Feature Set:  

We found PowerDVD to be the most versatile program on the market. We've listed a few of our favorite feature perks below.

One of PowerDVD’s newest features is Fancy View. Utilizing PowerDVD’s Smart Navigation, Fancy View allows you to navigate your movies in an animate rolodex sort of way. This feature’s navigation is very similar to Apple and iTunes “Cover Flow.”

One of our favorite and most unique features of PowerDVD is their online movie community, MoovieLive. Using PowerDVD’s Movie Collection organization functionality you can share/display your collection of DVDs and Blu-rays with the MoovieLive community. Here you can add ratings and reviews to movies you’ve seen; share movie remixes; and edit film information like cast or trivia. It’s like a special social network for movie lovers and PowerDVD owners.

With regards to play back, PowerDVD automatically adapts the video to your specific monitor or screen size. This stretching technology means you'll have no more annoying black spaces, just optimal picture with the best ratio for your screen.

Unlike most DVD player software, PowerDVD can play movies directly from your hard drive; simply select the movie folder and press OK. There is also a time-saving shortcut that lets you access video object files (VOB files) through Windows Explorer; just drag the VOB file directly into the screen to begin the movie automatically. This is great for watching home videos ripped directly from your MiniDVD discs. Common media players like Windows Media Player cannot read VOB files.

You can program your mouse or computer keyboard to perform common commands like chapter selection, volume control, fast reverse/forward and more.

PowerDVD includes convenient mobile power settings for notebook computers. When you watch a movie on a notebook computer in battery mode, PowerDVD will balance your power usage to allow the movie to continue to play through to the end. Although you'll experience a slight loss of performance, your movie will not be interrupted by a dead battery. Or, you can preset your battery-saving settings; this allows you to automatically terminate the movie when the battery level reaches a certain percent so that you can preserve your battery power for other tasks.