Since I already had the PowerDVDVersionen 11 and 12 installed / did and am largely satisfied, I have to upgrade to PowerDVD 13 Ultra.
If you order the upgrade version directly from CyberLink, then you get the following products currently free on:
- Power2Go 8 Deluxe
- PowerDVD Remote for v.13
- PowerDVD Mobile for Ultra
During the installation of this version, which went smoothly, a previous version is not uninstalled. That must perform even one if necessary. Carrying out an uninstallation, you should not delete the personal settings of course (for this you will be asked), because they are not available in the new version then.
On the positive side, that the loading of Blu-ray has become much faster. Whether Also as previously announced, the picture quality has improved with True HD Theatre, is difficult to judge, because this quality is also dependent on the graphics card, as well as the quality of the DVD or Blu-ray. On my notebook I have at least compared to PowerDVD 12 Ultra found no visible improvement in picture quality, but also no deterioration.
When you start PowerDVD standalone, ie without first inserting a DVD or Blu-ray, then immediately starts the media library PowerDVD and searched the areas My Pictures, My Music and My Videos to receive the content in this library. Although I have a quite powerful notebook (Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz processor, 8GB of memory) affects this store performance significantly. Terminating PowerDVD, this charging process is not completed. This is necessary to stop on the Task Manager. To avoid this, it is best to set immediately after installation, which areas should be included in the media library.
I use only PowerDVD for playing DVDs and Blu-rays. To this end, the new version is an easy-to-use product.
However, for me, regardless of the PowerDVD version, not all Blu-ray playback (this issue I have, for example, in Game of Thrones Season 2, Restless, Dead Silence), which does not necessarily lie in PowerDVD. The same phenomenon I have with Acer Arcade Deluxe (not commercially available, is part of the standard equipment of each Acer notebooks). For both products, I perform regular updates so that AACS may not be the cause. For testing purposes, so I had a 15-day trial version of ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre installed 6 and buy now. Hereby I can turn to play all Blu-rays.
Conclusion:
PowerDVD is no longer the leading product, which it once was when it like I used to play movies for me. Regarding the purchase of such products, I let the moment decide the price.