The biggest hurdle for any player seeking an InMatrix seal of approval! As bad as we rated the interface of previous SoftDVD players, we were equally disappointed by the video. The player strained BADLY on many titles, to the point of lockups and stutters even with ATI Hardware Acceleration working in full force.

This is where MGI made the biggest and most important gains. The playback of SoftDVD v.6 is Much improved over previous versions. Still not at the level of WinDVD or Cinemaster for overall quality and smoothness, but it works well enough to satisfy most users. When Hardware Acceleration was on, I achieved smooth playback most of the time, including on The Matrix, which was a title that previous versions of SoftDVD could Never play smoothly! Watching The Patriot, I did not have the ATI induced distortions that PowerDVD's recent builds have, so the ATI support seems at least a little better developed. Explosions played clean with no artifacts or stuttering.

One thing I have to hand to them is their Color Saturation. Those users with TV-OUT video cards are aware that the TV-OUT images are never quite as sharp or well colored as the identical ones playing on the monitor. Many TV-OUT cards seem to wash out colors to some extent, and even maximizing PC color controls only achieves adequate levels. Three different people watched DVDs on my Sony TV with SoftDVD sending the images, all 3 have also watched most of my other reviews. The opinions were unanimous: This thing has Nice color saturation! For TV-OUT, this is a major victory, as it really makes the image warmer and more vibrant. I was very happy to see this, and I would have to rank the latest build of SoftDVD very close to or even with WinDVD for the quality of its TV-OUT image. Well done!