And, to nobody's surprise, the usual evasive answer:

"Thank you for writing back.

I appreciate your comments and suggestions and will use them to help improve our products / services when making future decisions.

I have forwarded your concern to our Product and Development department for further analysis and future updates."

It's clear both this forum and Cyberlink's customer service are a waste of time and energy.

I agree with both your posts.

Also I would like to say I haven't recommended PDVD to anyone since I found cyberSink removed this feature.

Just got the follow email back from Top10Reviews regarding their article on PowerDVD14 and PowerDVD13. Just informing them their article is wrong and you can't resume playback on BluRay on PowerDVD 13 and 14. As this is third result you see when googling “Powerdvd 14 reviews” I feel it right other people should know. Hopefully it will drop PDVD down from a perfect 10.

“thanks for letting us know! Sorry for the inconvenience. I've passed this information along to the editors, and hopefully it'll get taken care of soon. Thanks again.”

http://blu-ray-player-software-review.toptenreviews.com/

Thanks, Deadeye

Hi,
I would like to use the opportunity and try to explain some of the circumstances that lead to the current application behaviour.

1. PDVD 13 & 14 do not support BD Auto-Resume
- Before CL kicks off a new product/version, we evaluate feedbacks from customer (complain/suggest/preference/....) and make our priority. Software performance is always one of the majorities that is taken into account.

- The major cause that slows down application launch is the amount of services being called and the BD Auto-Resume feature happens to be one of them.
- We've also done market study and found out that most of BD commercial titles are authored in BD-Java and hence BD players (including CE players) cannot support Auto-Resume such titles. If most BD titles are not authored in BD-Java, BD Auto-Resume has its value to stay.

- Before we remove/change any feature/behaviour, we debate it's value and trade-off. BD Auto-Resume then unfortunately needs to be removed to make the program lighter.


2. unclear feature information
- We do apologize if there is misleading information and will review and update the info again.

3. We do realize this stop some of our users from enjoying the feature; however, the trade-off benefits most of users when opening the software.

We appreciate the feedback and will remind our product development team to be extra careful and evaluate more before making any change to existing program in the future.


Greetings
Michael Technical Support

Werde Facebook Fan

So, Bottom line, It's gone forever.. I really wish I would of known you removed this feature BEFORE I paid to upgrade from 11 to 14.. I truly feel like I got duped.. Thank You for your reply anyways..

EP

I do understand that I represent a single customer but CyberLink needs to see that this thread represents many. I will agree that booting time for older versions of PowerDVD was an issue but was there any communication with testers as to the trade-off? You have a list of customers right here who might've complained about start-up time but if you would've told us you can fix it at the cost of auto-resume, we would've all asked you to leave it alone and would have be patient for a few seconds more.

I have to call into question your statement about BD-J encoding. I have a large collection (75+ titles, hundreds of discs from all continents) of Blu-Rays (TV shows, movies, music concerts, animation and even a game (Dragon's Lair), all these from major Studios and smaller independents) and they all work with the old resume function when I use older versions of PowerDVD (such as 9 for example). I can close the window in the middle of playback, re-open the program and it offers the option to resume which it accomplishes flawlessly. Then I try them again int PowerDVD 12, 13 and 14 and no such option appears. I am stuck watching the same un-skippable trailers and advertisements over and over again. Even worse, I keep losing my position when watching TV shows and I find myself giving up on the them or finding other means of watching it digitally. In other words, the start-up of the program isn't a problem anymore as I barely ever use PowerDVD anymore.

So with actual testing, we can see that BD-J isn't an issue (unless somehow all my mainstream and obscure discs all dodged the "majority of authored Blu-Rays out there that are mastered with Java". The program does start up faster so I will give you this but why are you continuously removing actual PLAYBACK features from this VIDEO PLAYER program while multiplying the tangential media library ones that a consumer looking for the type of program PowerDVD masquerades as (a DVD and Blu-Ray disc player program for Windows) would either have no or at best coincidental interest in?

This is software design. If CyberLink no longer has any interest in making a video disc playing program then stop pretending and make something else. Otherwise, why not spin-off something like PowerBlu-Ray and offer all the disc features under the sun for real enthusiasts with powerful PCs and an interest in having the best disc-based experience possible?

As it stands, PowerDVD 14 is my last CyberLink purchase. I gave it 3 shots (PowerDVD 12, 13 and 14 for a total of over 200$ invested with CyberLink) and besides faster load times, a picture of the movie poster and some kind of star rating for the disc I just put in (which can diminish the experience when you suddenly see a 1-star rating for a movie I was looking forward to watching...) it has only gotten worse. Learn from RealPlayer, Winamp and even iTunes' mistakes: have an idiot-proof one-button mode for our moms, focus on the one task you do, do it as best as you can, offer all the options imaginable in deep advanced menus and listen to your customers who pay, not focus groups you pay. Don't diversify and overstretch yourself. That's not who your Windows customers are. That's not what they want. That's not what anyone in this thread wants. Consumers who have plenty of free and pirating options but decided to support true efforts from a professional team at a cost of 100$/year. We update, we upgrade, we discuss in this forum because we care and we're given the cold shoulder because... well.. I can't reconcile that reality as we've shown interest and poured money your way but we somehow aren't worth an extra check-box to select in a menu somewhere. We're lied to about BD-J being a problem and paying customers are told that what we want isn't what paying customers want.

Sad really.

Thank you, Jean-Olivier, for an excellent post. I can assure you you also speak for me, in everything that you have said. In particular, I am convinced, from my own experience, that the BD-J excuse is just that, and a falsehood to try to shut us all up. Like you, and others on this stream, I shan't be buying anything more from Cyberlink. I also warn anyone who enquires about their software about their dreadful customer service.

Thank you again. Sad, indeed.

So, this really sucks. I just purchased powerdvd 14 for my PC hooked up to my TV and discovered that when I pause my bluray movie and try to play it again THE MOVIE HAS TO RESTART. WTF? This is because I use windows media center and have my pictures play as the screen saver and when I try to unpause I'm returned to the main menu and resume is grayed out. This is unacceptable. Period. I'm going to look for some other software to replace this and request a refund.

After reading these posts, I can see to an extent, the kind of manufacturer/client disconnect that leads users to piracy.

I also watch my movies in section (I lack of time) so I am loosing A LOT of time loading the Bluray, going through the menus and finding the moment I was watching previously.
Jean-Olivier said BDJ are not a problem, so why not enabling this function? With a warning "checking this will cause Powerdvd to start slowly" it should be fine, not?
I'm currently testing the trial of PowerDVD 16. It's very unstable and it lacks the "resume Blu Ray playback" function, so I'm not sure I'll buy it after the 30 days of trial.

Thanks, Grendizer. As I expected, and you've saved me contacting Cyberlink. I certainly won't be upgrading. I wonder how many customers they've lost over this BD resume issue?