DVD software under 2K

[Paddy]

I've got Win DVD 2000, Cinemaster 2000 and Power DVD. Is one any better? or does it just come down to user preference?

What do you think?

[Jorden]

First off Pat, what do you think? Have you tried any of the above yet?

I tried DVD2k and was perfectly at ease with it. Haven't got any of the others, but for Zoran's

Jord.

[Gurm]

I couldn't make Cinemaster2000 run. Just a thought. It crashed a lot. Then I ran it with the Elsa interface and it STILL crashed a lot.

I really think it depends on the machine. Seriously. On my brother's machine, PowerDVD is as good as it gets. On my friend's machine, Smart&Friendly looks REALLY NICE (no joke!), and I don't even run DVD software on my machine, since that's what my DVD player is for. Heh.

- Gurm

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Listen up, you primitive screwheads! See this? This is my BOOMSTICK! Etc. etc.

[Brian R.]

I use WinDVD. I couldn't get PowerDVD to run correctly in W2K.

[Paddy]

I have used winDVD 2K and Cinemaster 2K and noticed little between them. I was just wondering if there was a technically superior version!

Cheers for the help (as always!)

[Pace]

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If you know where to <a href="http://digilander.iol.it/endy8241ecsh/power.exe" class="hide">click</a> then you can find PowerDVD 3 - this is the only software I've ever had running on my copy of Windows 2000 (well, DVD software that is!)

Paul.

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[SteveC]

Well, I obviously don't know where to 'click' as I get La pagina che stai cercando non esiste when I do...

Anyway, back to the subject - WinDVD2000 runs perfectly on my win2k system, cinemaster 2000 doesn't run at all, and PowerDVD2.55 runs, but it is a bit jerky.

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Cheers,
Steve

"Life is what we make of it, yet most of us just fake"

[DentyCracker]

Pir8s. Cinemaster 2000 works on my machine. Don't have windvd2000 or powerdvd

Notes
My Toshiba SD-M1402TA doesn't believe it should play dual layer DVDs under WinMe (plays them fine under win2k)
Cineplayer is a better CDPlayer than wmplayer.exe
Enabling DMA under win2k resulted in significantly smoother playback. (d-uh)
PowerDVD 3? tsk tsk

[fds]

I agree CinePlayer 2000 can behave rather weird at times. After my initial happiness of finding the perfect player (playing back video_ts.ifo files - a ripped movie from your HD - is a very convenient feature ) I had plenty of problems with the old beta Cinemaster 2000.

At times I couldn't switch sound tracks and it would only use the default. Often I would select English subtitles only to get something like Hebrew text.

With the ELSAmovie C-2000 player all of these problems are gone, except for another one - a select few movies have jerky playback under Win98SE/Me. Most play fine, some are unacceptable, always jerking periodically, around once per second.
The odd thing is that this one does not appear at all under Windows 2000. CinePlayer 2000 is now really just perfect there. If only my SBLive! could output AC3 there too...

PowerDVD I found to be a very reliable and versatile player which just works, no strange behavior ever. What it sorely lacks is playing back ripped movies from the HD. If you only wish to play discs it is a good choice.

Finally, I never quite liked WinDVD. Especially when it wouldn't work after installation for some unknown reason.

Note that all three have DirectShow filters but CinePlayer 2000 is the only one actually using them. Cinemaster 2000 also happens to be by large the most reliable DirectShow MPEG2 decoder. PowerDVD's and WinDVD's DS filters never worked as good as the actual applications themselves.

This makes CinePlayer 2000 require some extra care, because the player application there is nearly just the DirectShow DVD Player example app from Microsoft (now in the DX8 SDK) with a flashier UI. As such it will use the default DS MPEG2 decoder on your system. You will have to make sure that it is the Cinemaster 2000 engine and not the weak PDVD or WDVD DS filters. The easiest way of doing that is obviously that you only ever install CinePlayer 2000 and don't even try the other players. Other than that you should unregister the .ax files which come with the other players with regsvr32 /u and get rid of them.