Cyberlink PowerDVD 24 Ultra Blu-ray player software for the year 2026 (user review)

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Cyberlink PowerDVD 24 Ultra (latest 64 bit Blu-ray player software for the year 2026 (user review)

On 6-13-2025 the retail box version of PowerDVD 24 Ultra was listed for pre-ordering on the Amazon website for $99.99. However, I did not become aware that Cyberlink released PowerDVD 24 Ultra until July 3rd 2025. While I consider PowerDVD 24 Ultra a year 2025 release, officially on the Cyberlink website in the upper left of the screen they claim PowerDVD 24 Ultra is a new release for the year 2026. That is because the company considers the software a year 2026 software even though they released the software officially on 6-13-2025 according to the Amazon website. At this time Amazon only has the retail box in stock. Many people are still not aware of PowerDVD 24 Ultra being released with some online places not receiving the retail box yet and have a status of "pre-order". Also, the PowerDVD history page has not been updated at the following link yet.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerDVD


According to the Amazon website PowerDVD 24 Ultra was released on 6-13-2025 with a retail box with download card. However, zooming in on the fine print on the retail box it says an installation disc is included and if that is true then a download card would not be needed and only a product key with the installation disc. So once again this year it is unclear if the retail box with UPC code 884799007378 includes an installation disc (Maybe the retail box includes both the digital download version and installation disc, since some people buying PowerDVD 24 Ultra do not have any type of optical computer drive). I normally over the many years have almost always purchased the retail box version of PowerDVD every year since it always came with an optical disc for software installation. However because it was unclear what is included in the retail box and because my family members were in a hurry to get the new release installed, therefore just like last year I decided to purchase the download version which took around 30 minutes to download over a 1,000Mbps fiber connection (it should have taken less then a minute to download but the Cyberlink servers must have been busy with people downloading the latest version of PowerDVD Ultra. PowerDVD 24 Ultra can be purchased for $99.99 or $49.99 for the upgrade from prior versions.


https://www.cyberlink.com/products/p...son_en_US.html



https://www.cyberlink.com/products/p...26_52430_0_ENU



https://www.amazon.com/CyberLink-Pow.../dp/B0FCJB49G8



https://www.bhphotovideo.com/spanish..._23_ultra.html


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerDVD

100% of all the computers I tried with PowerDVD 24 Ultra are using the Windows 10 Professional 64-bit operating system (and when it comes to Windows 11 the software in theory should work fine for both 2K Blu-ray discs and DVD discs). Like always the latest version of PowerDVD Ultra , called PowerDVD 24 Ultra, worked perfectly fine for playing back 2K Blu-ray discs on various 14-year-old desktop computers I tried, and also PowerDVD 24 Ultra worked perfectly fine for playing back 2K Blu-ray discs on 10-year-old desktop computers. While I did not try it, in theory as long as the graphics card is supported PowerDVD 24 Ultra might have also worked fine on an 18-year-old desktop computer from the year 2007. One of my family members has a 18-year-old year 2007 HP Pavillion HDX9000 series Laptop with a 1920 x 1200P 20.1 inch screen that came with a built in BD-ROM drive (which was top of the line 18 years ago) that is running Windows 10 Professional 64 bit with solid state drive and 8GB of DDR2 memory added to it 10 years ago. Every year including last years PowerDVD 23 Ultra there has been no problems playing back 2K Blu-ray discs even for people using computers that are around 20 years old. However, this year was different, when I uninstalled PowerDVD 23 Ultra and installed PowerDVD 24 Ultra, while audio CD’s and DVD discs playback perfectly fine from that 18-year-old Laptop, the problem is as soon as I try and play a 2K Blu-ray disc, a message pops up on the screen saying something about the graphics card driver is not supported and the 2K Blu-ray disc will not playback. I searched for a new graphics card driver but the last driver for the graphics card was released around the year 2013 which is the latest version installed. Sure 18 years ago this Laptop had the top-of-the-line graphics card but now the graphics card is outdated and cannot be updated to a newer graphics card like one can do very easily with a desktop computer that are 18 to 20+ years old. Therefore, I decided to re-install PowerDVD 23 Ultra and for the first time I had two versions of PowerDVD Ultra installed on the same computer. I purposely set Windows 10 Professional 64-bit Autoplay for new discs inserted to automatically launch PowerDVD 24 Ultra when a DVD disc is inserted and to launch PowerDVD 23 Ultra when a 2K Blu-ray disc is inserted. That is the work around I have to use since the 18-year-old graphics card in the 18-year-old Laptop is no longer supported when it comes to playing back 2K Blu-ray discs with PowerDVD 24 Ultra. PowerDVD 24 Ultra automatically launches for DVD discs and last year’s PowerDVD 23 Ultra on the same computer automatically launches for the playback of 2K Blu-ray discs. So while PowerDVD 24 Ultra works fine on 14 year old desktop computers with 14 year old graphics cards, anyone with a 18 or 20 year old Laptop or desktop computer might want to stay with last years PowerDVD 23 Ultra program, and might not want to upgrade to PowerDVD 24 Ultra since there is a strong possibility if ones graphics card is between 15 to 20+ years old that one might lose the ability to playback 2K Blu-ray discs (While desktop computer owners with old computers can just buy a new modern year 2025 Graphics card, Laptop owners many times are not able to upgrade the graphics card). So, beware if your computer is older then 14 years old and around 18 years old you might lose the ability to playback 2K Blu-ray discs with the installation of PowerDVD 24 Ultra (DVD discs will work fine since lower resolution with less copy protection). The work around is to re-install last years PowerDVD 23 Ultra when it comes to playing back 2K Blu-ray discs on very old computers that are around 18 years old. It’s just this year it was a decision by Cyberlink to stop supporting very old graphics cards around 18+ years old when it comes to the playback of 2K Blu-ray discs only.


PowerDVD 24 Ultra is officially compatible with the Windows 11 operating system, however even though my 10-year-old desktop computer has the latest TPM 2.0 chip with secure boot technology, my PC lacks the latest CPU requirements to use the Windows 11 operating system, and therefore I am using the Windows 10 Professional 64-bit operating system instead. Windows 11 requires a recent new desktop or Notebook computer with the latest CPU within the last 2 to 3 years. However, PowerDVD 24 Ultra is fully functional with both the Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating system.

Is PowerDVD 24 Ultra a downgrade or an upgrade when compared to prior versions of the program?

Cyberlink allows consumers to have more then one version of PowerDVD Ultra to be installed on the same PC. Blu-ray 3D disc playback and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc playback is no longer allowed from the latest versions of PowerDVD Ultra. Blu-ray 3D disc playback was added with PowerDVD 10 Ultra and completely removed on PowerDVD 20 Ultra. 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc playback was added with PowerDVD 17 Ultra and removed on PowerDVD 22 Ultra. Many consumers feel the best version of PowerDVD, was PowerDVD 19 Ultra since it’s the first version that supports 8K video playback from ones 8K camcorder or 8K downloaded demo videos. PowerDVD 19 Ultra was the last software from Cyberlink that supports the playback of both Blu-ray 3D discs and 4K Blu-ray discs. Blu-ray 3D disc playback was dropped with PowerDVD 20 Ultra and 4K Blu-ray disc playback dropped with PowerDVD 22 Ultra. Personally, I never owned the required hardware to playback Blu-ray 3D discs and 4K Blu-ray discs on a desktop computer. However, those that have 3D capable displays connected to their desktop computer and for those that have the no longer made Intel SGX security technology on their motherboard, are the ones that have both PowerDVD 19 Ultra and PowerDVD 24 Ultra installed on the same computer (some people might even have PowerDVD 22 Ultra before the firmware update that removed 4K Blu-ray disc playback). However, the problem is people with old desktop computers that support Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray disc can never update their software drivers or they lose the ability to playback Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray discs. To make matters worse Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray disc playback only worked with PowerDVD 19 Ultra if one was running the Windows 10 operating system. If one upgrades to Windows 11 since the latest Windows 11 software drivers do not support Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray discs, this means that when people do the required Windows 11 upgrade in October of 2025, that they will lose the ability to playback Blu-ray 3D discs and 4K Blu-ray discs from a Windows machine even if they already own PowerDVD 19 Ultra (One should not blame Microsoft for this issue, since the problem is with the companies that make software drivers for PC’s making the decision to no longer support Blu-ray 3D discs and 4K Blu-ray discs). The Blu-ray Disc Association should have made a business agreement with Microsoft to include 4K Blu-ray discs and Blu-ray 3D disc playback natively from the Windows operating system, but they failed to do so. So, the only way to playback 4K Blu-ray discs and Blu-ray 3D discs is to purchase a standalone 4K Blu-ray player from Sony, Panasonic, or another company.


If one owns a large collection of Blu-ray 3D discs and native 4K Blu-ray discs then upgrading to PowerDVD 24 Ultra is a downgrade since the Cyberlink company no longer supports Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray discs (Only standard 2K Blu-ray discs, 480i DVD discs, and audio CD’s are supported when it comes to physical optical disc media). Many years ago, PowerDVD 10 Ultra added Blu-ray 3D disc playback. And PowerDVD 17 Ultra added native 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc playback. For those that need Blu-ray 3D support they should stick with Cyberlink PowerDVD 19 Ultra since that was the last official version that supports Blu-ray 3D discs. In PowerDVD 20 Ultra Blu-ray 3D support was removed (or I should say never supported Blu-ray 3D). For those that need native 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc playback they should stick with PowerDVD 22 Ultra since that was the last official version that supported native 4K Blu-ray discs (make sure one does not install the latest firmware update or software patch that removes native 4K Blu-ray disc support). In PowerDVD 23 Ultra native 4K Blu-ray disc support was removed (or I should say never supported 4K Blu-ray). Of course, those consumers that need both Blu-ray 3D and native 4K Blu-ray disc playback from a Windows PC should be using PowerDVD 19 Ultra since that software is the last software that supports both Blu-ray 3D and native 4K Blu-ray discs. However, to play the latest new release Blu-ray disc movies with the latest AACS security keys a firmware update is needed once every 6 months or so. Installing the latest firmware update will most likely remove Blu-ray 3D support and native 4K Blu-ray disc support. Also, at a certain point Cyberlink will stop supporting older versions of PowerDVD and a firmware updates will stop and customers will need to pay around $99.99 to upgrade or sometimes $49.99 to upgrade to the latest version of PowerDVD Ultra which currently for the year 2025-2026 is PowerDVD 24 Ultra. There is a possibility that one day that Cyberlink might drop native 2K Blu-ray (100% standard Blu-ray disc) playback from a future version of PowerDVD Ultra in 3 to 5+ years. But that is just speculation after long time consumers have seen the company drop Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray playback. If standard 2K Blu-ray disc support is ever dropped, then I will never be upgrading to a newer version of PowerDVD again, since that is the main reason, many people purchased PowerDVD Ultra in the first place. Worst case scenario is that one day Cyberlink might drop 480i DVD disc playback and audio CD playback, and become a Cloud based media download player, but the player would need to be called something like PowerMedia player instead of PowerDVD player if DVD player support is dropped. In Cyberlinks defense the company was forced to drop both Blu-ray 3D and native 4K Blu-ray disc playback, since that feature was removed from all PC hardware as soon as consumers started installing the latest firmware updates to graphics cards, motherboards, etc. Ten years ago, in the year 2015 I built a high-end Intel based desktop computer with a native 4K HDCP 2.2 computer monitor that could stream and download native 4K content from the web, however when the 4K Blu-ray format launched in 2016, I and the 99% of other consumers that owned a PC with a native 4K BD-ROM drive could not play 4K Blu-ray discs since it required a special Intel CPU and motherboard that used SGX hardware-based security technology. But the problem is only 1% of the Intel based computers on the market had that SGX security technology and 99% of the other new computers lacked that technology. And SGX security was only offered on low to medium end computers and not the high-end motherboards. To make matters worse the Blu-ray Disc Association only approved Intel based SGX security technology as the only security technology allowed to playback native 4K Blu-ray disc, and just a few years ago Intel stopped making CPU’s and motherboards with the SGX technology. To make a long story short SGX is a dead security technology and since all new firmware/software updates to computers remove the ability for consumers to playback Blu-ray 3D discs and 4K Blu-ray discs, Cyberlink had no other choice but to remove both Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray disc playback capability from its PowerDVD Ultra product line. At this point the only way to playback Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray discs is to purchase a standalone 4K Blu-ray player from Sony or Panasonic or another company that is not Windows based.

Windows Media Player dropped native DVD support and only the playback of audio CD’s occurs starting with Windows 10. There are over 1.5 billion Windows 10 and Windows 11 users combined, and the ability to playback Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray discs from a Windows PC is not possible anymore, and might never be possible. At this point the only thing that could bring back both Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray disc playback to a Windows PC, would be if the Blu-ray Disc Association makes a business deal with Microsoft. Microsoft has knowledgeable computer programmers that could make a secure software, secure hardware, or secure hybrid software/hardware technology around the TPM 2.0 chip or other security technology that would allow all Windows based AMD CPU’s and Intel CPUs to playback both Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray discs. It would also be ideal to have a Windows Media Player that supports DVD-Audio disc and Super Audio CD (Blu-ray Audio is already supported on 100% of Blu-ray players since the year 2006). If Windows 12 becomes a reality one day all new Windows 12 PC’s could ship with a new version of Windows Media Player that supports 4K Blu-ray disc, Blu-ray 3D disc, 2K Blu-ray discs, 480i DVD discs, and audio CD’s. Maybe even a new 4K Blu-ray Windows Media App one day that can be downloaded from the Microsoft store for existing Windows 10 and Windows 11 users. The Blu-ray Disc Association if they want to restore 4K Blu-ray disc playback and Blu-ray 3D playback from a Windows PC are going to need to make business deal with Microsoft. For now, 4K Blu-ray disc playback and Blu-ray 3D playback is not possible on a Windows PC anymore. Also, another problem is all or most companies have stopped making 4K BD-ROM drives since there is no legal way to playback the 4K Blu-ray discs on a PC, therefore only 2K BD-ROM drives are in production in the year 2025 from what I understand.

One might be wondering why I purchased PowerDVD 24 Ultra if both Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray disc playback is not supported. The answer is I personally never owned the equipment to playback Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray disc from a Windows PC. So, for me and my family members I have been using a year 2016 OPPO UDP-203 4K Blu-ray player to playback native 4K Blu-ray discs. While many consumers lost the ability to play Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray discs from a Windows PC, those were features I wanted to use but personally lacked the computer hardware technology to playback those formats. So, my point is PowerDVD 24 Ultra is a very small upgrade for people that only need to playback standard 2K Blu-ray discs, 480i DVD discs, and audio CD’s. But a big downgrade for people that lost native 4K Blu-ray disc playback and Blu-ray 3D playback.

Some positives and a few negatives of Cyberlink PowerDVD 24 Ultra (mostly a 64-bit application).

It appears nothing has changed with PowerDVD 24 Ultra in terms of specs for physical media support, the software plays 2K Blu-ray discs and DVD discs. But just like last year’s version, PowerDVD 24 Ultra does not support 4K Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D. The software still supports playing back native 8K and 4K from one’s camcorder video footage with HDR10. No HDR10+ or Dolby Vision HDR support. AMD and Intel frame interpolation support was added and some minor new features like Audio playback speed control support.


There are a lot of signs that the world is transitioning away from physical optical disc media to Internet cloud-based streaming or download media playing. The latest computer graphics cards and computer monitors support native 8K video playback (one of my family members owns an 8K graphics card but the graphics card is connected to a 1080P computer monitor, instead of a 4K or 8K computer monitor). I have owned a 4K computer monitor since the year 2015 but have not yet upgraded to an 8K computer monitor. YouTube is currently offering native 8K streams and possible one day around the year 2026-2028+ Netflix, Amazon, VUDU, and other streaming providers might offer 8K movie streams with lossless audio or lossy audio. In addition, professionals and consumers starting around the year 2019+ could purchase an 8K camcorder to create homemade 8K family videos. In the year 2019 Cyberlink was smart enough to have their computer programmers add native 8K video playback support starting with PowerDVD 19 Ultra. And every year the 8K feature is improved upon. With PowerDVD 24 Ultra continuing the support for 8K video file playback. I do not personally own an 8K camcorder but one of my family members has an old year 2017 Sony 4K camcorder and I was able to use PowerDVD 24 Ultra on a native 4K computer monitor to playback 3840 x 2160P videos using the MPEG-4/AVC codec with studio master 2.0 LPCM stereo sound. But I do not own an 8K camcorder to test the 8K video playback capability of PowerDVD 24 Ultra, I am sure the software most likely does a good job with 8K videos. I searched on the Internet and with my Microsoft Edge 64 bit web browser I was able to playback native 8K YouTube demo videos, but they were downscaled to 4K quality on my 10-year-old computer monitor. But the 8K YouTube streaming demo videos looked amazing even though I had to downscale them to 4K quality on my 4K computer monitor. But the 8K YouTube videos are being played back on the Microsoft Edge 64 bit browser, and YouTube is the most popular streaming service in the world, and most likely one main reason being that YouTube is free. However, I needed to try and find some 8K demo videos that I could download and play on my PowerDVD 24 Ultra software interface. The problem I ran into is I could not find any free native 8K demo material to download, the websites that claimed 8K video downloads were offering videos in native 4K quality and not true 8K quality. The one website that claimed to offer 8K demo video downloads wanted a minimum of around $300 for each download, therefore I passed on testing the 8K video playback feature with PowerDVD 24 Ultra. If I could have found a free 8K demo to download in theory PowerDVD 24 Ultra would have played the native 7680 x 4320P video back but it would have been downscaled to 4K quality due to the limitations of my 10-year-old desktop computer monitor. But that is one of the amazing features of PowerDVD Ultra, is that 8K has been offered since the year 2019, with the ability to playback native 8K video files downloads from the web or 8K camcorder video file playback.


PowerDVD 24 Ultra offers better HDR10 support for 8K and 4K web-based video downloads but no HDR10+ or Dolby Vision HDR support. Also, Intel and NVIDIA RTX Video Super Resolution is supported. PowerDVD 24 Ultra does not support Blu-ray 3D and 4K Blu-ray, and therefore when I insert a native 4K Blu-ray disc into the computers 4K BD-ROM drive the following PowerDVD 24 Ultra message pops up on the screen:

“There is a disc with an unsupported format in drive F:” (the drive letter for the 4K BD-ROM drive will usually be D, E, or F depending on one’s hardware configuration).


That being said playing standard Blu-ray discs, DVD discs, and audio CD’s was almost flawless on my 10 year old desktop computer system (PowerDVD 24 Ultra also appears to load at the same fast speed when compared to last year’s version). Mixing down 7.1 lossless audio tracks to 2.0 PCM by the software sounded fine with the Blu-ray disc titles I used. Bitstreaming lossless audio to a A/V receiver is a non-issue since the A/V receiver does the decoding of the audio. Also, I know people with an 18-year-old Laptop computers and a BD-ROM drive that are having major problems with playing back standard Blu-ray discs but no problems with playback DVD discs, and audio CD’s while using PowerDVD 24 Ultra (This year PowerDVD 24 Ultra dropped support for playing back 2K Blu-ray discs from very old graphics cards). PowerDVD 24 Ultra like almost all prior versions offers unlimited persistent storage for BD-LIVE, bookmarks, and resume play if one unchecks the box that says “Limit the size of cache storage to”. Also, under more settings make sure the “Enable network for BD-live” is checked for those that want to use BD-LIVE (one’s entire solid-state drive is used for temporary cache storage). Clearing the cache storage fixes rare Blu-ray disc playback or disc loading issues sometimes for both standalone Blu-ray players and PowerDVD 24 Ultra. However, I tested the BD-LIVE function on some Blu-ray discs and while it appears the BD-LIVE feature would have worked from PowerDVD 24 Ultra, the problem is all the BD-LIVE servers are down and I am not able to test BD-LIVE from any Blu-ray player (all studios including Showtime in 2025 dropped support for BD-LIVE. See the following link for more details https://forum.blu-ray.com/showpost.p...4&postcount=23). Scanning forward at 32 times speed and scanning backwards at 16 times speed was nice and smooth and is the maximum scanning speed possible by the program. PowerDVD 24 Ultra just like prior versions of PowerDVD automatically adjusts the graphics card frame rate (Hz) output from the default 60Hz mode to 30Hz (29.97Hz) when playing back material that is 30fps like DVD discs with 3:2 pulldown, and also when BD-LIVE use to exist prior versions of PowerDVD Ultra would playback BD-LIVE using 30fps. Also, the graphics card switched to 24Hz (23.976Hz) when native 1080p/24 material was played from a Blu-ray disc. Since my computer monitor is native 3840 x 2160P with native 60Hz, any 24Hz and 30Hz material gets converted to 60Hz by the computer monitor. But if one hooks up an external display like a Pioneer plasma the native 1080p/24 from the graphics card well be triple flashed to 1080P at 72Hz by the Pioneer plasma display. Or native 2160P/24 at 96Hz if one hooks up a 4K LCOS projector and is able to play 4K camcorder images (some 4K videos might be 30fps or 60fps instead of 24fps).


PowerDVD 24 Ultra has an optical disc information screen that shows basic information like the video and audio codec located on the disc, disc resolution, and audio and video bit rates. However, PowerDVD 24 Ultra still does not show the frame rate on the disc and if the source material is interlaced or progressive. Therefore, movie reviewers still need to use the 2016 OPPO UDP-203 Blu-ray player that mentions the native frame rate of the disc and if the image is progressive or interlaced. Plus, the OPPO UDP-203 informs one what the output frame rate and output resolution is. Hopefully a future version of PowerDVD well offer frame rate and progressive/interlace information. Next to the resolution all they need to do is place a letter “I” or a letter “P”. Then have a native Hz info on screen also. But for some reason PowerDVD Ultra does not offer the same level of detail as one gets from a high-end standalone 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc player.


My desktop computer uses a Windows 10 Professional 64-bit operating system. Programs that run in 64 bit mode instead of 32 bit mode are more powerful and faster (that is true 99% of the time as long as the programmer designed the program correctly). Cyberlink PowerDVD 19 Ultra was the very first PowerDVD software program to offer native 64-bit software code for the main program. While it’s true that PowerDVD 24 Ultra also runs in 64 bit mode, that is only true for the main program and many times PowerDVD 24 Ultra runs in a hybrid 64 bit and 32 bit mode. For example, when playing an audio CD, PowerDVD 24 Ultra runs in 64-bit mode, but when one plays a video from a DVD, or Blu-ray disc, PowerDVD Ultra must access 32-bit software code to play that video. In the ideal world when and if Cyberlink makes PowerDVD 25 Ultra for the year 2026+, they should rewrite the program so that its 100% 64-bit application code running instead of the hybrid 64 bit and 32-bit code that is currently being used for video. For example, while viewing the “Platform” column under “Details” tab in Windows Task Manager, one gets to see all the 64 bit and 32-bit software programs that are running. As soon as one clicks on the PowerDVD 24 Ultra desktop icon, the main core program called “PowerDVD.exe” well run-in 64-bit mode on a 64-bit Windows operating system. Then for a second or two “PowerDVD24Agent.exe” which is also 64 bit well briefly run and then close as soon as “PowerDVDMovie.exe” software is launched automatically. The problem is the “PowerDVDMovie.exe” software is only running in 32-bit mode. While audio CD’s only use the 64 bit “PowerDVD.exe” program, when one wants to play any video-based program from a DVD or Blu-ray they are accessing the 32 bit “PowerDVDMovie.exe” software code. Therefore PowerDVD 24 Ultra is not 100% 64 bit and only the main program, therefore it has to always access 32-bit software code in order to play video-based material. In the ideal world the next version of PowerDVD, which in theory will be called PowerDVD 25 Ultra, most likely will be released in 2026+, and hopefully the Cyberlink company programmers will have re-written the software so that the “PowerDVDMovie.exe” portion of the software uses 64-bit code instead of 32-bit software code. If that was to occur then the program would no longer be a 64 bit and 32-bit hybrid but 100% 64-bit software program.

If one does not need support for playing back Blu-ray 3D discs or native 4K Blu-ray discs, I highly recommend PowerDVD 24 Ultra. Overall PowerDVD 24 Ultra appears to be a little bit better when compared to PowerDVD 23 Ultra as long as one does not own a graphics card that is around 18 years old. PowerDVD 24 Ultra is also the best Blu-ray software for a Windows PC for those that own a BD-ROM drive and want to playback standard Blu-ray discs, DVD discs, and audio CD’s. It’s true that PowerDVD 24 Ultra is the best and number one software to use to playback standard 2K Blu-ray discs and 480i DVD discs (plus audio CDs are supported). However, many consumers are going to instead purchase a standalone 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc player from Sony or Panasonic so that they can playback native 4K Blu-ray discs and Blu-ray 3D discs. I always wanted to playback 4K Blu-ray discs on a Windows computer when doing brief user reviews, but for the past 9 years all my 4K BD-ROM drive was good for is getting the GB information from the 4K Blu-ray disc (PC built in 2015 but first 4K BD-ROM drive came out around 2016). I really wish the Blu-ray Disc Association would make a business deal with Microsoft and fix this issue of Windows no longer supporting native 4K Blu-ray disc playback and no longer supporting Blu-ray 3D playback. With over 1.5 billion Windows devices in use, it should be possible to get 15 million consumers out of the 1.5 billion to purchase an internal or external 4K BD-ROM drive if 4K Blu-ray support were to return to Windows one day. It’s all up to the Blu-ray Disc Association if they want to get this issue resolved. But now it’s my understanding that no one makes 4K BD-ROM drives for computers anymore and only 2K BD-ROM drives for computers. But that could change in the future with a BDA business relationship with Microsoft.