Yesterday my HD-DVD drive arrived from Alternate. Bulk version, eighty bucks (Euros), no fancy-schmancy stuff attached like Pet-Print-Studio or crap like that. No, just plugged in and it works. Perfect! But I had no HD-DVD media at the time, so I thought I just go to the mall and get one. That’s when my odyssey started… yes, another one.

At the local Walmart equivalent Media Markt I browsed the very small shelf of HD-DVD / Blu-Ray Discs. While there were about 500 identical Spider Man IIIDVDs perfectly aligned in a sheer endless row, the HD-DVDs were not even alphabetically ordered because you would see them through in two minutes. About 20 of the 50 HD-DVDs were Harry Potter so I settled for Prestige, a flick that Lisa recommended to me. And she’s always right with her flicks! 29.90 € away!

And because I wanted to play the thing back on my PC too I needed some HD-DVD player software. I remember having read in the forums that the new PowerDVD from CyberLink is capable of doing the same thing, so I checked the sparse selection. PowerDVD 7 for 29.90 € and PowerDVD 7 Max for 49.90 €. Hm… the packaging looked nearly identical, the only difference was the Max writing and a small HD logo on the back. That looked good enough. I took the box, sealed in shrink-wrap and off I was.

At home I opened it and, surprise, I wasn’t the first one. Somebody obviously returned the damn thing after redeeming the CD-key which made my efforts to install it useless.

The next day I took the box back to the store, answered some concerned questions about the reason ¹ and took a new box, this time making sure it was sealed properly and only once.

Installing it under Vista was a pain in the ass, somehow I managed it by an odd combination of keeping a crashed setup-routine in RAM, setting user-permissions on the fly during install and by kicking other stuff out of my memory. After an hour it finally worked. Even entering the CD-key was useful this time. I was so happy that I just wanted to watch a little Prestige.

Disk not supported.

WTF? Then I searched the forums on the web, googled for “hd-dvd player software” but, shockingly, without any proper results. While searching for the feedback option at the CyberLink website (which really isn’t well designed and logically linked) I stumbled across the fact that only Power DVD Ultra plays back HD-DVDs and Blue-Ray discs.

The website offered me the possibility to upgrade my version to Ultra for as little as 62 €. It didn’t matter by the way, whether I wanted to upgrade a Max, Deluxe, Standard or OEM version (all in different price categories), the amount to pay remained the same. That kind of price policy really made me angry, while other companies treat you so well ². Let’s break it down for some of the fast paced and hence slow people out there:

So the worst case would be paying 22 € more than purchasing the Ultra version in the first place. Imagine 121.99 €! FOR A FUCKIN’ PLAYBACK SOFTWARE! Still I just upgraded to PowerDVD Ultra. For 54.577705 €. And I tell you how:

The English version of the CyberLink website offers all their overpriced and jelly-bean-colored software in US dollars. Even when you’re a customer from Europe. In that case the upgrade cost 79.95 USD, VAT included! That way I paid “only” 4.57705 € too much. I just hope that they won’t charge me with the additional amount when they find out I am a EU customer. On the other hand: So what? I won’t pay a single cent more than stated on the invoice I just received — period.

And still… the 4.57705 € are nine and a half cups of coffee at the vending machine. And still… it’s only a fucking playback software — nothing more.

Hm. Looks like I got ripped of majorly by CyberLink. Those bastards…

EDIT: Guess what’s not installing on a Vista system? Aaargh!! I feel like a money piñata that’s whacked open!

EDIT: Thanks to west coast customer support times my problem got solved while I was asleep in my time zone here. Yes, it took quite a while manually deleting keys from the registry but at least I am able to watch HD DVDs by now. Let’s better not spoil the precious moment my considering how much I had to pay for it.