Up until recently, I've been using WinDVD 6.0 for all my systems. The full version has better audio support than PowerDVD and has always sounded better than PowerDVD, although PowerDVD seems to have the slight edge in image quality. Anyway, a recent patch for WinDVD seems to have made a mess with things so I've gone over to PowerDVD 6.0. The image quality is still there and the audio has improved over recent versions as well.

Unless something improves with WinDVD, PowerDVD 6.0 is my choice of players at the moment. I haven't used the most current versions of either PowerDVD or WinDVD. The versions I have seem to both do what I need to equally well so I don't find one program to be particularly better than the other. But unless something major has changed I will always choose WinDVD over PowerDVD for one reason alone: digital output interruptions. I pipe the digital audio when playing DVD's to my Z-680 digital input. This means I have the software pass the audio directly to the Logitech decoder. You'd think a simple task like just passing audio wouldn't be a problem for PowerDVD, but it can't even handle transitions smoothly.

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Everytime I interrupt the DVD by changing scenes or switching to a menu, the Z-680's sound will be interrupted for 2 to 3 sec as it redetects the digital sound source trying to determine if it's Dolby Digital, DTS, etc. This should happen only if I switch the audio type and not when I'm just jumping around.

This gets extremely annoying when I'm skipping between chapters in a movie as I will never be able to hear the first few seconds of a scene this way. While part of the fault does lie in the Logitech decoder taking too long to detect the audio feed, it turns out there is more to the story. I got WinDVD and was amazed to find out my digital audio prob was solved by switching my software. WinDVD does not interrupt the digital audio feed even when I'm jumping around so I can hear the first few seconds of a scene! It obviously will still do this if I switch from Dolby to DTS the first time, but that is normal and even our home theatre receiver does this. Rayman Arena Pc on this page. That prob aggravated me for so long that I was only too happy to have it fixed. That one issue is enough for me to choose WinDVD over PowerDVD any day.