The new PowerDVD 20 Ultra still supports native 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs for the less then 1% of the 1.5 billion Windows owners that have the rare required Intel SGX CPU and SGX compatible motherboard. The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray format came out in 2016 and starting in 2017 with the release of PowerDVD 17 Ultra, 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray discs are supported. While yes PowerDVD 19 Ultra 64 bit edition still supports Blu-ray 3D, there is a possibility that in 2-3 years from now consumers will stop getting firmware updates to PowerDVD 19 Ultra and to play the latest Blu-ray discs with the latest AACS encryption keys one will have to upgrade their software to the newest version of PowerDVD Ultra that no longer supports Blu-ray 3D. However, starting in the year 2020 the new PowerDVD 20 Ultra completely removes the Blu-ray 3D feature with no more plans to every support that format again, which means over 1.5 billion people that use the Windows operating system have lost the potential to playback Blu-ray 3D discs. Then in the year 2010 the Blu-ray 3D format launched and for the last 10 years since PowerDVD version 10, the Cyberlink company has supported Blu-ray 3D. Therefore what has happened is Cyberlink continues to call their software player PowerDVD instead of something like PowerBlu-ray (standalone Blu-ray players are called Blu-ray players and not DVD players, but most likely why PowerDVD software has been so popular over the years is because it has the brand name DVD in the product title). The 480i DVD format is much more popular when compared to the Blu-ray format (even in the year 2020), the majority of PC’s with a optical drive are using DVD-ROM drives instead of BD-ROM drives. The Blu-ray format came out in 2006 and PowerDVD version 6 added support to playback standard 2D 1080P Blu-ray discs. With the current Windows 10 operating system not including a DVD software app with Windows, one either has to download a free third party software package to playback DVD discs or they need to purchase a software package like PowerDVD in order to playback DVD discs. Cyberlink originally released PowerDVD back in 1997 and the software was originally designed to playback only DVD and audio CD’s.

There are very minor improvements with PowerDVD 20 Ultra this year, however the removed 3D features for Blu-ray owners is a disappointment. But if I would have known that Blu-ray 3D support was dropped with PowerDVD 20 Ultra I would not have wasted the time and money to downgrade to a software package with less features ( Also I read one professional review that claimed the 3D feature came with PowerDVD 20 Ultra). Inside the retail box is a CD-ROM and installation guide for easy installation on a Windows PC (PDF User Guide is downloaded from Cyberlink).įor over a decade I have been spending around $100 every year to purchase the latest retail box version of PowerDVD Ultra, and every year except for this year, there has always been improvements with new important features.

** If you still own PowerDVD 19 Ultra 64 bit I strongly recommend not upgrading (downgrading) this year to PowerDVD 20 Ultra since features like Blu-ray 3D support has been dropped **įor $99.99 plus taxes I received the full retail box version of Cyberlink PowerDVD 20 Ultra. Cyberlink PowerDVD 20 Ultra is a downgrade when compared to PowerDVD 19 Ultra 64 bit (user review)

Cyberlink powerdvd 19