complaints about the installs the program just isn't ready for prime time yet.
I wanted to give it a great review, I've used version 8 which is bundled with my copy of Video Studio 11.5 and it worked fine. I never paid much attention to software DVD (or Blu-ray) players before, they played or they didn't play the movie and some had better controls. But the sales pitch of this one indicated I would see better pictures and cleaner video even with older tech using some cutting edge software magic. I guess however, I'll never know (okay maybe I'll try again in the future, but not anytime soon).
Customer Rating:
Summary: Blu-Ray of Light Clearing Up Your Video
Comment: Well Blu-Ray is here, and it is a blinding light. With storage capacity of 50GB on a single disc, it is much more than just an entertainment breakthrough, it also doubles as an incredible storage medium. The somewhat expensive as a drive Sony BWU200S DVD+/-RW Blu-ray Disc Serial ATA (SATA) Drive has full recording of Blu-Ray as well as DVD and playback. There are cheaper drives that also record.
There are DVD Blu-Ray drives priced all over the map, and many of them are OEM drives only without any software, so when I saw this Corel WinDVD 9 playback software I jumped at it.
I know the future of entertainment is already here with a PC Centric system. Even with components, a PC is increasingly becoming a central device.
DVD Blu Ray players as standalone devices are to be had for not that much money these days, and Blu-Ray players placed in your PC are not far behind in price. The big advantage of the more expensive Blu-Ray recordables in PC's is that they double as an incredible backup and storage device. Of course you would need another Blu-Ray player to recover the data. As I understand it Windows Vista unfortunately does not directly support Blu-Ray. Maybe someone can chime in with comments on that. Seems like we are so close, yet so far.
So what does this Corel WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-Ray player software do for you? It does more than enable Blu-Ray playback on your PC, it also doubles as an enhancer for standard video playback, even standard DVD playback.
I am running Windows XP SP3 on an AMD 3800+ 1GB ram. I am running a concert DVD and in the background is an orchestra. I was curious just how effective the ALL2HD feature worked. So I watched the DVD, and the well lit performer in the front was crystal clear already, so I more or less ignored that, what I concentrated on was the dimly lit orchestra in the background, and as it is with poor lighting, it brings out the weaknesses. So I played the show, and when I could get a really good view of the orchestra, I froze the picture, and in freeze mode, the picture did not fade one iota, then I went into the video menu, and set it to ALL2HD, then when I hit the play button, you could see a marked difference in the resolution. The dimly lit players became instantly more defined, and I could not see any lines of resolution bars in the dimly lit area anymore. I am running a NEC 19" CRT AccuSync 95 with up to 1900 x 1400 lines of resolution, and have it set at 1024 x 768.
So it did clear up dimly lit areas proving that it will enhance even a DVD playback movie. The only problem is that it made the singer appear as if they were lip syncing, because the processing for the video enhancement resulted in a playback delay. Then I discovered the video "Time Stretch" feature built in, and I tweaked the speed just a hair faster, and Wah lah no more delay, the synchronizing was perfect again, and it did not degrade the viewing experience at all. You would not tell the video was ever so slightly speeded up. If you use the time stretch slide bar you can speed up or slow down the video a lot or a little. Kind of a cool tool for jumping over the parts of a rented DVD that you know you aren't interested in, but want to keep an eye on it to be able to see any good parts before returning it to the store. A feature all too oft needed in a sea of less than spectacular movies, blended in with the great ones.
Pertaining to the audio enhancement feature, you can artificially create hall and concert sounds, but to me, someone who is more interested in clear sound, and hearing the nuances of the way the audio engineers spent countless hours mixing, and adjusting it to perfection, I would rather just leave it set to normal, and use the best sound system I can to bring it out. You know the experience, you set it to concert, and the volume drops, and the echo kicks in, and you feel like you are far away from the performer. I like it clean and clear with just the right amount of icing the engineers put in it.
I had no problems running this on Windows XP although I see the problems that Vista is having with this. As I understand it, Windows Vista does not support Blu-Ray directly from Media Center, which is most unfortunate. This Corel WinDVD does support in XP all Blu-ray and HD DVD video encoding formats, such as MPEG-4-AVC (H.264), MPEG-2, and VC1, and it also supports HD Audio technologies from Dolby and DTS. (Some of those are standard XP audio and video fare) All in all I gave it 4 stars because it does enhance weaker video, but I took away a star, (maybe I should have taken away 2) for not working, based on the other reviews in Windows Vista.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very Good Easy to Use Video Playing Software
Comment: A couple years ago Corel bought InterVideo $196,000,000. That's a lotta zeros. Will the investment pay off in 2008, well if WinDVD 9 plus Blu-ray is any indication of what they're going to do with the InterVideo's software, I'd say yes.
Even though your PC comes with a video player, WinDVD 9 plus Blu-ray comes with some great extras you're not going to get otherwise. Like support for Blu-ray movies. They're starting to make laptops with Blu-ray drives, I don't have one yet, but WinDVD 9 plays back your standard DVDs, making them look almost like high def. If you're watching a fast-paced action film, you might not appreciate this so much, but if you're watching anything else, you're going to be amazed.
And one thing they've added to their software that you won't find anywhere else is Smart Stretch. Let's say you're on a plane, the flight's almost over, you're going to land before the movie's finished. With Smart Stretch you can speed up both the audio and video just enough to see the end. Sound hokey, well, maybe a little, but really, would you ever go back to the last five minutes of a movie otherwise?
And it goes without saying that this software supports AVCHD, so you won't have any problems playing back video you've recorded on your camcorder and it also has virtual surround sound that even works if you're using headphones. What more could you ask?
So again, do I think Corel got their moneys worth with all those zeros? Yeah, I think they made a good investment. They bought a good program and made it better.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great little DVD player
Comment: Let me get something straight...you can't physically watch a Blu-Ray DVD without actually owning a Blu-Ray player...i've tried already. It was wishful thinking. For a regular DVD, this is such a great player. Better than the default Windows in terms of appearance and the DVD looks better too. It also plays CDs.
Only thing missing is the ability to save picture snapshots of what you're seeing.
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