Last November, I bought an HTPC and a Plextor external Blu-Ray drive which came with PowerDVD 9, and I succumbed to the prompts to upgrade it to 10 (though it still pops up offers to upgrade to their media suite package or some such).
For a while, it's been okay except for the occasional failure to pick up where it left off (I've tried bookmarking, but since the bookmarks are kept per-dvd, if it doesn't offer to resume, the bookmarks are gone as well). I haven't figured out what triggers that failure, but recently it has been getting stuck on a black screen instead of properly playing discs. It's possible that installing a pre-release version of the iWin Games Manager, plus Jewel Quest Online Party and Wordscape Online Party caused the second failure to start happening, but I'm not sure.
I had VLC player already installed, so I was able to use that to avoid the black-screen problem, but setting bookmarks is challenging in that one, since the "Manage Bookmarks" dialog disappears when the cursor moves out of it (at least in fullscreen mode). Also, I can't confirm that it saves the bookmarks between launches. On a side note, I liked the bookmark handling in PowerDVD 9 better, since it could be done on a pure keyboard without using a pointing device, but I think it was susceptible to the same bookmark loss problem.
Sometimes I watch anime on my gaming rig in my bedroom using Media Player Classic Home Cinema (as installed with the Combined Community Codec Pack), but that wouldn't cut it for the HTPC, because my family often rents other DVDs that have closed captions but not subtitles, because MPCHC doesn't support closed captions. (the most recent example of a disc where we wanted the closed captions instead of subtitles was a Star Trek series disc that had closed captions in English, but only Spanish and French for the subtitles)
If there is a way to make PowerDVD work better, or should I switch to something different? I don't insist that it be free software, as long as I can be sure ahead of time that it will do what I want it to (possibly by letting someone else who already has the software confirm it). Here are the features I'm looking for (some of which might help explain why I bought an HTPC instead of a straight blu-ray player):
1. Automatic aspect ratio adjustment (some dvds are written for 4:3 aspect, some are written for 16:9 - and before you jump on me about some having 2.35:1 or other aspect ratios, those are actually letterboxed to fit into 4:3 or 16:9)
2. Closed caption support (without requiring 480i output which would make the TV show the captions - the current TV doesn't detect the aspect ratio from the disc being played, though I've read there are some that can)
3. Resume capability of some sort - manually set bookmarks/favorites like MPCHC are okay, being able to set them with just the keyboard would be a mild bonus, but automatically remembering my position (at least for the last several discs) would be best.
4. Blu-Ray playback ability (can be a separate program than what I use for DVDs if necessary, as the first two items don't apply; I've read that some blu-ray discs refuse to support arbitrary stop/resume points, but that's only appropriate for games, rather than movies or tv series on blu-ray; if there are any movies on blu-ray with such a restriction, I will seek to avoid them or get the DVD instead)
For a while, it's been okay except for the occasional failure to pick up where it left off (I've tried bookmarking, but since the bookmarks are kept per-dvd, if it doesn't offer to resume, the bookmarks are gone as well). I haven't figured out what triggers that failure, but recently it has been getting stuck on a black screen instead of properly playing discs. It's possible that installing a pre-release version of the iWin Games Manager, plus Jewel Quest Online Party and Wordscape Online Party caused the second failure to start happening, but I'm not sure.
I had VLC player already installed, so I was able to use that to avoid the black-screen problem, but setting bookmarks is challenging in that one, since the "Manage Bookmarks" dialog disappears when the cursor moves out of it (at least in fullscreen mode). Also, I can't confirm that it saves the bookmarks between launches. On a side note, I liked the bookmark handling in PowerDVD 9 better, since it could be done on a pure keyboard without using a pointing device, but I think it was susceptible to the same bookmark loss problem.
Sometimes I watch anime on my gaming rig in my bedroom using Media Player Classic Home Cinema (as installed with the Combined Community Codec Pack), but that wouldn't cut it for the HTPC, because my family often rents other DVDs that have closed captions but not subtitles, because MPCHC doesn't support closed captions. (the most recent example of a disc where we wanted the closed captions instead of subtitles was a Star Trek series disc that had closed captions in English, but only Spanish and French for the subtitles)
If there is a way to make PowerDVD work better, or should I switch to something different? I don't insist that it be free software, as long as I can be sure ahead of time that it will do what I want it to (possibly by letting someone else who already has the software confirm it). Here are the features I'm looking for (some of which might help explain why I bought an HTPC instead of a straight blu-ray player):
1. Automatic aspect ratio adjustment (some dvds are written for 4:3 aspect, some are written for 16:9 - and before you jump on me about some having 2.35:1 or other aspect ratios, those are actually letterboxed to fit into 4:3 or 16:9)
2. Closed caption support (without requiring 480i output which would make the TV show the captions - the current TV doesn't detect the aspect ratio from the disc being played, though I've read there are some that can)
3. Resume capability of some sort - manually set bookmarks/favorites like MPCHC are okay, being able to set them with just the keyboard would be a mild bonus, but automatically remembering my position (at least for the last several discs) would be best.
4. Blu-Ray playback ability (can be a separate program than what I use for DVDs if necessary, as the first two items don't apply; I've read that some blu-ray discs refuse to support arbitrary stop/resume points, but that's only appropriate for games, rather than movies or tv series on blu-ray; if there are any movies on blu-ray with such a restriction, I will seek to avoid them or get the DVD instead)