So I raised my support ticket and Im now into merry go round phase of waiting days for the response, and if prior history is a lesson, it will say, were real sorry we stuffed up and weve passed this to our engineering team cos the issues are complex and it may take time to fix....And then they will close the ticket so their managers think they arent stuffing up their SLAs......Irrespective of actually not resolving the problem at Cyberlink its OK to close tickets before its resolved....

And beyond 3d not working heres a screenshot of how absurd the bug is with subtitles when running win10 300% dpi as recommended by default by Microsoft for 65" 4K displays......

http://postimg.org/image/8k2963ve3/

Ive reported it in good faith before in betas but Cyberlink decided to not invest the effort to have it fixed during the beta and then released a prod based patch that doesnt fix it....

Well after being stuffed around by Cyberlink support where the first ticket response I had to wait for, when it finally arrived it was boilerplate nonsense that asked for information I had already supplied.

Then after waiting again, they've now asked me to test it not under 4K but HD with 1920x1080. That doesnt work either on Windows 10, so atleast something has been learnt about the issue.

I'm hoping now it wont be weeks / months for it to be patched.

Hi Nullack,

We are very sorry about the time that you had to wait for the answer.

Our support is recieving daily a couple of questions, that have to be handled on the same time.

That's why it takes time.

The link you posted is invalid, can you please repost it again? Or you can attach it to the message.

Many thanks for your pacience and understanding.

Best regards

Hicham Technical support:
EN: https://www.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
DE: https://de.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
FR: https://fr.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
ES: https://es.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp

Thanks, I'm sorry too as I want to be a fan of PowerDVD and contribute to it's success. If this software isn’t successful HTPC enthusiasts wont have real alternatives for full bluray playback including menus. The core competitive advantage of why PowerDVD is useful and why I have bought every version for many generations, is because of bluray playback. No other software does this properly. It could be argued that free software competitors such as MPC-HC with the LAV filters is a strong competitor that has other features which PowerDVD currently does not meet, such as full hardware decode support of high colour HEVC video (you only accelerate 8 bit colour not 10 bit on the GPU in PowerDVD15), but its certain that PowerDVD has no real competitor for proper bluray playback.

The simple fact is that are you not being very successful in delivering to your customerbase robust software in your production releases. This is also why you are suffering from a large quantity of support requests, which I do sympathise are time consuming and it can erode whatever profit you originally made on the software sale. I believe the root of this problem is because you are running a flawed software testing strategy and a flawed release cycle model. These things need to be re-examined and changes considered, such as:

1. To better deal with the myriad of different configuration items that your software runs on, and to save internal costs in replicating those configurations as well as the significant man power investment it takes to execute extensive regression testing over lots of different configuration types, explore things like better customer Beta processes.


2. You could consider things like an internal series of tests at Cyberlink (unit, systems integration, regression, useability etcetc) then progress into say a closed beta where you invite select customers who know what they are on about and wont waste time reporting things which arent bugs, then a more open public beta later on.


3. In these betas, you could target specific configurations such as 4K, HD, SD, certain GPUs, CPUs etcetc.


4. Put more effort into governing the betas. In the past youve just posted the beta build binary location and locked the thread. No explanation of how volunteers are actually going to participate in the beta and report bugs. I think you want to be building your community and really getting into having the betas as a serious community engagement. Let them test your software without you paying for it, either in your companies time or your company having to buy all those different hardware configurations internally.


5. By properly building your community up, you'll then find the forum becomes a place where the users help each other and more experienced users resolve common user problems without hassling your official support channel and tieing up your costs there.


6. Get more aligned with key ecosystem changes. It shouldnt be end users reporting 4K dramas with playback. It shouldnt be Windows 10 production users reporting Windows 10 problems. You need to be more focused on getting involved in say preview versions of major new operating systems from Microsoft, and when industry trends are taking place like the move to 4K, getting ontop of that in the development phases of your projects and not waiting until customers complain and tie up the support channel about 4K playback not working, Windows 10 stuff not working. Windows 10 was in preview for many many months before its prodfuction release.

After some weeks I still dont have working 3D bluray playback on Windows 10 and I'm continuing to work with your support on that. The latest is you guys cant replicate it. I dont mind if you want to send me a debug build and send that telemetry back to your development team so you can actually see it. I cant stress enough, the primary feature of why your product is bought against free alternatives, is because of bluray playback. If that isnt reliable, theres no real competitive advantage you can compete on to other alternatives. I could alternatively send a video showing what happens when 3d playback is attempted on Windows 10 on my config.

I will re-post a screenshot showing the subtitle DPI sclaing problem and how cyberlink user preferences in your UI are not respected in the playback.

Sincerely

Ok, heres a screenshot of the font scaling DPI issue in PowerDVD 15

http://s16.postimg.org/3l7uoq4v9/ridiculous.png

nullack i don't have this bugs...

Thats precisely the dilema Cyberlink are in. There is many different configuration sets, such as 4K / HD / SD run through different connections such as display port / HDMI / component with different GPUs Intel / NVIDIA / AMD etcetc

Youll see if go searching around about PowerDVD 15 such as on reddit, some people on reddit dismiss it with negative comments like "buggy and bloated" and other say "works ok for them".

I think my recommendaitons about Cyberlink changing their processes is the right path for them to both reduce their heavy tech support demands as well as having a larger portion of the customer base actually enjoying the software and recommending it to others

Hi,

you may contact our Support Team

Best regards

Hicham Technical support:
EN: https://www.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
DE: https://de.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
FR: https://fr.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
ES: https://es.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp

Hi Hicham,

I am into the support process with a ticket on 3d bluray playback not working on windows 10 with my setup. Since 7/9 there has been no resolution of that problem with today being 25/9.

With the other oustanding bug being subtitles are broken at 4K resolutions on necessarily high DPI desktops for HTPC large (e.g. 65") TV displays. This gets to the core of why your testing and release processes are broken.

I first raised this issue with complete configuration descriptions, test results including screenshots showing the problem and replication instructions, in the last beta.

Why hasnt the beta bug reports been actioned in the beta? If Cyberlink makes the decision to goto prod without fixing a beta bug report, why then does a user have to go and start a whole new ticket for prod support when it was already all disclosed in the beta? Why arent you carrying over unresolved beta bugs into your prod support and giving users tickers on those? Why do even you bother having a beta if you dont track the beta bugs testers report and fix them in the beta?

I will raise a ticket, but it'll probably take multiple responses before I get beyond boilerplate nonsense thats not relevant to the problem and/or asks for information I already supplied in the ticket. Your support team tries to tick and flick most support requests off their que as quickly as possible and given prior experience, they often dont actually read a new support ticket with any reasonable level of attention. It takes multiple goes of responses to get to the actual support and by that time weeks have passed.

Regards

A furstrating time indeed with 3D Bluray playback! I've spent hours on hours diagnosing this. Cyberlink support have claimed they arent able to replicate the issue. With my hardware and the drivers I nominated in the below thread over on the Geforce Forums, configure a 3D desktop resolution and do anything but Powerdvd 15 3d bluray disc playback, and the system will BSOD hard crash everytime, with Nvidia's driver being blamed for the crash:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/881779/bsod-win-10-x64-gtx-960-hdmi-uhd-60hz-repeatable/?offset=2#4686481

It escapes me how Cyberlink cant replicate this problem. Just goes to show how limited and ineffective their internal testing is.

So round four billion in this drama is how I can apply pressure now to NVIDIA to fix it......And wait months more....

At what point does a sane person just stop using HTPC's for bluray menu playback and 3D playback, and simply use a cheap 3d standalone player?

Hi nullack,

Can i have you support ticket number?

Best regards

Hicham Technical support:
EN: https://www.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
DE: https://de.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
FR: https://fr.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp
ES: https://es.cyberlink.com/support/contact-support.jsp

Hi Hicham

The ticket number is CS001507339

Today the latest response from support is that your organisation cant replicate it in your test lab, I should see if Im up to date with windows update and then I should go hassle NVIDIA about the BSOD on my own cos you guys cant replicate it.

While Im trying to be a fan of your software, I am rightly critical of your testing processes. Your internal testing process that your company describes in the support ticket says your using a GTX 980 to try to replicate the problem. This is a significantly different configuration item compared to mine as the GTX 960 which I use has a totally new version of the full hardware video decoder engine in this new GPU architecture amongst several important differences compared to a 980. You dont mention in the support ticket what your display config is either, as thats important with it being HDMI 2.0 UHD @ 60Hz. Its like you guys are an airplane manufacturer, I the customer say the airplane doesnt work, then you guys say well we say it does but we have a different model airplane were using to prove it does work....

You seriously need to fix your testing and release processes like I describe above or your going to forever be treating paying customers as testers and having the current situation of PROD effectively been where the software is properly tested. If you cant afford the hardware diversity internally do it in a BETA either closed or public. Labelling past PowerDVD15 releases as PROD releases is a great shame on your company because the quality of them is very poor and is no way reliable commercial software.

For anyone else suffering from the 3d playback bug (not the subtitles wrecking the video display at UHD and high DPI font bug) the 3d bug can be fixed by:

1. Going to the windows 10 insider build 10565
2. Going the NVIDIA beta driver version 358.50

Those two changes will fix the 3d playback for setups like mine

An update on my mission to get 3D playback happening with 3D bluray via PDVD 15 and WIndows 10

The above fix works, but it wont fix resume. If a user watches a 3d disc and gets half way through, and then later tries to resume, it will blue screen with an unhandled thread exception in the WDDM / DirectX stack, This happens also on build 10568 of windows 10.

The only known workaround at the moment is never to resume, always to restart