For 4K playback with 4K footage you need a GTX 960 or 950. If you try deocding say high bitrate HEVC Main 51 2160P60 using the CPU even the most modern and fast CPUs results in a stuttering mess of dropped and skipped frames. You simply must use full hardware decoding for these types of things and thats a 960 or 950 with the right video engine on the GPU that supports it.

Keep in mind also that 10bit high colour in PDVD15 is not GPU accelerated and the absence of this feature makes playback impossible on content such as HEVC Main 10 L52 2160P60. PDVD15 resorts to the CPU and its an ugly thing to see with drops and skipping. I suggest most of the HEVC content will be high colour as thats the UHD bluray spec. THis is why full hardware decoding is so important - no CPU on the planet will do 4K high frate rate high bit rate HEVC decoding in real time properly.

Be aware also, I've had a difficult road with Cyberlink of numerous bugs some of which are still outstanding after many months. To their credit they have fixed some, but in my current state now, I have major bugs that effectively means I have to use alternate software until its fixed. To be honest if the free open source software (which works better and has less bugs) did 3D and full bluray menu playback reliably I'd drop PDVD in a heartbeat. Since PDVD is the only real solution for this, I've tried to help them with bugs and I've spent ALLOT of time fiddling around on it. I'll be happy when/if PDVD15 is finally patched to remove my outstanding bugs.

Quote: I'll be happy when/if PDVD15 is finally patched to remove my outstanding bugs.

Just out of interest what are they?

1. Subtitles wreck the video display in cases of non bluray subtitles such as from an MKV container, when using UHD displays with high DPI font scaling such as 300%. The subtitles preferences are actually ignored and regardless of what a user sets as the setting, its never respected. I've had this issue for months, was ignored in beta testing by Cuberlink, and now my support ticket has not beeen responded too despite it being weeks since they requested to raise one. They should have fixed it in beta, but didnt, and now Im waiting in their prod cycle. This is a major issue as I need subtitles for allot of content. VLC and MPC-HC just works with this.


2. Years ago in powerdvd 10 I reported that deinterlacing didnt work and even supplied them sample files. I got the "our engineering team are looking at it" and after much hassle and aggrevation, I gave up because Cyberlink are utterly unable to competently do deinterlacing in their video player. For interlaced content, I now use VLC or HPC-HC which again, just works. I can even specify various software and hardware deinterlacing algorithms and balance the quality against the overhead of different methods. This again is a major issue cos interlaced content is unwatchable without deinterlacing. The original support ticket is still in the support que too.


3. This is another major one, the powerdvd 15 as it stands now fails the windows platform readiness tests because Cyberlink have written special kernel mode ring 0 processes that involve illegal calls from bad programming. This is easily shown using Microsofts own test tools like device driver verifier.


4. One of my biggest frustrations and the one which Ive sunk countless hours into is trying to get 3d bluray playback working reliably at UHD resolutions on WIndows 10 using PDVD15. AFter hours and hours of diagnosis and little support from Cyberlink supoport other to to firstly claim they couldnt replicate the problem (they dont even have my generation video engine GPU in their test lab, they said they have a 980 and Ive got a 960 which has a new generation of pure video in the hardware video engine of the gpu chip) to then blaming NVidia as the cause. It turned out to get it semi working I had to join the MS Windows insider programme and goto fast ring windows OS builds, work with NVIDIA on their side, and together with a new OS build from MS and new drivers from NVIDIA I can finally play 3d blurays at UHD using PDVD15 but theres still bugs and areas of failure like if I try to resume a part watched 3d disc it will all crash. Theres no way Cyberlink ever effectively tested this prior to releasing it and making the clearly false marketing claims about working features such as 4K and windows 10 support.


5. Now with their latest prod build Im getting crashes once again and the cyberlink error reporter Ive been using to feed that info to Cyberlink. Something has regressed badly from the beta to the prod version they pushed out, I know there was build changes between the two and its very bad practice to not have another beta cycle with this new build. They frankly seem like a bunch of cowboys with their development and testing standards. Basic stuff like random and bizzare behaviour with their patching tools which, to Hichams credit he spotted, and I was able to uninstall and completely re-install to fix it. But the deeper issue is why cant they release software that firstly is robust and reliable enough to install, or atleast give an error message and exit instead of a silent failure and making the user think the patch is fine. Basic stuff like release practices and testing thats actually effective in providing to customers working software that actually does what they claim in their marketing it can do.


6. Theres others but those are the major bugs the rest I could live with

Ive done far more than I probably should have in trying to help Cyberlink, but I guess my passion for home theatre and the promise of actually working cyberlink software appeals to me. The reality is that the open source alternatives dont reliably do bluray menu playback and 3d disc playback.

Honestly out of all those listed not one affects me. I never use PDVD for 2D playback. There are better alternatives for that.

I only use it for 3D playback of Bluray and Bluray ISO's at 1080P rather than 4K. Is their any point as there is no 3D 4K content I would have thought? Can't you just switch your desktop to 1080P and then let your 4K display or projector upscale it?

If customers accept the marketing hype that the "worlds number 1 media player" actually isnt very useleful for stuff like interlaced content and it fails Microsts verification tests, and only use it for bluray disc playback and 3D bluray disc playback, then theres still reason to run a native display resolution on the desktop. The reason is simply one of image quality, both hardware and software on the PC does a noticeably better job at scaling and resizing than the displays internal scaler.

Beyond that, there is the realities of trade practices too. Theyre selling software where they make certain claims of what it can do, and those claims are reasonably expected to be fulfiilled by the customer. When they say 4K, when they say Bluray 3D, when they say you can have all this in the worlds best media player, customers have a basic right to expect it to be true and accurate. This wouldnt be the first time after Cyberlinks scandal with DVD Audio, but as I say, there's no real alternative for working full menu blurau playback and 3D bluray on a windows PC.

Quote: but as I say, there's no real alternative for working full menu blurau playback and 3D bluray on a windows PC.

You don't need to keep telling me as it's the reason I've been using it for years.

Quote: When they say 4K, when they say Bluray 3D...

They've said 4K, they said 3D, but have they ever said them together?

I've always taken 4K playback to mean 2D in the context I've read them in regarding PDVD.

Even the new UHD bluray disc will still only support 1080P 3D I believe.

4K doesnt work as Ive explained, yes mate its 2D.

3D bluray sorta works, after allot of hassle with nvidia drivers and using microsoft windows 10 insider builds, with remaining bugs. In 3D, the native resolution of my 65" UHD curved display for 3D mode is in fact 1920x1080. It cant do 4K in 3D. For 3D, Cyberlink swaps it to 1920x1080@24hz. The other way I should be able to run 3d bluray discs is in 4K but 2D, which also doesnt work.

cheers

Quote:
3D bluray sorta works, after allot of hassle with nvidia drivers and using microsoft windows 10 insider builds, with remaining bugs.

It seems generally that AMD ATI video cards give much less grief in this regard.

Cheers.

My rig is a 6700k @ 4.4ghz and an AMD 290x and I can playback 4K content from a 4K source smoothly without problems. My collection: http://www.blu-ray.com/community/collection.php?u=194008&action=showcategory&category=1&categoryid=7

The thing about it is, is that 4K isnt generic. 4K specifcally means the resolution. What matter also is what codec is used, what level/profile is used, what frame rate etcetc.

Most 4K consumer content will be encouded in HEVC. There will be two main types. I imagine the most popular one will be HEVC L52 MAIN 10. I have sample of L52 MAIN 10 HEVC in 4K@60 FPS and playing this is the current build of PDVD 15 is a stuttering mess. The reason is, PDVD15 has no GPU acceleration for high colour footage. It does work for example with MPC-HC FFMPEG Lav Filters, where it can do DXVA2 GPU acceleration in both copyback and native modes. I imagine this will be the most common as its what the UHD bluray spec uses and the content producers will no doubt target that.

Only a Geforce 960 and 950 currently support full hardware decoding of HEVC 4K content in the video engine of the chip. Theres no way any CPU will do realtime HEVC L52 MAIN 10 4K@60FPS.

The other one of the two types, is lower 8 bit colour encoded HEVC. With say a sample of HEVC L51 4K @60FPS I can do PDVD15 playback accelerated through my GPU (well the current build of PDVD15 is broken for me but assuming thats fixed and I have been able to do it in the past) just fine. It also works with the usual open source players too.

Thats why I gave those examples in my first response

On the list of top priority issues with #1 being the subtitle bug, I've received a response from Cyberlink support saying they have reproduced the problem and have added it to their to be fixed list