Review by JDThird

I have been using a home theater PC to run my TV since 1998 when I got my first HDTV but didn’t have any high def sources for it. So I used a TV with a capture card to capture other sources and upscale them for the new TV. And I’ve not been without a computer on the TV since. Once Windows Media Center came out in the early days of Windows XP, I was in heaven.

So for me, I need something like this to play my blu ray content. I have PlayStation 3 and 4, as well as the Xbox One, that can play DVD’s, but I don’t like the interfaces, even when using my Logitech Harmony remote with the Xbox One. I’ve always preferred actual discs be played in my computer. More options for me to do things.

I also have a ton of movies and TV shows in MKV format. I never bothered worrying about playing them on my iPads and such. I didn’t need them THAT portable, I have a TV in the only two rooms I’m likely to want to watch something. But when I got PowerDVD 13, I found that the media server worked very well for my iPads and even iPod touch and iPhone. It was great that my son could pull up all the cartoons I have saved on my media server anytime he wanted with his iPad. I was able to play my 3D blu rays as well without any problems, and my standard DVD’s looked very good. It did everything I wanted.

So I had hopes for the version 14. But while the basics work fine, such as DVD playback, Blu Ray playback, or even using the free PowerDVD remote on my mobile devices to duplicate a touchpad to control the mouse, the one thing I had come to appreciate, the transcoding for remote devices, totally does not work.

I have the app on my iPad, and the iPad can see my computer in the list, but it won’t connect anymore like it did in version 13. It just errors out and says it can’t connect. Or sometimes it will connect, and all I see is an empty folder. When I look at the computer that the software is installed on and look at the media it is offering up, I see all my files listed without any issues. Firewall is turned off, there’s nothing blocking any access. From other computers I can still just map the network drive and play things fine, but from the Power Media Player on my iPad, I get nothing.

Since that was a bonus feature that I ended up enjoying, but not something critical for my base functionality, I’m not losing sleep over it, nor wasting time more than the 20 minutes I already spent trying to resolve it. I just wrote it off as a feature that clearly doesn’t work as well as it used to in the previous version. I’m guessing part of the issue may be that this full version isn’t smart enough to see a previous version and just UPGRADE the existing version, but it installs as a separate program. That was a pain at the beginning, and I ended up uninstalling all the Version 13 components to help alleviate any conflicts from this poor install routine. I’m guessing that I may be able to overcome some of my issues if I were to nuke it all off of my computer, and just do a clean install of version 14 now that version 13 doesn’t exist anymore, but it’s just not worth the hassle. If they can’t write their programs well enough to accommodate existing users who upgrade from one version to the next if they end up with a full version of the newer version, then I figure I will spend my time and money and effort with someone else’s solution who does want to make the experience as trouble free as possible.

If you’re looking for a way to watch DVD’s and blu ray discs on your computer, this will work. But I’d go with the lowest cost version for what your needs are. If I had paid for this version, I would’ve wanted my money back. As it was free, I’ll just leave it alone and just use it to watch discs as needed, if I don’t just ditch it altogether and start using the Xbox One for my Blu Ray playback instead…