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It's unclear why responders avoid explaining what personal data on our PC's is being transmitted, or to whom, or show zero concern about it. The thread is the results of my TEST, not listed anywhere as a REPORT, to help those interested in protecting of our children, their PRIVACY, and that of our families.
I have two daughters with several cell videos and other data stored on our server. At my age, there's a certain level of trust and expectations when using a product as intended. However, had I not tested v13, I wouldn't have known about the constant movement of OUR data or taken steps to stop it.
The personal attacks show a lack of appreciation for the several hours I spent trying to figure this out.....or the sharing of those results. For those of you that do "Get It", I'm glad I could help.
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We've been using PDVD since version 9 and our family likes it, especially playlists. However, during installation of v12 last year it started to scan every movie, picture, and music file on our computer. It wouldn't allow me to delete the "Video" folder until I added a dummy folder to swap out. It basically forced us to provide a folder. This set tone of my skepticism....why the forceful nature of accessing our information.
WHY WE TESTED PDVD13?
Our v12 experiences made me a bit paranoid. We don't need to solicit metadata or want to participate in anything like that. We just want to use PDVD to watch movies and TV shows that are located on our NAS. We always accessed our movies using "My Computer". But v13 looks promising so before we let it scan our entire movie collection, we created a test folder with a few movies. We were shocked at what we found.
QUESTIONS FOR CYBERLINK OR USERS:
1)With all of the PDVD13 settings OFF, why is data being sent and received from my computer to these servers?
Google - Mountain View, CA (IP 74.125.224.233 through Port 80)
Hurricane Electric (ISP) - Fremont, CA (IP 72.52.84.204 through Port 80)
Digital United, Inc. (ISP) - Taipei, Taiwan (IP 203.73.25.241 through Port 80)
Amazon Technologies - Seattle, WA (IP 54.230.87.209 encrypted through Port 443)
Akamai Technologies, Inc. - Cambridge, MA (IP 23.42.82.110 through Port 80)
2) What PDVD13 settings will stop these and any other data transmissions?
With ALL network/internet settings seemingly turned OFF in PDVD13, the app still opened up to 15 concurrent internet connections and was sending or receiving data from at least 5 different cities (that we know of). We had "Movie Info" unchecked, yet movie details appeared. We had "Movies Library" checked so the "Add Movies Folder" tab appears.
  
OFF - Run at startup
OFF - Check for product updates
OFF - Participate in product Improvement
OFF - Enable Network for BD-Live
OFF - Allow connection when cert is invalid
OFF - Movie Info Auto Sign In
OFF - Movie Info Features
OFF - Device Tab
OFF - Store
OFF - Home Media DLNA
OFF - DLNA Access Control
OFF - DLNA Folder Sharing
OFF - Online Media (All 3 unchecked)
OPENING THE APPLICATION:
With the application open and static, internet connections open and data is transferred to IP addresses at Google and Hurricane Electric (ISP). It is unclear what data is being sent and received. Those with deeper technical skills should further investigate these connections.
HITTING THE PLAY or STOP BUTTON:
Selecting the "Play" button with those movies on your computer that are listed in the "Media Library" tab will trigger an internet connection to ISP Digital United, Inc. in Taipei, Taiwan. This city is also the HQ for Cyberlink. Digital United is one of the largest ISP's in that country and was formerly known as SeedNet. It is owned by The Ministry of Economic, Institute for Information Industry (Taiwan). The government of Taiwan apparently has access to our data.
IT KNOWS WHAT YOU WATCHED....AND WHEN!
ALL "Movie Info Features" are turned OFF. When we hit the "Stop" button with our test movies, the application presented details about that movie in the "Media Library" window. This also triggers several internet connections. So even with everything unchecked, the application is transmitting data about our movies. It then serves up its best guess of the movies details in the application window. It knows what we are watching, and when.
Hurricane Electric IP 72.52.84.204 connects your PC to these:
Google IP 74.125.224.233 connects your PC to these:
 
Digital United IP 203.73.25.241 in Taipei, Taiwan:
See below report, possibly sending logs.
There are several IP's that PDVD13 connects to. I used these links to collect IP data. I am truly a technical novice so all this took me quite a bit of time.
http://ip-lookup.net/
http://urlquery.net/index.php
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Hi All,
We need some help understanding if there are any benefits of letting PDVD scan our movie folder (900+ movies) or our TV show folder. For the last 4 years using PDVD we've just used "My Computer" to access a movie or TV show from our NAS server. We like PDVD because we loads shows from the NAS into a "Playlist", but we might be missing new capabilities in our upgrade to v13.
Each of our movies is in it's own folder like the below. The "movie.xml" file contains all the IMDB type details on the movie or show. Trailers are usually 1080p MP4's in the Trailers folder. I use Media Center Master to collect some of the folder contents. We don't want to participate in ML or any other service that collects our information or needs registration.
Possible CONS - PDVD Scanning Our Folders:
1) Even with "Movie Info" turned off, I suspect some of our movie data would be transmitted to an outside source, correct??
2) I suspect PDVD can't read any of the XML contents so no movie details. This probably only comes from outside source correct?
3) PDVD can't provide a clean "view" of our TV Shows - see last topic at bottom.
4) Will PDVD still mix trailer files with movie files in the same view?? This happened before in I think in v9 where movies, trailers, and backdrop images were all in one view. It was a mess.
Possible PROS: I can't think of any more benefits here
1) The "Recently Played" and "Recently Added" links might finally show playlists. These are always empty using My Computer to access movies.
2) We will no longer be viewing "backdrop.jpg" images when we access our movie folder via My Computer>NAS. We would be viewing the actual intended movie posters, the folder.jpg image. Combined with a very lengthy loading time, these "backdrop" images are useless because they don't have the movie title. This is what the posters are for (folder.jpg).
TV SHOW ISSUES:
I suspect letting PDVD scan our TV Show folder would create a mess. Does anyone know how to organize TV Shows with PDVD or is this something PDVD doesn't mess with. Currently, PDVD 13 would probably mix episodes from ALL seasons together. Below is how our TV shows are organized, pretty much industry standard.
Typical main folder for a TV Show (Fringe), and subfolder for Season 1.
 
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Congrats to Cyberlink for now (v13) allowing us to turn off certain features we do not use (DLNA, ML, PlayTo, etc.). I miss the following:
1) The checkbox to "Run At Full Screen". When a movie was started from the application, it would go full screen. We don't use a 3rd party app so command line tricks don't seem appropriate. Any suggestions here?
2) Mobile Power Settings: This would stop the movie when the power got to a low level I could determine. Any suggestions?
3) Is there a way to have PDVD open to a certain view, like a specific folder in "My Computer"? It always seems to open to the BD-DVD Rom Drive (D):
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I use a product that pulls TV show images and metadata from the API at TheTVDB.com.
It gets movie data and images from the API at themoviedb.org
Both are dead accurate if the naming convention of the file is correct. I don't believe there is a fee for either service. Maybe Cyberlink should try to incorporate those API's.
I believe IMDB offers a free API that is only for limited text information. I understand the fees for their images and such can be rather expensive. This is why so many 3rd party software's try to scrape the pages of IMBD, and why IMDB strictly forbids this in their terms of service.
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Hi All,
For our use, it appears we only need one process running (PowerDVD12.exe). But there can 7-8 more running in the background. We can't find a way to turn some of them off.
We only need (PowerDVD12.exe) for v12 Ultra to work with our purpose. We are trying to disable the rest.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMPONENT SERVICES:
CLMSMonitorServicePDVD12 - CyberLink PowerDVD 12 Media Server Monitor Service: Changed Automatic to Disabled
CLMSServerPDVD12 - CyberLink PowerDVD 12 Media Server Service: Changed Automatic to Disabled
CLHNServiceForPowerDVD12 - Changed Automatic (Delayed) to Disabled
MSCONFIG - STARTUP TAB:
Cyberlink DRMEngine - Uncheck this DOES NOT disable the service from running after opening PDVD
Cyberlink PowerDVD 12 - Uncheck this DOES NOT disable the service from running after opening PDVD
HOW DO YOU DISABLE THESE? They do not show up in Component Services.
We don't want to keep manually turning them off in Task Manager every time we open PDVD.
PowerDVD12ML.exe
PowerDVD12Agent.exe
PowerDVD12DRMEngine.exe
PowerDVD.exe
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Hi Lysdexic,
I to have experienced this same issue. When I contacted support had little interest in helping. In fact, I put up a thread with images of all the old stuff that gets installed on your PC when you go through this "step-up" upgrade process. As you can see, older version stuff doesn't get removed.
Let me know if you find a solution. It looks like the only way to avoid this is to clear your cookies, visit the Cyberlink website, and just buy a new complete license.
Click below link:
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/23740.page#128426
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Thanks Peter.
Your response speaks to my issue. You have to a be a computer expert to figure out how to dissinfect your computer from all the junk installed by the upgrade process. It's a flawed process that starts with the sales team at Cyberlink trying to shove discounted upgrades at you all the time.
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So I got a Dell computer, it came with PDVD v9.6. I upgraded to v11 and noticed some very weird changes in the GUI. So I did the best I could and got frustrated. I even posted a lengthy thread with pics showing those weird changes. I eventually upgraded to v12 and didn't see many improvements but it rocked my world with what I discovered.
I got a new PC and changed hard drives which required a fresh install of Windows 7 (64). Because CyberLink pushes upgrades, I had to install v9, then go through the steps to upgrade to v11, then repeat the upgrade process and install v12. I was not afforded the option to simply install v12 with a key. I had to go through a step-up process from one old version, upgrading to the next old version, to the now current version. After that I had to apply the upgrade patch. What if I was a customer for 10 years - would I be stepping up through 8-10 applications? This is the only way they said their system works. See below.
MY TWO PROBLEMS:
There are a tremendous amount of processes that now run in the background on this new PC. I've seen as many as 11, that's right, I said ELEVEN. There is no need for most of these and no option to turn any of them off via the application. This is just horrible programming by any standard. You have to get into and make changes to Component Services, MSCONFIG, Task Manager, etc. I've probably spent 12-14 hours reading up on how to deal with these areas of a PC. Even then, if not using a media server, you still get pop up warning messages. It hogs up to .5GB of memory at times even without a movie.
There is an incredible amount of garbage installed on my PC now because of this "step up" process. Support refused to help me, stated that is the only way to install a current application. They would not provide me a different key or links to install v12. Again, this is just ridiculous in my opinion. I am unable to show you all the crap in the Registry, but there is a Massive amount of it because of this goofy process. Just look as the three examples below. Keep in mind this is a band new OS where the goal was to just install PDVD12.
There are so many of these entries in Windows Firewall
that it's impossible to show all of them with one screen shot.
Here are ONLY two of the many locations that have
multiple versions stuffed with files. These are not empty folders.
And let's not forget all the C++ packges that get installed. This is just unbelievable.
All I needed was a different key for v12 and a place to download the application.
I am beyond frustrated knowing I have a new machine, fresh install, and now have this MASSIVE amount of garbage installed on my PC. I would hope the President of Cyberlink or the Executive staff in California will see this thread.
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