Karaoke features are also included for karaoke-fans, with pitch control, as well as the standard vocal options - a lot of standalone DVD players that have karaoke functions have these features as well. There are also environment processing options, such as the late night mode, also a favorite of home theatre amp/receivers.
There are also DSP effects, which are like the type of effects you get on home theatre amp/receivers (eg. Most Creative sound cards, which are still the most popular consumer level sound cards, are supported. 4, 6 and now 8 channels of audio are supported, although one 8 channel card is supported (also because there aren't that many 8 channels cards on the market yet). Gamma correction and color adjustments are only available in WinDVD 4 Plus.Īudio quality has been improved with the addition of SRS "Dialog Clarity" and "TruBass" processing.
When NTSC (US) movies are transferred from film to PAL DVDs, the playback speed will actually be 4% faster than normal (NTSC 30 FPS converted to 24 FPS using 3/2 pulldown, and this 24 FPS movie is played back at 25 FPS - hence the 4% speed increase).Ī similar feature that was previously available in WinDVD 3.0 is time stretching playback, which allows you to playback a movie either faster or slower, but with the audio's pitch unchanged (just the playback speed) - you'll have to see it to believe it, but it works quite well.
"Video Desktop" may not be very practical (if you have multiple windows open, your desktop is most likely blocked out), but at the very least it makes an interesting screensaver/desktop background.Īs previously mentioned in the What's New page, there is also a new playback mode called "PAL TruSpeed", which plays back PAL DVDs at their right speed. There is also the new and exciting "Video Desktop" mode, which allows you to playback the DVD as the background image of your Windows desktop - so for those who have called for animated Windows desktop backgrounds, your wish has (sort of) come true. "Always on top" mode has been added, which was one of those options a lot of people requested. I would expect most forms of Motion Compensation and some forms of iDCT are supported, along the lines of PowerDVD. it does not include GeForce4), so it isn't easy to say which card is supported. The graphics acceleration support documentation has not been updated (eg. WinDVD does makes up for it's greater CPU usage in greater quality visuals, especially picture sharpness - but this will greatly depend on your graphics hardware, as each decode is optimized for different types of graphics card. On 1000 MHz systems, there is almost no difference between WinDVD 4 and Cyberlink PowerDVD 4.0's decoder, however, on lower end systems, PowerDVD still comes out ahead efficiency wise. With modern CPU, the efficiency of the decoder is becoming less of a problem. Contrast also seems to be better in WinDVD.
WinDVD does seem to be less blurry than PowerDVD in full screen mode, which is related to scaling and how each software DVD player implements it.
Some people might actually experience better quality on PowerDVD, but most should be able to get the highest quality from WinDVD (at the expense of performance, of course). Of course, this is dependent on your graphics card and settings, rather than directly on the Video decoder. Video quality remains high, just like the previous version of WinDVD.
Information/Reviewīelow is a review for the latest version of WinDVD.īelow is the specs for the test system used : For the latest review, please refer to this page. Of 24: Full Review of WinDVD 4.0 Note : This is an archived review for an older version of WinDVD.