Yet more comments after yet more testing:

1. As pointed out in Leawo's website, one can play blu-ray folders by choosing the m2ts file. However, it would be much more convenient for the enduser if the movie plays automatically just by navigating to the folder, as is possible in PowerDVD, TotalMedia Theater, DVDFab and PotPlayer. Especially if one has an HTPC and is sitting on the couch, one does not want to figure out which m2ts file to play. In any case, the main movie often consists of more than one m2ts file and sometimes the longest playlist doesn't even correspond to "Play All".

2. For HTPCs, it would be great to have Leawo BluRay Player integrate into Windows Media Center (the way PowerDVD does) and/or XBMC.

3. I had some issue with extreme stuttering with some MKV files, but it may be that it was the files that were defective. To be precise, the files ripped with Aiseesoft MKV Ripper stuttered badly but the ones ripped with MediaCoder played perfectly. I suspect it was the fault of Aiseesoft MKV Ripper because PowerDVD, TotalMedia Theater and DVDFab also had trouble with the same files. However, PotPlayer could play these "bad" MKVs perfectly.

Altogether, I really do like Leawo's Player because of:
1. The beautiful simple, uncluttered interface.
2. The extremely low CPU usage - great for those who want to turn an older computer into a HTPC.

I'd like to add a bit to my comments here as I have done a bit more testing.

1. In addition to PotPlayer, TotalMedia Theater and DVDFab Player, the latest version of PowerDVD also supports playing from blu-ray folders - although the feature is not obvious from the interface and is not easy to access. Since TotalMedia Theater and PowerDVD cannot play from ISOs, folder support would allow users to save their blu-rays in a way that would play in all players.

2. The best feature of Leawo, according to my tests, is the low CPU usage. Here are my test results:


CPU (% Used)
GPU (% Used)
DVDFab
68
28
Potplayer
20
30
Leawo
18
19
PowerDVD
30
12
TotalMedia Theater
41
9

3. There are still some titles that Leawo has trouble with. This is understandable but I if I keep trying to play unsupported titles, I get a message about the software not working on my computer, something about either the registration code or my computer may have been banned. Since I got my code straight from you via the GOTD offer, I know that obviously this is not the case. Everything works again after I restart and reenter the registration. However, this message could be very annoying users who know that they have not done anything illegitimate. When the software is unable to play a title, the error message should be changed and there should not be any implication that the user's registration number or computer is banned. You can imagine that this would not create happy users.

4. Testing with more titles show that there are in fact titles that Leawo can play that PotPlayer won't, and vice versa.

Re: Dono

You are correct that the Digiarty product / website recommended by Giovanni appear to be down. However, I looked it up on the Internet Archive. Here is a snapshot from 8/11/13:
https://web.archive.org/web/20130811012235/http://www.digiarty.com/

Generally speaking, nothing new. I got one today. Actually I want to see if this player performs good enough compared to my currently using Mac Blu-ray Player from Macgo.
I have to admit that a part of discs are available but some are not. And it is not as easy as possible like Macgo when play a Blu-ray movie. Missing features is another great disadvantage.

This is a significant improvement over the last version I got (1.3.6?) which had a lot of distortion and the Full Navigation Mode playback did not work. Full Nav of the menu now works, but unfortunately there is still some picture distortion in specific spots that are repeatable. Rewind doesn't work. It's nice to see they've done some work on it but I'm not going to be purchasing with the bug. I have an old 4X BDROM drive but that shouldn't matter, other players do not have this problem although the other cheaper ones from small publishers also do not have the full menu navigation so that gives me some hope as to an affordable player with full features.

Thanks Leawo for the generous giveaway! I bought a blu-ray drive for my pc a few months ago, but little did I know that I needed expensive software to play actual BluRays.

This player is perfect! It plays anything I throw at it, including store bought Blu-Rays and DVDs. I'm glad I don't have to juggle two applications to play the different formats.

I like the clean user interface a lot- its a rare thing for media players! And not only does it have the looks, it is functional. Lots of options, from auto-skipping things before the DVD/BD menu, to automatic playback, to video quality controls. Being able to see how far the disk is buffered is wonderful too!

For the next update, I do have a few suggestions. It would be nice if the installer would give options for enabling those cool features right from the get-go (like setting it as the default autoplay option), instead of waiting for users to be pleasantly surprised later. Also, some of the text in the American English distribution could use an edit or two, and "Full Navigation Mode" occasionally has trouble loading menus correctly. However, who would want to wait for the menu to load when Leawo lets you skip straight to the feature?

Merry Christmas!

None of the Blu-ray players that have been given away here in 2013 have been able to play some of the newer Blu-rays released by Sony and Disney. Just last week I tried the Smurfs 2 on several of my PC media players with no success. Unfortunately I don't have the Smurfs 2 disc to test this new software with.

Here are some of my observation.
1. It seems that Full Menu is now supported when playing from disc, but not when playing from ISO. Please allow Full Menu when playing from ISO.
2. Please allow playing from Blu-Ray folder. This can be done on PotPlayer, TotalMedia Theater and DVDFab Player, so it should not be hard to implement.
3. There are some blu-ray titles it cannot play, eg Bluscenes Underwater Cozumel and Majestic Waterfalls. Interestingly, the titles it cannot handle correspond to the ones that PotPlayer cannot play.
4. It would be a plus if it could support blu-ray 3D in the future.

Runs well on my XPs3, have a quadcore with AMD motherboard graphic card and 4Gb Ram. Would like the ability to move the options/settings windows from the center of the screen.

Player won´t run. Only shows error on startup "CApplication::CreateGUI() failed - Check log file for display errors". But there is no log file!
Are there any special requirements for this to run? System is Windows 7 Ultimate with SP1 and all updates.
There´s a d3dx9_43.dll in the program folder. Does that mean this piece of crap needs outdated direct x version 9 to run?
Computer is running DX11 out of the box!

I have two 23" monitors. The one on the right is HD so if I'm watching a movie in 1080p I have it going on that screen.
Last week I did the craziest thing, I wiped my computer and placed it back to the factory settings. Of course, I didn't back a lot of stuff up and lost all my previouse GAOTD offerings.
This player came in the nick of time.
I like it! THANKS for the Christmas Present!
"Sniper" is on right now!

1/One year? No thanks!

The No Audio thing has to be MANULLY SET TO not BE THE Leawo DEVICE, USE YOUR DEFAULT AUDIO DEVICE TO PLAY AUDIO, THEN YOU WILL HEAR THE SOUND THAT IS MISSING FROM THE PLAYBACK. Leawo'S AUDIO DEVICE DID NOT WORK ON MY SYSTEM, AND THEY ALSO NEVER SENT A KEY, SO IT MIGHT WORK FOR A MONTH, NOT A YEAR.

I'm not going to comment on this particular giveaway but I'd like to share my experience on a particular Leawo software product I did install awhile back. It was called "Video Converter Ultimate"

During installation on Windows XP SP3 (x86), I noticed that about half way through there was a lengthy pause (about a minute) before installation continued and then was complete. I thought it was odd behavior to install any software product and for this to happen but I let that thought go. The first thing I noticed, after installation, was my red Windows Security Shield popped up on the systems tray. When I clicked on it, it said that my Antivirus and Firewall were turned both turned off. Luckily, I had a recent backup of my Windows XP installation, thank God, because I tried everything in the book to try to get Antivirus and Firewall to be recognized by Windows Security Center.

This included uninstalling, removing every trace in the registry, turning off Real-time-Protection and then turning it back on, you name it. Nothing I did could fix this problem so I went to the recent backup image I had of Windows XP to get everything back to normal. BTW, the antivirus I was using was MSE and the firewall was COMODO

I'll let you come to whatever conclusions about what the developers are up to here. This was a real experience that troubled me and I'm sure if anyone else experienced the same thing, that would have raised a red flags in head head as well. All I can say is be real cautious about Leawo software products.

Leawo? Never again. The headaches it caused me that day were awful and if I didn't have a backup of it at all, then it would have taken me many days to get my OS and all my software installed to get it all back to normal again.

Robert...

@#8 Dono

Dono, the Diarty site is up & running; whatever problems were experienced earlier seem to have been corrected.

As for its review, Softpedia states "the media player runs on a low-to-moderate amount of system resources, has a good response time and worked smoothly during our testing, without hanging, crashing or displaying error dialogs; we haven't found any issues in our tests. All in all, DAPlayer should satisfy all users who are looking for a feature-packed yet straightforward media player." and was rated a 4.0/5.

Though not quite ecstatic the review seems to be at least a reasonably happy one.

Special shout out to mike, our site professor, who is always instructive yet never condescending.

This is NOT bad player....
In the sense of image rendering, Digiarty is better
For the sound options (equalizer, volume up etc.) this offer is better.
I do not know if someone can combine both?
Thank you.

No audio with the player (avi file) ----GOM audio works fine. Can anyone give suggestions why there is no audio with today's giveaway? Otherwise, everything went well (download, install, and registration). Video quality very good.

@Giovanni You are not quite correct in saying DAPlayer does exactly what Leawo player does. DAP fails to play my commercial blu-rays (purchased ones), whereas Leawo Blu-ray Player succeeds. You can read my review (1.1.0.25 (beta version)) for the details:
http://dottech.org/106758/windows-review-leawo-blu-ray-player/
IMO, this is a good blu-ray player, but without 3D playback, I can't give it two thumbs up.

Got this giveaway and installed the program on Windows XP and got the Application configuration is incorrect , reinstalling the application may help. I did install all the runtimes on that desktop and it wont even launch. I was able to install this on my Windows 7 laptop and it worked without a problem. Perhaps its truly not compatible under Windows XP? Developer issue perhaps? I've emailed them for support, hoping they can help and even posted to their FB page in hopes of reaching out but no support yet. At least it does its job of playing DVD movies without an issue on Windows 7 SP1. The interface is a bit tricky to move around as you have to have the mouse on the right spot of the app, otherwise the menus move around too quickly. There is also a button at the bottom right, that if you click it, it opens up the developer page for support, but it freezes the player for a good 6 seconds leading the OS to believe the program hung or froze. That's not good for stability purposes. Program should not be having this problem under the Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4ghz and 4GB Ram. Upon further investigation of the programs instabilities and reading these comments, it now appears it requires a runtime that's not available for Windows XP making it ineffective to run. Should not list an OS when it won't run.

Awesome app, will try out later and report results when got more time!

"This mail already sent for code" to be exact.

Yet another GOTD with no email reply with the keycode. I do get an "already sent" on trying again.

Always the same with all Leawo products, error message is "failed to get computer ID" when trying to register any of their programs. Ran as manager, cleared through firewall the usual procedures but still nothing with any of their products I have purchased.

My suggestion is that newbies will be helped if a brief reference to the Minimum System Requirements is made in the giveaway description. This will only need a few words: "Needs DirectX version 9.0c, Blu-ray drive, Internet Connection". Otherwise a prospective user might download it hoping to view their home Blu-ray movies on their PC only to find out that these few requirements are not met (on older systems).

#4: "Does the /1year keycode mean, that the software stops to work? In the email sent, there is nothing mentioned about a licence time."

The Leawo Blu-ray Player & similar work more-or-less like most Blu-Ray & DVD copy & ripping software, phoning home for directions on how to handle the disc's DRM. One alternative BTW is DVDFab's Passkey or Slysoft's Any DVD, which are drivers that perform this DRM bypass for you, so you can use any player you want. Since the DRM on Blu-Ray & DVD discs continually evolves, engineering that bypass takes constant work, not unlike the way anti-virus software companies must constantly adapt their software to deal with new malware threats. And like security software, you pay not just for the app itself but that continuing work, often on a subscription basis.

With these players generally when the subscription's up you still have the app, & it still works, but you can't access their servers for instructions on how to bypass the latest DRM. On the bright side GOTD will likely offer another player or three before then, and while the overall number of files & their size can be a bit on the heavy side, most aren't that bad when it comes to (un)installation -- XBMC is almost portable.

* * *

#5: "Great Blu-Ray player but could use Intel Quick-Sync or Nvidia CUDA to reduce CPU usage during playback, also it would be great to reduce loading time of the software."

As far as graphics card or chip assist goes, most all graphics hardware on the market is designed to provide some help with HD video playback -- even inside your tablet. Where Quick Sync, Cuda, & AMD Stream, & for all 3 OpenCL, usually comes into play is when you're doing some sort of calculations that, because of the way GPUs are designed, they perform faster & more efficiently. A few examples are crunching numbers on Wall St., rendering video, brute force password cracking, & bit coin mining... I mention the last 2 because not every malware infection is solely after your data, as some bot nets steal your graphics processing horsepower to do that sort of thing.

That graphics hardware assist for [particularly HD] video playback is usually automatic, involved whenever you're playing video -- based on Direct Show, developed as a solution before there was Cuda, Quick Sync, or Stream/Avivo -- and varies a lot in how much it helps out depending on the horsepower of your gear. If you're using a discreet graphics card vs. an onboard chipset or a GPU that's built into the CPU, the more expensive the card the more capabilities & horsepower it has. That's not to say you want or need the most expensive card on the market, as the increase in video related capabilities starts to level off in the mid-range, while gaming features continue to increase.

As far as loading times go, if you're after simple video playback the open source Media Player Classic Home Cinema [MPC-HC http://mpc-hc.org/ ] is a hugely popular, in part because it is so light weight. If I remember correctly the original MPC was developed to get away from the bloat Microsoft introduced in Windows Media Player when they expanded it to handle play lists & libraries etc. years ago -- the Home Cinema version stays true to that concept but provides loads more capabilities.

Most of the Blu-Ray players that aren't licensed by the Blu-Ray folks, e.g. the Leawo Blu-ray Player, are based on XBMC [xbmc.org] , which is a full media center app -- as such it's going to take a bit longer to load because there's more of it or to it.

For expirenced users only!!!!!!!!!!!!1

Most everyone has the Visual Microsoft v 10 runtime files installed.

Rh means you can delete the two files starting with msvc*.dll

Most people have Java installed. It installs and older version which is know for causing problems. You can completely delete the jre folder. You'll have to restart your computer and then delete the remaining files and then the jre folder

I've saved over 10MB of files and my player works just fine.

I can't understand why they install Java in it's old folder.

If they were smart, they should choose an install that checks for the presence of Java.

All in all I think it's a good player

Installed from the temp file.
Eula has some unusual terminology.

Email and retrieval of key allowed quick install.

Wow, how long does this software take to load a BR disc? Simple Easy Player setup, please.
5 minutes the first disc I chose out of it's new wrapper.

And now the second new disc is up to 4. I pulled it back out. I'll let Leawo be the default auto play for any BR disc inserted. Insert... Aaaand nothing at all. Pulled the second new disc back out. So, Leawo didn't set itself as the default BR player in Windows. Oh, the button is selected, it just doesn't work.

English guys. "Stop palying when battery is less than" ?? C'mon.

So the software thinks my desktop computer is charging it's batteries? WTH?

So far, strike 3 out of 3 here. This is a loser bit of software.

Thumbs way down. This isn't ready to be let loose on an unsuspecting public.

Dono





Giovani, the Digiarty site is null 404 and the DAPlayer 1.0.1.9 is not reviewed happily on Cnet or Softpedia.

Great Blu-Ray player but could use Intel Quick-Sync or Nvidia CUDA to reduce CPU usage during playback, also it would be great to reduce loading time of the software.

The programs from Leawo are quite interesting and for few times I used them, including an older version of this player and it was good. This version still is interesting and I'll keep it.


I agree with comments no. 1,2,4 ... Leawo and GOTD should add the info "1 year license" ... everywere the name of this GOTD and/or it's license is mentioned.

NOTE: Leawo, please stop giving negative votes that are 'out of place'. You are not a new company or/and with very new software, that nobody knows. And you are also not Noobs to not know that we have our own brain to judge the comment voting. The comments made by the majority, here, are also not noobs... don't be shocked and do not try to annoy us. Your software might not be perfect but is good enought; and its not crappy (as far as I know) ... yet.

Went to the promotion site to get the keycode. Found the GiveAway and was astonished to read : $14.95/lifetime or Get Free keycode/1year.

Does the /1year keycode mean, that the software stops to work? In the email sent, there is nothing mentioned about a licence time.

Installed on a Win8.1 64 Bit system without problems. Registered with the code. After registration the registration dialog disapears, but the "about" window does not tell anything about a defined period (1year) so I assume, that this is a lifetime registration without update possibility.

Nice is the onscreen keyboard to enter the key -> tablet users. The software has a clear interface in the modern Win8 look.

A first test with a standard .AVI file needed about 30 seconds to load and to display the file. I liked the screen layout.

Tested with a blue ray disk. I cannot tell anything about the video quality, because I see no real difference between different players. So I let answer my feeling. It looks good and makes a perfect impression. THE most modern player.

Will stay on my computer. (*)

Thanks GOATD and Leawo.

(*9) would be frustrated, if the player stops working after one year... No, not real, because I expect to see a lot of other players here.

Merry christmas to all!

I have a suggestion for you that when playing the video in full screen mode the time should be appeared at one corner of the video and this time is optional(i.e. It can be disable or enable via settings or options)

Does the job pretty well but with the update limitation I'm afraid that it can be used for FREE just for a few months.

For this reason I recommend DAPlayer by Digiarty, which does exactly the same things as this GAOTD with the only difference that it does not charge you a dime for that:

http://www.digiarty.com
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Video-Players/DAPlayer.shtml

Otherwise just use these two FREE apps to bypass the latest DRM protections, so as to enjoy or even copy the ripped Bluray movie by playing it with your favourite media player (Potplayer, in my case) or with your DVD player afterwards:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/CD-DVD-Tools/CD-DVD-Images-Utils/BDlot-DVD-ISO-Master.shtml

http://www.dvdfab.com/hd-decrypter.htm

Enjoy!!

Very disappointed. I tried to install this program, but I can´t. Here a screenshot: http://imgur.com/wG3zrRR
Then I read that we just get a one year license. So, it´s not that free.
Sorry, I have to pass. Will stick with my vlc-player which is always free. Merry christmas to all and thanks for the offer.

Hi,

according to their webpage, the key is for ONE year only !!!!! :-) Well nothing against this policy, but should be mentioned here on giveawaysoftheday.com so that everybody knows what he gets!

Hello everyone, as promised, this is the winners' time!

We've selected 5 best comments and each single of them will be rewarded with a $100 Amazon Gift Card as grand Christmas gifts.

So 5 winners are:

#5 Comment by Karl — December 23rd, 2013 at 4:43 am

#8 Comment by Dono — December 23rd, 2013 at 7:05 am

#10 Comment by mike — December 23rd, 2013 at 7:48 am

#27 Comment by Gandalf — December 23rd, 2013 at 10:15 pm

#29 Comment by Anthony — December 23rd, 2013 at 11:57 pm

Congratulations and sit tight, you will be receiving a notification email from GOTD soon, and then please reply that email with the original content intact to partner@leawo.info, telling us which email address do you want to use for receiving the gift cards.

Thanks winners and all others for participating our campaign and we wish you a great holiday!

Best regards,

Leawo Team