Over the weekend, I picked up Terminator Salvation (I love the Terminator movies!) in Blu-ray. About a year ago, I added a Blu-ray player to my custom built Velocity Micro Windows Media Center PC (the CineMagix Grand Theater Entertainment System). The Blu-ray drive was a great addition to a PC that essentially controls my whole home entertainment experience in my living room. I noticed that the application I used to play Blu-ray movies was in need of an update. I decided to go out and look for an application that is Compatible for Windows 7 and I came across Corel WinDVD Pro 2010. WinDVD Pro 2010 is listed in the Windows 7 Compatibility Center and uses new Windows 7 features I think a lot of you will enjoy. It’s a great example what’s possible when developers want to make PC apps simpler and more fun.
First off – WinDVD Pro 2010 comes sporting a brand new look and feel with its UI. Corel takes advantage of Aero Glass for the look of the application. The layout is similar to Windows Media Player. The playback controls at the bottom of the application are in similar positions as they are in Windows Media Player. This is great for folks who are already comfortable with Windows Media Player today.
In Windows 7, WinDVD Pro 2010 introduces integration with the Windows Taskbar and utilizes Jump Lists.
With the WinDVD Pro 2010 Jump List – you can quickly play your DVD and Blu-ray movies right from the Windows Taskbar in Windows 7. It literally fires up WinDVD Pro 2010 and plays your movie without any need to fiddle with controls to setup your movie.
If you are using WinDVD Pro 2010 on a Windows 7 PC that has multitouch capabilities, WinDVD Pro 2010 also supports Windows Touch! You can control playback of your movies with the touch of a finger. My setup in my living room is not with a PC, TV or monitor that supports multitouch unfortunately.
WinDVD Pro 2010 also has Windows Media Center integration for quick access to WinDVD 2010. This comes in quite handy for Blu-ray movie playback and used this option to start playing Terminator Salvation.
Corel offers 2 versions of WinDVD 2010 today – Standard and Pro. I chose Pro due to the wanting Blu-ray movie playback. For more on the features in WinDVD 2010, click here.
For Windows 7 PCs with Blu-ray drives, this app is certainly worth looking at for Blu-ray playback.
Know of any other great apps you want to share with people that work great in and take advantage of Windows 7? Post a comment and let me know!