Merits:
A user-friendly and easy-to-use program is always popular from now and then; so is PowerDVD. This program automatically selects media files for you to select a certain one to play, which saves us lots of power to find the appropriate files. With a simple look, even a beginner could use it with ease. You would experience the superb quality provided by this tool both in sound and visual effects, furthermore, HD DVD and Blu-ray films could be read by it. This is really a powerful player for DVD videos.

Demerits:
The Help file is not very detailed—I want to learn more about this tool while there is less description compared with other programs. If you changed the play path, to find the former one is a little difficult. If it could remember a few play paths that would be perfect. The changeable operation mode needs improving, since the intuition is not user-friendly enough.

Benefits
PowerDVD is one of the most popular DVD players in software market and “Ultra” is the freshest one of all. It is said that this latest version goes much further than ever before; which means the tech of it has updated with most effort—you would find HD DVD and Blu-ray films playable by this smart app, as a result, more storage space is needed; as a certain editor says: “This latest Ultra version goes much further than ever before, being designed principally to play back both HD DVD and the new Blu-ray disks that have considerably more storage space than conventional DVDs.”
The user-friendly interface helps you get quicker familiar with PowerDVD. I was not fear to operate at first time just because of this reason. I was not sure about what formats it supported and tried to find the answer (there’s no related information in its Help file). Oh, I got the answer by myself—if the formats are not DVD video, there would be a warning to prompt you the file mode is not correct or you would not choose it in the play list. The program is powerful in quality yet the playable formats are less than Real Player—for example, .au files cannot be played by PowerDVD but Real Player could (This tool could play standard DVD, AVI, Mini-DVD and WMV to MPEG-4 AVC, WMV-HD and DivX Pro format files). While I find the quality is really superb than common player, which deserves praise, doesn’t it?
At the click of a button, users can seamlessly bring up Picture-in-Picture windows (such as cast & crew commentary or storyboard comparisons), access links to online content, zoom in to portions of an image as well as various other toggle-effects. As with standard DVDs, the amount of interactivity depends largely on the movie disc at hand, as well as your chosen format, but rest assured, Ultra will handle whatever a HD DVD or Blu-ray disc can throw at it.

Setup
The installation takes a few seconds to finish. Note: do not always follow the default otherwise you would fail in setup—choose “accept it” instead of default “do not accept” (just a joke, haha). What I mean is to select several choices by ourselves, do not rely on the installation wizard too much.
Should you decide to remove this tool, is there a shortcut for uninstall? Let me check…Sure, there is! It is very lucky to uninstall a program automatically, which does not require users to uninstall manually. OK, utilize this shortcut to remove PowerDVD.

Interface
The interface of PowerDVD has changed, too. It is totally different from last version, while I prefer the former version. There is a huge picture added to the interface of this version—it is not as simple as former ones.
When you move mouse to every button, there will be a short phrase to explain the function of it. It is very convenient for users especially the beginners to try PowerDVD. If you are not satisfied with the default settings, it provides you another interface to select parameters by yourselves—it’s also easy to use; no wonder it counts as one of the most popular Players in its field.

System Requirements
PowerDVD runs smoothly on Windows 2000, XP, ME, as well as Vista—another surprise it brings to us, for some multi media software cannot be compatible with Vista. Since it is a multi media player, sound card is a must. The RAM requires 256MB or higher. Oh, you should leave 90MB hard space at least.
Though the above requirements are higher than average Players’, yet it is not difficult to realize.

Conclusion
As a new to try PowerDVD, I was surprised by it several times. At first, I did not expect its quality as excellent as said by other editors. When I tried a movie, the sound and visual quality eliminated my former prejudice towards PowerDVD. If you are interested in HD DVD or Blu-ray films, this is the first recommendation.
This tool is designed for every user, since it is an easy to use program. A newbie could use its basic functions, which could be up to his needs; a sophisticated user could also be satisfied by its user DIY interface.
It’s quite a good recommendation.