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August 9, 2006 DVD Movies On Your Computer . . . control and features way beyond the usual start, stop, pause, skip forward or skip backward . . . We’ve found a great program for playing DVD movies on your desktop or laptop PC. It’s the newest version of PowerDVD 7 Max (Cyberlink, www.cyberlink.com, $59.99) and offers so many more controls and features than other DVD player programs (such as Windows Media Player) that we know you’ll like it. Lets look.
PowerDVD 7 Max gives you control and features way beyond the usual start, stop, pause, skip forward or skip backward. The control panel display itself comes in five different easily switchable formats to suit your needs. The Dock Mode locks the controls to the bottom of the viewing screen. One click, however, brings up the floating Player Mode display that includes the complete selection of DVD movie functions--and then some. A Wheel Mode provides a compact panel offering the essential controls only, and a cute Mini Mode displays an icon and thumbnail screen on the task bar. Or run your movie Full Screen for greatest enjoyment, and if you need the control panel, just drag the cursor to the bottom of the screen to make it appear. Don’t like the color of the control panel? A click changes it.
You can quickly access the DVD title menu from the control panel to play the movie and, depending on the disk, select special or bonus features, change audio specs or select a scene for starting playback. And, PowerDVD 7 Max includes a cool Bookmark function that allows you to create bookmarks anytime during DVD playback. Once you’ve bookmarked one or many points in the movie, you can use the bookmark menu to go to that bookmark. The Bookmark menu can display your bookmarks as a simple chapter listing or as thumbnail views. Once you’ve bookmarked your favorite scenes or parts of scenes you can access them without having to wade through chapter selections or fast forward or backward. And there’s more: the set of bookmarks is saved so that next time you play that DVD, your bookmarks are available for instant favorite scene selections. More yet: you can copy the bookmark file for that DVD and import it to another computer, so when you play your DVD on the other computer (which needs to be running PowerDVD 7 Max) you have access to your bookmarks. How cool is that? There is also a slider control providing another means of accessing any part of the DVD movie instantly.
PowerDVD 7 Max also can display two subtitles at the same time, and the Read-It-Clearly feature allows you to display subtitles in the black bars at the top or bottom of the screen. The program features an Express Menu that’s easily accessed by right clicking your mouse during playback. This menu features most functions from the various control panels; it also provides another function available only in the Express Menu: Digital Zoom, letting you digitally zoom the display of your DVD 4X or 9X during full screen playback. The zoomed window is movable, so you can zoom in to see what’s going on in any part of the movie scene.
PowerDVD 7 Max also features Smart-Stretch, which allows your widescreen 16:9 ratio movie to fill the screen of your 4:3 monitor, or vice-versa. Another neat feature is the ability to customize your mouse and keyboard for various controls, For example, customize the wheel on your mouse to control DVD playback volume. More cool. Like karaoke? Special DVD karaoke playback options are included, such as direct access to the karaoke menu, selecting one, both or no vocal channels, adjusting pitch and shuffling songs in your playback list. The program supports a wide range of disk players, eight video and a dozen audio formats, including high definition disks and Blu-ray. The program also supports access to media files over emerging UPnP digital home network systems. A range of video and audio controls are customizable to suit your taste or system, such as Image-Enhancing technology to automatically sharpen, brighten and naturalize colors. If you’re watching your movie on a notebook on battery, special power-saving technology is used, along with a tiny battery meter and a See-It-All feature that imperceptibly speeds up playback, if necessary, to insure you can finish the movie before the battery gives out. An optional InterActual Pack is available to unlock InterActual features on compatible DVD disks. The PowerDVD 7 Max complies with Protection Rules for Premium Content, permitting playing of protected files. Once you use PowerDVD 7 Max you won’t want to go back to any other player program--but you do need to pay attention to the system requirements for the best performance. |
You can take a Snapshot of any scene
during playback, pause or step frame. Put the captured snapshot in the clipboard
for use by other programs, capture to a centered or tiled wallpaper or save to a
file. Choose the file capture format (JPG, BMP, GIF, PNG or TIF) for use in your
own application. The snapshots captured to file are numbered sequentially, so
you can capture multiple scenes. A Say-It-Again feature automatically
repeats the last movie scene (including picture, audio and subtitles), so you
can catch what happened without having to stop, rewind and the like. One click
and the movie continues.