PowerDVD 8.0 Ultra Released!

[XxDeadlyxX]

Is anyone having problems with PDVD8 and Data Execution Provention? Sometimes when skipping chapters or doing whatever, PDVD8 crashes due to DEP.

 

[andy o]

PowerDVD 7.3 already did that, but I believe it didn't decode the "MA" part, only the "HD" part. For me this is sufficient, I probably will never notice the difference anyway.

Are you implying that the DTS MA tracks have three layers of audio? The "core", a DTS-HD layer, and top it off with a "MA" layer adding the lossless stuff? I don't see a reason for that, since the "core" is just for backward compatibility reasons, and DTS-HD and MA are same generation and come together in most equipment. From what I understood it was that the DTS-HD and MA both had a "core" DTS, which is 5.1 only.

 

[SamuriHL]

Is anyone having problems with PDVD8 and Data Execution Provention? Sometimes when skipping chapters or doing whatever, PDVD8 crashes due to DEP.

Uh, nope, haven't seen that.

 

[andy o]

My CBII only got 5.1 set up. Looking for an excuse to upgrade V8 now

Can PDVD8 DTS-HD MA support on a 5.1 set up?

MA support is not dependent of number of channels. Most MA tracks out right now are still 5.1, and from my experience 5.1-to-7.1 virtualization is effective, since virtualizing a speaker between other two (as in a center channel) is far easier than virtualizing, say, the back speakers from the front ones. C-Media-based cards that have the 7.1 Speaker Shifter virtualizer work excellently with 5.1 setups. They won't mess with the 5.1 signal, but will take the two back surround channels and virtualize them from your side surrounds. You'll need to set 8-channel input in the Vista drivers, and 5.1 channel output.

Oh, and what is a CBII? Maybe I missed something before.

The only reason I can come up with is that you'll be the first kid on the block to get the new toy.

I have 7.1 analog capability on my current receiver but I'm waiting for HDMI 7.1 digital before I go there. I can count on one hand the number of movies I've seen in a theater that have impressed me with their sound.

The movies that stick out in my mind are Midway and Terminator 2. I think the reasons for this are that most studios don't want to pay the extra cost to record good 7.1 and most theaters turn down the surround volume so low that you can't hear the extra channels.

Since the advent of HD DVD and Blu-ray, I've pretty much quit going to the movies because the experience is better at home on my 70" Sony SXRD.

As far as I know, most movies in theaters are 5.1 Dolby Digital and DTS, and the only 7.1-capable theater format is SDDS, which I think it's only a minority of theaters that use it. So we should be able to get better audio now at home with the new HD-disc audio formats.

 

[w1seman]

Well, like most other ppl here, I'm pretty p!ssed off with CL at the moment for the same reason as others here so I thought give Total media another go and take advantage of their half price offer.

I can only say WOW, this player has certainly improved so much, testing so far hasn't been extensive but I'm well impressed with what I have tested.

ISOs wouldn't work with VCD so I installed DT light and they play no problem with that. Picture quality is easily on par with PDVD, unlike CL they haven't removed HD DVD playback and R2 Yuma also plays with full menu navigation which it doesn't with PDVD.

I use Vista32 which seems to have the most support at the moment.

Anyway I thought I'd share my experience as today is the last day to take advantage of the half price offer, for just less than £30 UKP i'm well happy.

btw, half price offer code is 'fool08'

Cannot agree on what u state.

I'm watching on a 3 meters wide screen, sitting 4 meters away. PQ of TMT and SQ is nowhere near that of PDVD8. Despite the "fact" that TMT offers full 24/96 support on AUdio, PDVD8 sounds much better.

Regarding PQ, TMT fails every resolution test I made with it so far. Its not possible to display 1 pixel lines, it will only display a grey area!

As much as I hoped to find a better product with the 50% off offer, as much do I have to say that this product cannot match with PDVD8 superior PQ and SQ.

Regards

 

[James]

ISOs wouldn't work with VCD so I installed DT light and they play no problem with that.

huh? This is pretty much the only thing that worked. What VCD version?

 

[James]

Are you people sure, that PDVD8 has DTS-HD MA support? I am asking, because the Cyberlink Website does *not* mention it (only DTS HD).

 

[SuperGoof]

huh? This is pretty much the only thing that worked. What VCD version?

I also uninstalled VCD couple of months ago after I found that PowerDVD does not play BD .isos mounted with it (I tried it both with AnyDVD enabled on mounted drive and disabled as well). It was the latest version. I'm pretty sure that last year (about a year ago) PowerDVD could play BD images mounted with VCD (it was previous version). I don't use .isos that much though. Only experimenting with them from time to time.

 

[w1seman]

Are you people sure, that PDVD8 has DTS-HD MA support? I am asking, because the Cyberlink Website does *not* mention it (only DTS HD).

Well thats a difficult to answer question, as we do not have an inside in the code of PDVD8

BUt as far as what I hear and see, yes, it has true DTS-HD MA support.

1. The DTS-HD MA logo is on the start screen, its not on PDVD7
2. It recognises the DTS-HD MA stream as DTS-HD MAster Audio in the Information window
3. DTS-HD MA sounds much better than on PDVD7
4. PDVD8 now plays real 7.1 dicrete channels

So I'm pretty sure they do supprt the full signal, but still of course downsampling it to 16/48

 

[andy o]

huh? This is pretty much the only thing that worked. What VCD version?

Ha! For a moment there I thought you were talking about Video CDs, which seems about right anyway.

Are you people sure, that PDVD8 has DTS-HD MA support? I am asking, because the Cyberlink Website does *not* mention it (only DTS HD).

The MA logo was in the beta, and I think it is also there in the retail version. I think there's some confusion where companies don't care to distinguish between "DTS-HD" and "DTS-HD MA". I think DTS made a poor name choice there. Dolby TrueHD clearly sets itself apart from DD and DD+.

But my point was that, unless DTS-HD MA is a triple-layered format (read my post above), then 7.1 audio from DTS-HD MA 7.1 tracks would be a good indicator that DTS-HD MA is being decoded.

 

[XxDeadlyxX]

Uh, nope, haven't seen that.

Phew, I figured out what was causing it. It seems PDVD8 doesn't like D3DOverrider AT ALL... PDVD8 will crash 50% of the time on certain movies with it enabled. With D3DOverrider not running, PDVD8 runs fine.

At first I thought it was an issue with running PDVD7 and PDVD8 together, but I installed PDVD8 by itself and it still did it, and D3DOverrider was giving me troubles to begin with by not letting movies even play in PDVD8 when a certain setting was enabled, so I was suspicious it was the cause of this problem as well, luckily I was right. There's nothing worse than random crashes for no reason.

 

[davinleeds]

Cannot agree on what u state.

I'm watching on a 3 meters wide screen, sitting 4 meters away. PQ of TMT and SQ is nowhere near that of PDVD8. Despite the "fact" that TMT offers full 24/96 support on AUdio, PDVD8 sounds much better.

Regarding PQ, TMT fails every resolution test I made with it so far. Its not possible to display 1 pixel lines, it will only display a grey area!

As much as I hoped to find a better product with the 50% off offer, as much do I have to say that this product cannot match with PDVD8 superior PQ and SQ.

Regards

I'm interested in what you used for testing. I used DVE HD BASICS on TMT and I had no pixel display failures. My projector is 720p.

 

[James]

4. PDVD8 now plays real 7.1 dicrete channels

PDVD7 did that, too. DTS-HD 7.1 tracks played from all 8 channels (Output mode set to "No Effect", of course...)

So I'm pretty sure they do support the full signal, but still of course downsampling it to 16/48

Oh, no! I thought the downsampling is over!
BTW, did they fix the Dolby PL IIx bug from PDVD7 (wrong channel assignment with 2 channel sources)?

 

[James]

I also uninstalled VCD couple of months ago after I found that PowerDVD does not play BD .isos mounted with it (I tried it both with AnyDVD enabled on mounted drive and disabled as well). It was the latest version.

Latest? The current beta?

http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=15111

- New: Supports playback of HD-DVD & Blu-ray images in PowerDVD

(and from my testing, TMT)

 

[w1seman]

PDVD7 did that, too. DTS-HD 7.1 tracks played from all 8 channels (Output mode set to "No Effect", of course...)

Sorry, but thats simply not possible with PDVD7!
PDVD7 has only a 6 channel decoding capability (click on about in the context menu to see that)
When I playback Herbert Grönemeyer HD-DVD DTS-HD MA 7.1 or The Ghost From Mae Nak DTS-HD MA 7.1 I only get 5.1 output.

If I playback the reauthored BD Discs of the same content with PDVD8 I get true 7.1 output.

PDVD7 didn't ever had a 8 channel decoder.

Regards

 

[Humpa]

Oh, no! I thought the downsampling is over!
BTW, did they fix the Dolby PL IIx bug from PDVD7 (wrong channel assignment with 2 channel sources)?

I thought PVD8 would not downsample over HDMI but still downsamples over analog.
Is there a true HDMI audio or video card yet?
Will this work on XP too?
Is the no-downsampling-over-hdmi already included on PVD8, or was it going to be added in an update?

 

[Adbear]

Sorry, but thats simply not possible with PDVD7!
PDVD7 has only a 6 channel decoding capability (click on about in the context menu to see that)
When I playback Herbert Grönemeyer HD-DVD DTS-HD MA 7.1 or The Ghost From Mae Nak DTS-HD MA 7.1 I only get 5.1 output.

If I playback the reauthored BD Discs of the same content with PDVD8 I get true 7.1 output.

PDVD7 didn't ever had a 8 channel decoder.

Regards

PowerDVD 8 says exactly the same thing in that menu that it only has a 6 channel decoder so if it's wrong in 1 it can be wrong in both

 

[w1seman]

PowerDVD 8 says exactly the same thing in that menu that it only has a 6 channel decoder so if it's wrong in 1 it can be wrong in both

Thats only true when you don't play a HD-Audio stream.
Go in that "about" screen when a DTS-HD MA track with 7.1 is runnning.
Do that in PDVD7 and it still says "Audio Decoder Capability: 6"
Do that now in PDVD8 and it clearly says "Audio Decoder Capability: 8"
It seems that PDVD8 uses a special decoder for the HD-Audio material.
My soundcard control window also clearly only shows 6 channel output with PDVD7 whereas it shows 8 channel (full discrete!) output with PDVD8!

So again, PDVD7 cannot decode any 7.1 audio track to a true discrete 8 channel output.
PDVD8 can and does decode 8 channel Audio, which is a totally new feature.

 

[SuperGoof]

Latest? The current beta?

http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=15111

- New: Supports playback of HD-DVD & Blu-ray images in PowerDVD

(and from my testing, TMT)

No, I did not know about this one. I will certainly test it. Thanks!

Now if you only add "virtual image" feature to VCD. That would be great!

 

[SamuriHL]

Phew, I figured out what was causing it. It seems PDVD8 doesn't like D3DOverrider AT ALL... PDVD8 will crash 50% of the time on certain movies with it enabled. With D3DOverrider not running, PDVD8 runs fine.

At first I thought it was an issue with running PDVD7 and PDVD8 together, but I installed PDVD8 by itself and it still did it, and D3DOverrider was giving me troubles to begin with by not letting movies even play in PDVD8 when a certain setting was enabled, so I was suspicious it was the cause of this problem as well, luckily I was right. There's nothing worse than random crashes for no reason.

Not sure what D3DOverrider is, but, I'm glad you found the issue. I've had no issue with 7 and 8 side by side. We watched Enchanted in 8 last night and I was playing around with I, Robot as well. So far I do feel that 8 is better than 7 in many ways. Just wish they hadn't ripped out HD DVD support.