9 / 10
score
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Other Features
Not content with the removal of copy protection, AnyDVD offers other features too. For those who playback DVD you can set subtitle transparency, HD-DVD users can remove parental restrictions and remove menus completely, whilst Blu-ray fans can skip annoying adverts and trailers just like DVD users can as mentioned before.

Blu-ray users can also disable Blu-ray Live from disks if they want, and can even enable an option to stop PowerDVD from moaning when it detects virtual drives. There is a speed control option which will crank down the spin speed of your drives depending on the content inserted, which can be handy if you are trying to listen to a nice classical piece on a super fast but really noisy CD-ROM unit.

One interesting feature is the ability to launch a program whenever you insert a new disk into the drive or eject it, with separate selections for non-video, NTSC, PAL, Blu-ray and HD-DVD. If for some reason your system requires a change in display resolution or monitor frequency, this might be handy for you.

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Oh and finally AnyDVD is a multi-language product, so if English is not your first tongue, you can choose from a pretty extensive selection instead.


Conclusion
SlySoft used to have a monopoly on this sort of software, whilst there has always been other clumsy and very long winded options when it comes to making your DVD and Blu-ray drives region free, AnyDVD and AnyDVD HD still have very little competition that I know of. There are other commercial applications that offer to decrypt Blu-ray and DVD material, but with the exception of DVDFab Passkey (currently in beta), none of them to the best of my knowledge work as transparently.

AnyDVD HD just sits in your system tray, when you insert a disk it pops up for a period of time whilst it works out how to decrypt the disk, then it's done. That's it, nothing else you have to do, you can launch whatever media player you want, whether it be PowerDVD or something else, and play the disk back as if it was region free.

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Whilst the price of the HD version is quite a lot higher than the normal one, it is presumably attempting to reflect the fact you are essentially getting two products at the same time, since it supports DVD and CD as part of the package. That said it would be nice if they reduced it a bit, I'm sure many more potential purchasers would consider it at a lower price point, especially with the price of Blu-ray ROM drives now falling.

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Pros
  • Removes protection from DVD, Blu-ray and HD-DVD disks
  • Transparent operation
  • Easily disabled and re-enabled
  • Regularly updated
  • Additional useful options
  • Trial version available

Cons
  • Price

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