Laptop Thoughts: Blu-Ray 3D on Your Laptop with PowerDVD 10?

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Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Blu-Ray 3D on Your Laptop with PowerDVD 10?

Posted by Don Tolson in "Digital Home Software" @ 08:00 AM

The Test Beds

For this review, I downloaded and installed the Ultra version of PowerDVD10. Unfortunately, none of the machines I have available to me are Blu-Ray capable, nor do they have 5.1 or 7.1 audio capabilities, so I wasn't able to test these capabilities. I also don't have a 3D-capable screen just yet, so I wasn't able to view the TrueTheatre 3D emulation, either. Sorry about that.

The main testing machine was my Fujitsu T5010 'convertible' tablet/laptop, that I use at work. It employs an Intel Core Duo T9400 processor running @ 2.53 Ghz and has 4G of RAM, with Windows VISTA. No special graphics processors -- just the onboard Intel internal processor. While not a high-end gaming/media machine, it's probably pretty representative of what is generally available at the laptop level. It came 'standard' with version 7 of PowerDVD installed and, as you'll see later, it was useful to have this available for comparison testing.

I also tested PowerDVD10 Ultra on my home computer, which is an HP Pavilion running an Intel Core2 Quad Q8200 at 2.3 Ghz with 8 G of RAM under Windows 7. The graphics processor is a GeForce 8400GS equivalent.

The Tests

To test PowerDVD, I made use of a number of video clips Jason provided in various formats and sample rates which we normally use to test media playback capabilities on phones. These include:

  • DiVx @ 500, 1000 and 1500 kbps, 320x180 and 640x360;
  • h.264 @ 500, 1000 and 1500 kbps, 320x180 and 640x360; and
  • WMV @ 500, 1000 and 1500 kbps, 320x180 and 640x360.

Yes, I know the resolutions don't really 'push' the graphic capabilities of the typical laptop, but the point was test PowerDVD's ability to handle the formats. It played all of these easily, with no apparent stuttering, skips or stops. Since they were all the same clip of the movie, I was also able to check the audio synchronization and in all cases, the audio matched up perfectly to the video.

Figure 9: Here's a look at the Video tab, which shows all the videos I loaded up from our 'standard' tests. I didn't see any way to get it to list all the video located on the computer, in one list. For some reason, only the WMV files provide length information, possibly because the length info wasn't encoded when Jason created the other formats. Note the icons in the bottom right to create your own video playlist or directly upload a video to YouTube.

Figure 10: The same tab, but using the thumbnail version. Only the WMV files showed thumbnail images.

The next tests included video and audio from a variety of sources:

  • Commercial music DVDs: The Who -- "Kids are Alright" and BareNaked Ladies -- "Talk to the Hand"
  • Home video edited and burned from a DV Camera;
  • A conversion from VHS tape to DVD: "Muppet Treasure Island"; and
  • Commercial music CD: Billy Joel -- "River of Dreams"

For these kinds or reviews, I prefer to use music videos, since you become immediately aware of any synchronization problems between video and audio. With movie soundtracks, you can sometimes miss/forgive slight miscues since you may not notice, or they may be due to editing. In a music video though, this type of miscue would be extremely rare, since sychronization is the whole point.

The tablet/laptop installation was tested first. It turned out to be disappointing, since PowerDVD10 had problems with all of the videos, whether they were commercially produced or home burned. In all cases, the video was jumpy, stuttering, and in some cases, completely stopped for seconds at a time. The audio was also jumpy, but not as bad as the video. I tried it with the TrueTheatre enhancements on and off, but it didn't seem to make any difference. I was beginning to think the video was just too much for the laptop's graphic processor, so I tried exactly the same tests with PowerDVD 7 which came installed with the machine. What do you know? All the tests worked perfectly under v7! No jumping or stuttering at all. The weird thing in all of this is that the BNL video worked well on both version 7 and 10 on the laptop. Not perfect on V10, but only barely perceptible stuttering every once in a while. Very strange.

I then tried all the video tests on the home PC. Here, PowerDVD10 performed flawlessly in every case. No stumbling, stuttering at all, and perfect synchronization. I'm not sure what's happening on the laptop, since it's well within the minimum specs and I'm sure there wasn't anything else running in the background. I retried the tests on both machines and the results have been consistent. All I can think of is that it must be something to do with the processing power required by V10.

Although PowerDVD supports playing of audio CDs, it's clearly not a product focus. While it supports more formats than Windows Media Player, the interface is very simplistic and lacking many of the features we've come to expect from media players. There's no album art, or grouping by artist, album or genre. As with the video tab, there didn't seem to be any way to collect all the music from the entire computer/network, regardless of location. (Maybe you can do that with a Playlist, but I didn't check this out). It does what I would consider an adequate job of playing commercial audio CDs, MP3s and WMA files. The music quality is good, if not a little 'flat' compared to a Zune or an iPod. It seems to be missing some dynamic range.

Figure 11: Here's the Music tab. Pretty simplistic. They could have done a bit more work here to at least include some album art.

Conclusion

So, is this the be-all and do-all home entertainment media interface I was looking for? Well, not quite. The movie interface is good, and the video one would better if there were thumbnails for more formats, but there are other medias (such as TV and Internet Radio) that are missing and the music interface needs a bit of sprucing up, to my mind. PowerDVD is certainly at the cutting edge when it comes to commercially available video, and it feels like it may even be a bit ahead of the market, since we're not quite at the stage of ubiquitous Blu-Ray disk drives, 7.1 Dolby Audio, and 3D capable screens. I don't think it will be long though. For me, this version is also too overloaded with unnecessary social networking attachments. Sorry, I just don't want to share quite that much.

My only other suggestions is that you 'try before you buy', just to make sure it works properly with your hardware.

There is definitely an advantage to running something like PowerDVD over dedicated equipment, in that you have a very capable video player which can (and will!) get upgrades as the technology changes and has new features show up in the industry. With a dedicated player though, you're either gambling that the technology has stabilized or that you're willing to upgrade your machine every couple of years. I am definitely leaning toward the former.

Don is a Solution Architect with Fujitsu Consulting, specializing in Security and Project Value Management. He's been working with PDAs and Smartphones since the early days of the Sharp Wizard, iPAQ and Jornadas. As the Enterprise Mobility lead for North America, he works with clients who want to take their applications that one step further into 'mobility' by putting them right on the corporate phones.

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