Windows 7 64-bit
Core 2 Duo E4300
4GB DDR2 RAM
Radeon 6570 (Catalyst 11.7)
USB Optical Out Card
So, originally, I was on PowerDVD 10. I could play Blu-Ray movies pretty smoothly. I have a pair of wireless headphones which only accept Dolby Digital, so I would set the audio output to "Dolby Digital Downmix" or whichever that option was and it played fine.
I got a notice to upgrade to PowerDVD 12 and it seemed like a good deal.
So I guess it was a waste of cash and I'll be downgrading back to 10. I've yet to make it through a ten-second stretch of any movie that played smoothly. At best, I'll get audio fuzziness (this is with the Dolby Digital conversion turned OFF). This is where the dissapointment comes from:
- Video Acceleration is enabled via my graphics card
- Audio is being passed through directly via optical
- CPU usage is 60-90% and I get constant stutters and audio glitches
What, exactly, is PowerDVD DOING when I'm trying to watch my film that requires this much of my CPU when it's essentially passing ALL the data onto other devices? Keep in mind, PowerDVD 10 gave me NONE of these issues with the ADDED strain of having to convert DTS to Dolby Digital on the fly.
I am a little aggravated, and I couldn't find anything online regarding this issue. I understand that new software can sometimes be slow than older software, but this is a little extreme.
Keep in mind also that my aggravation isn't entirely in Cyberlink's camp. A good half of that is from Ati/AMD, who managed to make 9 driver versions (from 11.8 to the current 12.4) STRAIGHT without a working video acceleration implementation (and trial-and-error on driver installations, each requiring a reboot, is a grief I wish upon no man).
But either way, this feels like a MASSIVE performance regression in versions. It's literally unusable. Is this just Wirth's law in effect, or is there some sort of workaround for this?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at May 19. 2012 19:05