| Corel WinDVD 9 Plus (Blu-ray) | 
 enlarge | From: Corel
Category: Software
List Price: $99.99
Buy New: $50.00
You Save: $49.99 (50%)
New (26) Used (1) from $50.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  98 reviews
Sales Rank: 268
Format: Cd-rom
Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows Xp
Media: CD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 8 x 2.2
MPN: WD9PLBDENPC
Model: WD9PLBDENPC
UPC: 735163120448
EAN: 0735163120448
ASIN: B0015RTDI2
Release Date: March 28, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Not the best but pretty good!! November 20, 2008
I use macs and windows systems and i like them both but i was lacking of a good player that enables me using my blu ray in a better way... even more because my none of my macs has blus...
I only use it as a player and very satisfied with the loading time and performance, if this is what you're looking for, i gladly recommend it to you.
Blu-ray is cool! This even works in conjunction with a laptop! November 6, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I am always concerned when I add "anything" extra or special to my laptop. Will the software which I am considering ultimately be the final "coup de grace" which sends my whole system over the edge, figuratively? Then where will I be? Sitting helplessly as my laptop swears at me and leaves town once again? I hate that, and it makes me timid. My watchword concerning computers tends to be this: avoid adding anything to a computer you own which is actually in any sort of working order.
We go through laptops like other households go through cheesy poofs, and it's alwas a time consuming mess to get one fixed. And we are always, always doing that, because we have a lot of enthusiastic kids, and they LOVE computers. So...is it surprising when one breaks again? Never, to us.
We even have two laptops with the dreaded Vista. We are desolate when they are temporarily out of commission. Supposedly this program works with Vista. I did not attempt that however, because loading this and breaking everthing was not the point, for the purposes of this review.
I am prefacing this review with all this info because despite the situation here, the idea of Bue-ray availabilty was too tempting to resist. I HAD to try this (ultimately worthwhile) software item on one of our computers.
And guess what: it was worth it! WinDVD9 Plus Blu-ray is great! Its easy to install, easy to use program enables you to make your DVDs look like HD video!
What an astounding difference! The clarity is amazing and incredible.
What's more, you can play both Blu-ray and HD discs. It even supports Dolby True HD and DTS-HD.
It's a wonder!
Corel is a fine company which generally makes products I find excellent. So here you go. If you want to take a chance, as I did, give this a try and see what you think! I am glad we have it!
Good/reasonably price piece of software November 5, 2008
Good playback with plenty of controls for video enhancement plus surround audio. Fairly quick blue-ray loading. Very pleased.
Note: For those of you with dual video cards using analog outputs (VGA/component video), use dualview and put the player in the HDTV side of your desktop so you won't run into the digital copyright protection issue/shutdown.
 WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray Needs a Lot of Work. October 30, 2008
For the past three weeks, to no avail, I am been working on-and-off with several computers to get WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray to work. I thought for sure that my newest computer, a Dell XPS 420 could make WinDVD work because it exceeded the required specs: Minimum CPU Intel Core 2 Quad Processor Q6600 2.40 Ghz (mine was a Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 2/5 Ghz w/6 MB cache and 375W power supply); 256 MB system memory (mine was 3.0 GB); 128 MB VGA RAM (mine was 256 MB); ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card (mine was the Radeon HD 2600 XT). My OS was Vista Ultimate. My Blu-ray was a Blu-ray AND DVD+/-RW,X read/write (PLDS DH-4B1S 4X H/H SATA BD-RE). No dice!
I could get WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray to work on my XP Media Center PC, and I really liked what I saw including the playback features it had, but I was really hoping that I would find a program that could integrate better with my Blu-ray burner/player. Even after cutting-out most of the background programs, I couldn't get WinDVD9 Plus Blu-ray to even load.
As a Vine reviewer, I was given a contact person, and the URL of a web site, to help me if I had any problems. Initially, I thought about using that contact (I did visit the web site and found I had done all that they were were telling people to do if they had problems), but I realize that the average person would not have that sort of service at their finger tips, so I didn't pursue such assistance, but I tried to work through the problems using the help and other information provided with the product. It was all to no avail.
I hope that one day there will be a good program that can help me utilize the full capabilities of my Blu-ray burner, but for now, I am going to have to resign myself to using Power DVD DX that came with my computer.
I game this program two stars because when it worked on my XP computer with a regular DVD, not a Blu-ray, it showed that it had some great features.
Nice video and audio enhancements, but needs a few tweaks and bug fixes October 23, 2008
Overall I was really impressed with Corel WinDVD 9 Plus Blu-ray. It had some very nice features that improved the audio, video, plus some additional cool features.
First off, I love the color enhancements. The presets for LCD, CRT, and Projector were very nice. The projector enhancement darkened the overall picture, but increased the contrast, the LCD improved the brightness. I didn't play too much with the CRT preset because I don't have any CRT monitors at present.
Next, there were some video enhancement features, but I wonder why some were included. I primarily use the "cinema enhancement" in conjunction with the upsampling of regular DVDs. It produced a noticeably crisper, brighter, and detailed picture that the standard settings. There are also options to view in vintage (similar to sepia tone), negative, abstract, and more which I didn't find added anything to any DVD I tried.
Corel WinDVD 9 also has Smart Stretch settings, so at the click of a button you can change for 4:3 to 16:9, or even manually adjust your screen width so your movie will fill the screen completely.
My favorite feature is the time stretch feature. You can adjust the playback speed to go faster or slower depending upon how much time you have to watch the film. I found that 20% faster was just as easy to understand and was a real time saver. Faster speeds worked well too, but I don't expect everyone will enjoy watching a movie any faster than at a 20% increase.
My primary complaint is that the controls, especially the video controls don't work during pause. It would be nice to pause a scene and then make adjustments to get the picture just perfect.
Another really nice feature of Corel WinDVD 9 is the Trimension All2HD which up-scales even better than the standard up-scaling and cinema enhancement offered in the color controls. At first I didn't believe it was making a difference, and then I clicked on "demo mode" which made the left side of my screen "as is" while the right side of my screen showed the picture with Trimension All2HD. The picture difference was stunning, and I would have believed my DVD was a blu-ray even though it was not. I will caution you though that unless you have plenty of RAM, it will be choppy at times. I am running Windows Vista Home Premium SP1, 32-bit operating system with 2 GB of RAM on a 17" HP Pavilion laptop, and although I loved the Trimension All2HD, I had to switch back to standard upsampling (vs. up-scaling) because it was not smooth playback even though the picture was stunning.
This software really shines with the audio controls. This software supports Dolby surround and Dolby Pro Logic movie and music modes, as well as multiple speaker configurations. The hall effects included with this software also has hall effects including Sydney Theater, Chicago Theater, and Broadway Theater. The DSP settings have 17 equalizer modes to suit any type of music, plus custom and default settings.
Overall I'm happy with this software, but I wish I had more RAM to fully utilize the Trimension All2HD up-scaling, and I wish you could pause to see the effects on a still screen. I also found this software crashes much more often than other DVD playback programs, but I'm hoping through software updates they can work out some of those issues. I find if I make too many adjustments that the program just crashes, but now that I know my preferred settings and stick with them it's become more stable.
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