Hawk’s Babble-Log

I came across some software which has inspired me to blog about just how badly it sucks. It’s called PowerDVD. It is truly terrible.

Normally, when I come across some software which isn’t very good, I’ll just search around for something better and uninstall the old stuff. But PowerDVD is so truly bad, that I must write a quick blog article on it right now.

Let me start from the beginning. I just recently purchased a nice little Blu-Ray burner for my gaming machine. It has always been my goal to turn my gaming machine into a complete entertainment center. With the addition of this Blu-Ray burner, and my hi-res widescreen monitor, that’s now done and complete. Well, almost. I still need the software which can play the Blu-Ray movie I bought.

That’s where PowerDVD comes in. It came with the drive, on a CD in an envelope with a hole in it so I could see what was on the disc (they don’t even bother to glue a plastic window in the envelope any more).

No special drivers are required for Windows XP to use the drive, so this disc contained software on making Blu-Ray discs, backups, authoring, etc. PowerDVD was among the software packages, and I installed it.

The good news is that it actually installed. The bad news is that it doesn’t work at all. It doesn’t play Blu-Ray discs! It tries, then it fails. In fact, it did play me the “5 YEARS IN PRISON FOR PIRACY” screen (like that’s going to do anything about piracy), and it did play the Warner Bros intro, but when it came time to play the movie… well, no. It stopped right there. Black screen. Nadda.

It’s not that the program crashed because it sucks, it’s that the program stops in it’s tracks and stops responding when you try and play a Blu-Ray video. That’s why it sucks. The whole reason for building a program like this is to play movies!

I force-closed it and tried it again. A small window appeared in the lower-right corner of my screen, mentioned something about an upgrade. Ooo! An upgrade for PowerDVD! That’ll fix it! They must have shipped a version which doesn’t do anything so that they could fix it later with an update.

So I clicked on the update and it downloaded. I then ran the PowerDVD update. The first thing it did was uninstall my current PowerDVD, then began installing the new one. Before it could get very far, it crashed with an unhandled exception, and I was looking at my desktop wallpaper again. This is also why PowerDVD sucks ass. Even their updater fails.

So I ran the updater again, and it said that it could not run because I didn’t have a copy of PowerDVD! This is yet another reason why PowerDVD sucks ass.

So I deleted the non-functional updater and tried to install PowerDVD again. It wouldn’t, as it said I already had installed it! This is yet another reason why PowerDVD sucks ass!

Okay, so I go to my Control Panel, Add-Remove programs, and uninstall the there-but-not-there PowerDVD. It does, actually, uninstall. Then I pop in the disc that came with the drive, re-install PowerDVD again, and try to play my Blu-Ray disc again. Nadda. Nothing. The program freezes and won’t respond after that. I have to force-close it using the Task Manager.

And get this… all throughout the install and part of the upgrade (and in the config), PowerDVD is trying to sell me their paid version! Like I’d pay for it?!? What kind of masochist do they think I am? I pay for free software, if I like it and if it works. Why would I pay for software which doesn’t work???

Once more, just for good measure: PowerDVD SUCKS ASS!

[deep breath] Okay, it’s out of my system now. [deep breath]

So… Now I’m looking for any other software package which can play Blu-Ray movies. Anyone have any suggestions?