PowerDVD turns out to be a very capable movie player indeed. As well as Blu-ray discs (it also comes with a plug-in for Windows Media Center users), it played every single video format we threw at it without breaking sweat, including MKVs, AVCHD files and all manner of weird and wonderful native camcorder formats. More importantly, though, HD content that stuttered on our test laptop (1.8GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2GB of RAM) when played back via Windows Media Player and VLC ran smoothly in PowerDVD9.
Another string to PowerDVD's bow is its upscaling of DVDs. Pop a DVD movie into your optical drive and PowerDVD's "TrueTheatre" engine gives you the option to boost the detail and intensity of the picture and smooth out the motion. We're not too sure about the latter, but the detail enhancement works well - we compared the results with our Denon 1920 DVD player, which boasts dedicated, hardware-accelerated upscaling and were impressed. The Denon's output was better, but the picture quality on our laptop from PowerDVD 9 and a DVD wasn't far behind.
Among the software's less useful features is the ability to link up to Moovie Live!, a website that allows you to rate your DVDs and build up a visual library of DVD covers on your computer - the software links up to the website to download information and cover art whenever you play a new DVD, and then adds this information to a browser view. There's also the facility to "remix" DVDs - a feature that allows you to re-edit movies to your own ends, add captions and graphics.
Ignoring the needless frivolities, CyberLink PowerDVD 9 is a powerful movie player. It adds the crucial Blu-ray playback facility, while at the same time improving the video playback capability of your PC. But the price, unfortunately, is the main sticking point: 70 exc VAT strikes us as a bit of a rip-off.
