Hi!

I got a LG Blu-Ray reader (GGWH20L) that came with a striped down copy of Power DVD 7.3 BD. I've read reviews of Power DVD 9 Ultra and it looks much better than PowerDVD 7.3. But it's really expensive (added with the cost of the LG drive near as much as a standalone Blu-Ray reader). I'm really a n00b when it comes to BD and HDCP so i have some questions before spending around 100$ for a software BD reader.

1 - I'm really not a fan of the pano format but well almost all movies come in this format these days. I rented Underworld this weekend and was dissapointed to see i could not stretch the movie to 16:9 format (to remove the black lines). The options to stretch the movie was there but all grayed out. Is it because i have a striped down (bundled with the LG drive) version of Power DVD ?

2 - I am so far really dissapointed by the picture quality. I'm not an uninformed consumer. I know BD movies are still compressed. I did not expect lossless HD quality but honestly i expected more. People keep telling me that BD movies look far better than HD TV channel like Fox. I did not see any noticable difference while whatching Underworld. When you consider than most TV shows are not really HD but just scaled DVD it's rather dissapointing. It just doesn't fell HD to me it's still blurry like an upscaled DVD (not as much but far from crystal clear i would say CSI Miami rerun on A&E HD looks a little better). I kow because of HDCP BD readers can reduce the resolution on the fly. My TV and video card are both HDCP enabled. I own a Sharp 32" 1080p LCD TV i bought 2 years ago. My video card is a nVidia 8800 GTX. I connect the video card using a DVI to HDMI cable from AR. I wonder if there's a way to know which resolution power DVD is outputting the movie in? Just to be sure.

Ty for the answers.

For those who wonder why 1080p for a 32" TV. Simply because i use it as a monitor for my PC and 1080p is definatly better even at 32" when used as a PC monitor.