If you're a movie fan and happen to have a great PC setup with surround sound speakers then this is the software treat you've been waiting for. PowerDVD 7 is the latest version of this movie playback software from the Cyberlink people and it is jam-packed with features and improvements. So jam packed that perhaps the novice user may not ever use all those extra features ... but eh the power user is sure in for a great ride.

The Cyberlink people claim this tool has the highest definition video playback and state it has "Mind boggling clarity and a gust of sharp, bright colors to blow away foggy memories of dull video images. PowerDVD 7 gives you "THE" highest definition video playback supporting the latest technologies including support for key next-generation formats such as MPEG-4 H.264." There is also excellent audio with Dolby Digital and DTS ... yep I said both.

The User Interface (UI) has five different skins to choose from. This is always a delight for me, I love to customise / personalise players ... and, there's also a button in the UI to download the latest skins for free from the Cyberlink website. Take a look through the skins available now.

See-it-all is a new feature aimed at notebooks ... in short the software monitors the notebook battery and the running time of the movie, if the battery will run out before the movie the movie is sped up ever so slightly so that the whole film can be viewed. The speed up is tolerable but I guess it might make any subtitles a tad hard to read. Remaining battery length is displayed in an icon on the screen as well.

Read-it-clearly leaves the movie screen clear of text by hiding subtitles in the black bands at the bottom of the screen.

Say-it-Again is a little auto playback feature that runs automatically while watching a movie ... use one key to play back the last seconds without having to rewind manually.

And, those abundant features I spoke of earlier? Well, there are quite a few and possibly better explained by visiting the Cyberlink website but here are some examples:

• 9x digital zoom
• dual display mode (2 screen display)
• screen snapshots
• bookmarks (quick access to favourite scenes)
• colour profiles (original, vidid, bright and theatre profiles)
• karaoke mode
• audio visualisations

So, there you have it ... a great little product ... and with the top of the range Deluxe edition coming in at $69.95 USD a great little price as well. I heartily give this useful tool a double thumbs up and look forward to knock off time when I can put my feet up on my desk and watch The Matrix ... ah bliss.