Introduction

    With the spread of DVD (that’ll soon bury our old VHS tapes) and the unprecedented expansion of multimedia computer sales, most users now have a computer that can read DVD movies. If the need to have a MPEG 2 hardware decoder is now useless thanks to today’s powerful computers, you still need good MPEG 2 software player to watch your favourite movies. In that domain PowerDVD the flagship software from the Taiwanese manufacturer Cyberlink has always been the undeniable reference: fast, features rich, reliable, have been the master words of the software over the past years. WSKA, the European distributor of PowerDVD sent us the new release 3.0 of this kick-ass software for review.

Setup

    Installing PowerDVD 3.0 is a breeze; despite you have to type a long serial key to unlock the setup. After files are copied on your computer you’re prompted to reboot your computer in order the changes take effects. The reboot is required to correctly register the new MPEG 2 software decoder with the Windows Media architecture. When the computer will have rebooted the diagnostic program will start to help you better configure your DVD-Rom drives for optimal performances. The program is aimed to enable DMA transfer mode to beef up performance, however on our test system, the diagnostic module failed to detect that our drives were already in DMA mode using the Intel Ultra DMA drivers and kept prompting us to enable the DMA mode. Once you’ve tweaked correctly the settings of your DVD-Rom drives the software launches Internet Explorer (or every other browser) so you can register with Cyberlink in order to get advantages of free updates, rebates and other promotions. Now, well, the hardest task is to find the DVD you want to watch but anyway this should be feasible.