Cyberlink PowerDVD 12 Ultra review

Speaking of mobile devices, this Ultra version of the software comes with two bundled apps – which are then free to download from the Android Market or App store. PowerDVD remote simply lets you control your PC, and therefore PowerDVD itself, using controls on the handheld’s screen. These include both media shortcuts (play, pause etc.) as well as a virtual touchpad so you can control Windows itself. Nothing very radical about the latter but having both in one app is certainly handy.

The other app is PowerDVD mobile. This is primarily a media playback app, so you can browse photos and play music, and watch video files. This all works well, though there’s nothing to get excited about again. Where it really comes into its own is in pulling and pushing media to and from other devices. Using the app alone you can pretty much play any file on any device, anywhere you like. Want to play a video from your phone on your DLNA TV, then just hold down the file thumbnail and a menu appears with media players you can push the file to. Similarly you can grab files from elsewhere (such as our Blu-ray quality video test file) and stream them to your handheld device, with your PC re-encoding them in real-time.

Here’s the app searching for playback devices on our network

Again none of this is revolutionary – your PC can already do this to a degree using the right-click Play to command. However, the slickness with which you can select and play files across an Android handset, Apple iPad, Windows PC and media streaming device -such as a WD TV Live – is impressive none-the-less.

PowerDVD 2012 then doesn’t do anything particularly ground-breaking. However, its integration of PC software and mobile apps, along with wide file format and decent post-processing technology, makes it a one-stop-shop for media playback across your home network. However, to justify the price, you’ll still have to want to play Blu-ray discs on a home PC or laptop.

If you do, then this is a good buy, though we’re still amazed that such software costs more than a basic standalone Blu-ray player. We’d be interested to see how much CyberLink would charge for a fully-featured version of the software but without the Blu-ray and DVD playback parts and their ensuing license costs.