PowerDVD 12 or TMT 5? Help me decide.

If you want a better chance at everything working properly, get PowerDVD. I would be happy with TMT 5 if it worked correctly on my Win7 64 machine Intel Quadcore Q6600 and Nvidia display card. I never had any problems with PowerDVD since the 90's. As soon as I switched to TMT, I started having a hardware compatibility issue that will never be fixed.

They are both good products. I use TMT5 because of all the bloatware that comes with PDVD. Also, TMT5 cares more about what the we say here at AVSForum...they actually have a guy who spends time here on his own accord and answers questions, listens, etc. He then has to fight the corporate monster to get changes made, but he has been able to do that more often than I thought would have been possible.

I think they both have trials.

I don't think so, not when trying to do 24hz. There was a thread floating around here about that. It works pretty good for me on most BD movies, although I think the display frequency never quite matches, so it ends up adding/removing a frame occasionally.

I don't think there's much point in testing between the players on the same machine if you're testing video playback; at least, if youre using video hardware acceleration. Both players use the same resources and respective methods to decode video via your display adapter. There's a small chance the problem can be avoided by using software deocding in the player (disabling hardware acceleration).

Most people end up favoring TMT only because it doesnt have the bloat PowerDVD has; it's not because one players video any better than the other on the same machine.

Yes, now that I switched to WinDVD Pro 10/11.

I used PowerDVD since 7, upgraded through 11. Constant stream of problems, and their idea of a 'patch' was 110MB - used to drive me nuts.

I tried WinDVD Pro 10 - it just works. Doesn't have tight integration with 7MC, but for the complete lack of headaches with it, I'm fine with that.

For future Googlers I would like to post my experience with Arcsoft Home Theatre 5 (TMT5) and Cyberlink PowerDVD 12 Ultra (PowerDVD 12). I will add that old threads have helped me numerous times in my Google inquiries of the past so I feel chronicling my experience with these 2 programs will be beneficial to our fellow internet peers of the world if they've encountered these issues or if their curiosity is piqued with indecision as well.

I've been using TMT5 for about a year to ensure my Blu-ray content is backed up appropriately but within the past few months I've been viewing it through my large HDTV in an attempt to use my PC like an HTPC. TMT5 has horrible stuttering and freezing issues that cannot be resolved with mobo, graphics card or any other driver updates. It has problems with 23Hz vs 24Hz playback, which consequently did not resolve my freezing, stuttering issues. It has such a slew of problems as a program, I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND IT TO ANYONE. If you find it hard to believe this, just take a look at their own support forums...

http://www.arcsoftsupport.com/en/for...tering-in-tmt5

Queue in PowerDVD 12... this program is like a breath of fresh air!!! TMT5's support forum had me thinking my Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 graphics card was the issue and I was actually shopping for a NVIDIA card which is recommended with that program. Well, I didn't even need to change my graphics card with PowerDVD 12 as my Blu-ray movies played flawlessly from my HDD without any issues whatsoever!

My selling factor on any Blu-ray program is whether or not I can seamlessly play my Blu-ray movies right from their folder structure on my HDDs and it seems only TMT5 and PowerDVD 12 can do this. Look no further, people... PowerDVD 12 is what you're looking for! It does the job and very well at that. The interface is easy to use and adequately detailed for general tweaking.

Forget about both PDVD and TMT5. Convert your movies to MKV using MakeMKV and then use XBMC for playback. I've used numerous versions of PDVD and TMT and XBMC is the first playback app that's allowed me to play Blu-Ray and DVD rips from start to finish with zero artifacts, stuttering, or freezeups and retain the original HD audio (Blu-Rays only) and eliminate all unwanted extras. I can play the MKVs on any PC in the house with the same quality as the original Blu-Ray. I used to rip the Blu-Rays to iso's and proper playback was always hit or miss. I also got rid of Media Browser after seeing the XBMC interface. It just freaking works, which is all you ever want it to do. I could never make that claim with either PDVD or TMT.

Once I tried XBMC with the HD audio patch and MakeMKV I was sold. I spent the next few weeks converting my entire library of over 750 Blu-Rays and DVDs to MKVs and never looked back. XBMC and MakeMKV are both free and neither require AnyDVD HD. Try it with a few movies and see how you like it. It doesn't cost anything to check it out. I believe there's an XBMC thread with a link to the patched version, but you can still use the current Eden release without the HD audio patch if you don't need that feature as it's not in the released version yet.

To cut the long story short, you're most likely going to end up paying for the two (and probably a third one... WinDVD) and still use XBMC or MPC-HC as your main player.
Many of us have been there before...

The only exit is to start using MKV from day 1.
Unless you need 3D-BR...

My TMT 11 keeps crashing each time i load a movie file.. any idea?

See my post above. I don't believe TMT is up to version 11 yet. Perhaps you're referring to PowerDVD? PDVD 11 was a bit of a fiasco from what I read about the initial version. I assume they released one or more updates to cure some of the bugs in it.

I think JRiver Media Center 17 is just AWSOME for both BD & DVD playback! That's what I use.

Just my five cents to it. I have used PDVD and arcsoft since ages. Upgrading here and there always buying these upgrades. I switched to any new possible hardware (on-board vs discrete, amd vs intel : zacate, ivy, discrete ATI, NVIDIA and on and on) whenever something new came out. I had spent most of the time with TMT due to best MC integration. With TMT5 something just went terribly wrong and the software had severe issues (freezing, tearing, auto freq switch was terrible)and not all these issues are resolved as of yet. So getting fed up I gave PDVD12 a spin. I had no issue at all. It's not selling this here over TMT5 but for me it's a fact. PDVD12 just worked out of the box. on another note I also tried the "why buy big softs when you can have it almost for free" jriver, xmbc + codecpacks or MC-HD + reclock ++++: Jriver has fantastic audio capabilities. I have a LINN akurate player which is getting "jealous" of jrivers capabilities (SACD .iso). And Xmbc just has the best graphic interface...but guess NONE of these support full Bluray menu support. So you eventually end up switching from iso's to MKV, retagging manually ever chapter/title and remux here and remove subtitles there etc...it remembers good old hacking days where copying streams of copy protected discs was just fun to do.
Long story short : I ended up with a core i3,2130 (high clock)/an ATI 6570 discrete/a fast SSD/MC and binnerup's My Movies/PDVD12. All is stored on a 2011 home server (Origenae S21T) running the Mymovies database. Frequency switching is done by My Movies and if it should fail I can correct it by remote through the resolution changer of soundgraph (as the htpc case has a soundgraph iMON solution).
TMT remains my favorite player but PDVD12 just made all my problems disappear with my setup.