I have WinDVD 4, PowerDVD XP 4, CoolDVD, TheaterTek, Zoom Player and more recently Sonic Player 1.5
If your home projector setup requires picture movement then TheaterTek and Zoom Player are the only way to go, although out of all the commercial dvd players I like Sonic Player 1.5 the most but PowerDVD XP 4 comes a close second.
To be honest out of all front ends, Zoom Player is head and shoulders above them all. Things are afoot to make Zoom Player more user friendly, as for most new users the preferences screen is overwhelming. The great thing about Zoom Player is once you have configured it how you want it then there is not much else to worry about .
At the moment Im using Zoom Player with Sonic 1.5 Video filter with the ffdshow sharpening filter which makes some DVD's look like superbit and WinDVD audio filter, although sometimes I use the powerdvd audio filter as thats pretty good too. The sonic 1.5 audio filter will soon be given the make over treatment..cant wait for that!. I love the fact that Zoom Player can play trailers at the start and a personalized intro (if you have one) for your home theatre, and if you like it then donate some money to Blight with what you feel its worth.
Under the DVD section you can select from a list of filter graphs that various people have made including Blight for pretty much every video/audio/output combination. It also handles the registering of the filters when you first decide on what combination you want...
There should be some more filter graphs added perhaps in the future for ffdshow, although you can easily make one yourself
Originally posted by jrwood Under the DVD section you can select from a list of filter graphs that various people have made including Blight for pretty much every video/audio/output combination. It also handles the registering of the filters when you first decide on what combination you want...
There should be some more filter graphs added perhaps in the future for ffdshow, although you can easily make one yourself
Do you mean can you just buy the filter pack from cyberlink?, not sure I think you can although I got the full package free with a laptop I bought.
When you install DVD software most of it is just a 'front end' to the video.dll and audio.dll filters. The video.dll and audio.dll filters handle the work of displaying the DVD movie and providing audio output. So think of the filters as codecs really, as thats what they are. If you installed the XP filter pack from cineplayer (sonic) then you could use those directshow filters (codecs) with any front end like Windows Media Player or Zoom Player.
If you install say 3 different kinds of DVD software like WinDVD,PowerDVD and Sonic DVD 1.5 then sometimes you can get conflicts occuring, this is where Zoom Players DVD filter options comes in to play. You just select from the options 'unregister all filters' and it scans your hard disk for the dscinemastervideo.dll/dscinemasteraudio.dll, iviaudio.ax/ivivideo.ax/powerdvdaudio.dll/powerdvdvideo.dll or whatever they are called and unregisterers these DVD playing filters (codecs). Then you can choose from the large list of manual filters what you want to 'register' so when DVD's are played the 'front end player' automatically uses those video/audio filters (codecs).
I've tried WinDVD, PowerDVD and cineplayer and found the following :- only got DD5.1 out of WinDVD and PowerDVD. PowerDVD had the worst picture quality (8x8 pixel 'grid' clearly visible on flat colour areas), WinDVD has lip sync problems on PAL software. Zoomplayer makes the picture jerk as well so don't use that (none of the other players have this stutter).
ATI player 5 from the mmc 7.5 or later for the video filter, and WinDVD2.8 or later for audio with Zoomplayer.
Most all dvds play fine with excellent picture quality and full DD/DTS etc pass through.
If you install the ATI player, don't run it as this can permanently disable the spdiff out for anything other than DPL. Just install WinDVD with it and Zoom player. Use WinDVD with YXY for those DVDs that may give problems in Zoom (normaly sound issues).
Everyone should checkout the ffdshow with zoomplayer (quite easy to make your own custom filter), makes DVD's and offline encoded movies look fantastic.