HTPC Home Theater PC setup: DVD player software review - WinDVD vs Theatertek vs WMP

Please note: this is a tale of frustration - I finally gave up on the HTPC approach and bought an upscaling DVD player:

Never one to be surprised when Windows doesn't work properly, I purchased a copy of WinDVD Platinum and immediately had the ability to adjust various picture settings that I could not do with WMP. Furthermore, I was able to get digital Dolby 5.1 through the USB port to feed into my Sony STR-995 Dolby receiver for 7.1 channel decoding.

For a while, I thought this may be the answer (and don't get me wrong, it's a very good picture), but I soon realized that I couldn't really get any better picture by adjusting the software controls - and I could achieve the same thing (and then some) by adjusting the projector controls. I also noticed that every 5 minutes or so, the Dolby audio kept 'hiccupping', briefly interrupting the SPDIF pass-through Dolby audio stream. This problem was severe enough to prevent the desired 'immersion viewing' I seek when watching a good video - I like to get lost in the film and forget, for a while, that I'm sitting at home in my living room.

Ok, so what next? I studied the various DVD software players and Theatertek stood out because of its ability to upsample the standard DVD resolution by using ActiveX plug-in 'post processing' filters such as ffdshow. Upsampling is a a way of simulating an increase in resolution (sharpness), using a standard 480P DVD, to a higher resolution such as 720P by interpolating the existing data. Keep in mind that it doesn't produce a true 720P, because the information isn't there in the first place, and won't be until the next generation of DVD players arrives. Nevertheless, picture detail can be be significantly enhanced by this process.

Once again, the credit card came out and I bought a copy of Theatertek online. After installing it, I noticed right away that the interface is not as slick as WinDVD, but I observed that the picture quality was definitely better. This may be because they state in the specs that it is optimized for ATI Radeon chipsets, which is what is in my laptop. However, I was not able to tweak the WinDVD settings and get as good a picture, and I'm starting to think there is a fundamental difference in the different codecs that are used in each program (a codec is the software core of the program that decodes and displays the data from disk). Theatertek uses the Sonic codec (as does WMP), while WinDVD appears to use its own proprietary approach.

So this looked promising, and I pressed on, installing the ffdshow filter (available online for free - just Google it). I went through the somewhat complex process of setting it up, only to find that my 2 GHz laptop didn't have enough power to handle the additional processing burden. I also noticed that the Dolby audio problem had come back, delivering only L+R 2 channel sound (could this be a codec problem, since WinDVD does this ok?) It was very frustrating, because I could see that the upsampled pictures (between dropped frames) were much more detailed.

So now I was faced with the prospect of replacing my new laptop, to the tune of another couple thou, or finding another software solution, or finding a new hardware solution. Frankly, I was getting tired of constantly running into glitches with the HTPC approach; it was an interesting exploration, but I had reached the point where I just wanted to be able to sit back and watch a movie in high definition with full Dolby surround sound! Pass the popcorn, pulease!

It was around that time that the Zenith DVB318 DVD player came to my attention. Here was the possibility of buying a unit for a couple hundred bucks that would upsample a regular DVD to 1080i on an analog output that would feed the component video input on the projector, and maybe with uninterrupted Dolby 5.1 as well ... could it be that easy? So out came the credit card once more; see my next article (yes, it was that easy), pitting this unit against my HTPC ... 

For the sake of clarity, here are some acronym and terminology definitions relating to the various display technologies, used in the other table below to compare the various screen types: