Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 Ultra
CyberLink PowerDVD 9 Ultra is my favorite Blu-ray and movie player on the computer with some exceptional features but mainly it just works great movie after movie.
Ease of Use, Performance: 23/25
Look & Feel: 23/25
Features 23/25
How much I enjoy 24/25
Total: 93/100
CyberLink PowerDVD 9 Ultra is the top of the line movie and Blu-ray movie player for your computer that works, and works so well that I would have to highly recommend this as a full time computer software Blu-ray player. While I have checked out the main Blu-ray software competitor in the Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 I find that I prefer using the CyberLink PowerDVD 9 over the ArcSoft player.
The CyberLink PowerDVD 9 Ultra is a full media player that can play movies including Blu-ray and standard DVD’s but does not support the now fading HD-DVD. The prior edition PowerDVD 8 or edition 7 Ultra versions does support the HD-DVD playback but the newest edition does not include it which I can understand.
The CyberLink PowerDVD 9 Ultra includes all the features you could want for a home theatre experience including full 5.1 DTS-HD, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus and TrueHD with 7.1 channel sound support. This software plays back Blu-ray, DVD and DivX formats and just about any movie and audio setup including you will come across on commercially available movies and discs.
PowerDVD 9 Ultra also comes with an upconverting program called TrueTheatre HD which can even use NVIDIA graphics cards to help upgrade video using your graphics processor without taxing your CPU. The program has all kinds of great features that other players have like notebook power setup, screen captures and being able to change the look of the player for a custom fit to your media experience.
The main thing here is that the Ultra edition comes with the most versatility to play Blu-ray movies regardless of the profile and version of Blu-ray. Playing your movies using the PowerDVD is a joy and the program works well from installation to those long movie marathons on the weekends.
Installation went easily and you just have to update the program to make sure you have all the current patches and Blu-ray disc updates. When playing movies occasionally you will have to update the software to include recent changes that are included in Blu-ray movies and the BDLive functionality.
BDLive is an interactive area on the Blu-ray discs that really amounts to some addition games and other things for some movies and from some companies that requires internet access. A few companies like Disney has included some fun games for kids on their Blu-ray movies and Sony has also include some valuable extra content on BDLive but most companies only include additional movie trailers.
Playing both 5.1 and 7.1 surround sound was quite easy and setting this up in your settings page is pretty simple and unconfusing. You just find the settings for how many speakers you have such as 8 for 7.1 surround sound or 6 for 5.1 surround sound which is a bit odd but easy to figure out.
Once you have updated and setup things like speakers you can start playing movies right off the bat as long as you have the appropriate drive. I used the Lite-On 4X inexpensive Blu-ray drive as well as the much better Plextor PX-B320SA Blu-ray drive for playing my movies which worked out well for both drives.
I had virtually no problems playing the Blu-ray and regular movies using the drives and was very happy that I did not have any problems with the player crashing during payback. On a few occasions the ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 would somehow fail and I would have to restart the program to continue watching the movie.
This only happened on occasion and not for every movie but it can be annoying to have to search for the spot you left off in your movie. With the CyberLink PowerDVD 9 I had no problems and never had it fail during playback and was very happy with both movie playback and all other aspects of the player such as the TrueTheatre HD features.
I think the only other feature that makes much sense for concern in a movie player other than how well it plays Blu-ray and regular DVD, surround sound and encoder support is the upconverting of standard DVD’s. The TrueTheatre HD is a part of the program that cleans up and converts the standard video to make it better and more like high definition.
The feature is available on the settings page for setup and you can easily use the Auto Adjustment for a simple good looking high definition movie but you can adjust the sharpness and brightness independently. You can also compare the standard version with enhanced view in a side by side or split screen view to see how much difference there is from standard to enhanced.
The TrueTheatre works very well and I have it set to use all the time for standard DVD’s as they do look much better with it on but you can see for yourself in my included screenshot. Dirty Jobs, does look better with clearer and more in focus video and better color from the programs enhancement.
Standard & Enhanced Video
I did adjust and play with the settings and found the Auto Adjustment did work well for viewing pleasure and the hardware acceleration that needs to be off when using the TrueTheatre does not make much of a difference. Hardware acceleration uses the video card to decode video instead of using only the CPU so your system is split better for work load management.
When the TrueTheatre is on you need to turn off the hardware acceleration so the program can manage the video on its own using both the CPU and the video card of your system. TrueTheatre also stretches a display to 16:10 so that no matter the size of content from your computer it will stretch to a widescreen with minimal distortion according to the display connected.
Other features of TrueTheatre is the TrueTheatre Motion that adds frames to your movie so the action is smoother which is slightly noticeable in some situations. Mostly you don’t notice it other than as a smoother video that is more enjoyable as the frame rates are higher so there are more frames of the video in any given amount of video.
The sound as well gets some enhancement from TrueTheatre by trying to get it to sound much more like surround sound for stereo sound. This works pretty well but as you can imagine for audio that is not 7.1 working with stereo and trying to upconvert it to surround can only work so well.
The audio upconverting works pretty well but it usually only puts some sound to other speakers and not really splits audio so that surround works as it was designed. Surround sound works by having various sounds and effects on different speakers as well as moving effects going from one speaker to others so that sound that is moving sounds like it is on your home theatre speakers as well.
Cinema View
The system works pretty well but does not really get sounds to move from one speaker to another as true surround sound does but it does put some sound on other speakers even though it is combined. The TrueTheatre Surround does a good enough job creating a surround sound field but this is something that I would not put too much confidence in for any companies feature in a Blu-ray software package.
TrueTheatre in all its different features works very well and I am impressed with the video and motion as well as sound that creates a better entertainment experience from your standard content. PowerDVD 9 Ultra does have the usual playback of AAC audio and DivX as well as other formats, changing the playing panel and even the MoovieLive feature for movie fans to rate and chat about their favorites in the entertainment world but these are often extras that go unnoticed until your movies are playing well.
Cyberlink’s PowerDVD 9 Ultra works really well and is my top pick for standard DVD and Blu-ray movies right now until something better comes along, which is not very likely. Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 Ultra is the best software Blu-ray movie player for the PC that I have worked with and one I can easily recommend for the full version.