14 DAY TRIAL // If you decided to buy an all-in-one Entertainment Center, you can take a look at CyberLink PowerCinema. According to the producer, this 100$ product is the one thing you need to transform your PC into a digital entertainment center.
Lately, we seem to like products that come as a solution to multiple problems. You just pay for one and it should solve them all. My question is: the solution you get - is it a reliable one? Or is it the classic situation when you try to do more than one thing at a time and you fail in every way?
CyberLink PowerCinema is a great idea. For 100 bucks, you watch TV, listen to the radio, burn DVDs, record your favorite programs, read the news and so on? You can do all that if you still want to touch this software after the very long installation and configuration process.
Myself, for one, I was really curious... So I scanned for channels and started playing with it. CyberLink PowerCinema has a very nice sleek interface, but the producer seems to forget about the keyboard. YES, some computer users are used to working with it - and I think it's a shame that the producer didn't think about this aspect. You can change the channels with a mouse-click or with a remote control only, which you do not have when you download and try it. It would have been a great idea to insert some short tooltips for the buttons and a complete .chm help file.
The interface is elegant and modern, but lacks in some other features. The user may be intimidated by this software because it seems to have so little control over it. If the scan for channels was not a successful one - this is how I call the output of a list with noisy and scrambled channels - I can't scan manually just for one, until I consider I reached the best frequency.
PowerCinema can record the shows you like while you're away and you can schedule it to save them on DVD or on your hard disk, which is great. Another feature the producer is proud of is "Always Time-Shift Recording" which lets you watch the programs while PowerCinema is still recording them.
We all like to keep ourselves informed, but not even the ones obsessed by RSS feeds wouldn't choose to input an address in an 'on screen keyboard'. An RSS reader is light and tries to help the user move faster to the articles he is interested in. Typing an address - especially a long one- with the mouse is more than I can take.
The requirements to run this software are pretty high - and I can understand why. You need Intel Pentium 4 2.6 GHz or higher and 512 MB or more. The list of Tv Tunner Cards can be visualized here . The one that I use is not in that list now and this might be the explanation for this terrible noise.
Everyone who has a digital camera has a lot of pictures stored on one's computer. With PowerCinema, you can edit and display BMP, JPG and PNG file formats. You can create slideshows with nice transition effects and remove red eyes and adjust brightness or contrast automatically. Again, you can find small, freeware tools to do this kind of enhancements.
As a DVD player, it supports multiple subtitles, high definition playback with great audio and video quality. Here, the producer did a really good job. You can play widescreen movies and you can take advantage of the Dolby Digital support for 5.1-channel audio and the enhancements for headphones and Virtual Speaker, which simulates the feeling of surround sound when multi-channel audio is played via 2 speakers.
The Good
PowerCinema is a nice tool if you want to play DVDs, listen to some music or watch TV (and your TV Card is on the producer's list). The sound is great and the high definition playback will create an enjoyable experience.
The Bad
This Entertainment Center is probably not the best place to introduce a RSS feed reader. The whole principle of reading news this way is to do it fast and the environment provided is not helping at all. PowerCinema has a lot of features, but, there again, there is a lot of software out there, and I think buying one to solve all your problems is not the best solution.
The Truth
PowerCinema is a nice entertainment environment with some really great features. The interface seems heavy and difficult to control without a remote. Most of the buyers use the playback features, and that is probably the area the producer should concentrate on.
