So my work laptop pretty much exploded and I replaced it with a nice upgrade to do my business with (Dell Latitude D820 Vista, Core 2 Duo @ 2 ghz, 2 gig ddr2 and Nvidia Quadro 110M vid card). I had seen Cyberlink's PowerDVD Ultra system requirements and felt that, at a minimum, I'd be able to use my 360 drive to watch some of my HD-DVD's using my new laptop and PowerDVD Ultra, though under somewhat 'reduced' conditions due to my limited specs.

I really felt my new laptop wasn't beefy enough, there would be skips/etc. To my shock, Ultra runs silky smooth, with absolutely no performance hit when I pop open other apps. I do some image editing that can be memory intensive but when I open them and begin editing Ultra just keeps on going smoothly. I alt-tab betweeen editing an image/doc and Dune HD-DVD, really cool stuff!

Kudos to Cyberlink for a really nice program. I know there have been HTPC issues with this proggie but for my purposes (PC only) it's really worth every penny. I'm now the only guy in my office with an HD-DVD laptop, gold star indeed!

Just wanted to share my thoughts, super happy with Ultra. Anyone with a 360 HD-DVD drive who would like to use it with a PC or laptop (not HTPC, dvi issues?) should get this software, it's a fantastic program.

PowerDVD Ultra has an annoying requirement of a recent gen GPU. HD DVD playback is prevented unless you have such a GPU.

The really stupid part is it will play back fine on such a machine even if you turn off GPU acceleration, which means that GPU wasn't necessary in the first place.

PowerDVD Ultra has an annoying requirement of a recent gen GPU. HD DVD playback is prevented unless you have such a GPU.

The really stupid part is it will play back fine on such a machine even if you turn off GPU acceleration, which means that GPU wasn't necessary in the first place.

I know! I wish I knew that before I bought the 8800GTS. I think I will downgrade to an 8600 and sell mine to reduce the heat and power usage.

- Rich