DVD Decoder Mini-Review and Problems with DVD Decoders in Media Center

I have been using PowerDVD version 4 on my custom built Media Center for a while as my DVD decoder and it works great 95% of the time. A DVD decoder is needed for Media Center to play DVD’s inside the Media Center interface as Microsoft does not supply one by default. There are occasionally a few DVD’s that will not play in Media Center. I can still play them outside of Media Center in the PowerDVD interface fine. Since PowerDVD version 4 isn’t on the list of compatible DVD decoders for Media Center I decided to download the 30 day trial of Nvidia’s PureVideo Decoder that is designed to work with Media Center. Here’s a list of features:

Features

• Enables DVD viewing with Microsoft® Windows Media® Player or Microsoft Windows® Media Center Edition
• High quality MPEG-2 decoder supports any third party software application based upon Microsoft DirectShow®
• Enables PureVideo technology on GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs, for features such as spatial temporal de-interlacing, inverse telecine, and bad edit correction
• Dolby® Digital surround sound decoding
• Minimizes CPU utilization by offloading the MPEG-2 decoding onto the graphics processor
• Enables advanced de-interlacing
• Decodes high-definition MPEG-2 streams for ATSC tuners
• Supports Windows Mobile-based Portable Media Centers allowing end users to transcode MPEG-2 content into Windows Media Video 9
• S/PDIF pass through for external decoding of Dolby Digital and DTS (compatible hardware required)

To be honest, I am not impressed with Nvidia’s DVD decoder software. For some movies, like Sahara that I just recently got, it works fine in Media Center where PowerDVD 4 did not. But for other movies, like disc 3 of the sixth season of The Simpsons, the DVD did not work in Media Center for either Nvidia or PowerDVD 4. Plus for some of my other movies that have always worked with PowerDVD 4 in Media Center Nvidia seemed to have problems with them and was skipping the DVD. Maybe there’s an issue when multiple DVD decoder’s are installed? Maybe the Nvidia trial version has some bugs?

I did try to download PowerDVD’s version 6 trial version but it wanted to uninstall my previous version of PowerDVD which I really didn’t want to do since I only have the OEM disc and might run into some issues reinstalling it. I think I also saw that the trial version was going to install the Google toolbar for Internet Explorer as well without asking me which I definitely don’t like. (Someone needs to talk these DVD decoder guys and set them straight)

I would be interested in hearing other people’s issues with DVD decoders and Media Center – I wonder if everyone has at least one DVD that  won’t play or if it’s just my custom built setup and associated settings?