Far from being just office workhorses, computers are also thought of as complete entertainment systems that you can use to chat with friends, play videogames or watch movies. Regarding this last option, there's a wide range of DVD players out there, but we'll focus our attention on one of them: Power DVD.

The program's installation process is very quick. It includes Google Toolbar as an add-on but you can decline its installation if you're not interested. Once launched, you gain access to its main interface which, to be honest, is not especially nice: a close-up of a girl wearing weird sunglasses is not the kind of thing you expect to see on the screen when opening a DVD player. It would look much better with some abstract design or just the program logo instead. Anyway, configuration settings allow you to customize this interface with skins but there are no skins included. At least you can change the color scheme by clicking on the display.

The world of video has changed almost completely over the last decade. No longer are we chained to the antiquated video player and its poor playback, tape-chewing ways. The DVD revolution has not only transformed the quality of movies but has made it possible to watch films conveniently from the comfort of your PC.The price of hardware DVD players is falling all the time and software behemoths such as Microsoft and Apple are finally waking up to the potential of the digital media industry and emptying their bulging wallets into producing their own solutions.

Add this to the fact that fixed memory capacity and bandwidth sizes are expanding by the second and you start to wonder how relative minnows like CyberLink, developer of the vastly popular PowerDVD, expect to stay in the game. We caught up with the company’s founder and industry guru, Dr Jau Huang to find out how.

When was the first version of PowerDVD launched and who was involved in its creation?

PowerDVD was first launched in 1998. It was the triumph of a small team of eight engineers - including myself - who had a passion to create the best DVD decoder in the world. Of course, in some way we have to thank our first lot of users - mainly tech-savvy early adopters who had actually heard of MPEG-2! Without their enthusiasm for the product, PowerDVD would never have got off the ground.

So it's official - Blu-ray will be the next generation of disk that we watch all our movies and audiovisual entertainment on. Just like when VHS eventually triumphed over Betamax, Toshiba has thrown in the towel over its HD-DVD format and conceded defeat over the far more popular Sony Blu-ray disks. Toshiba said that it will no longer produce HD-DVD players or channel any more funding into its development after losing millions of dollars on the format. As a result of this, it seems the PlayStation 3 is going to become even more popular due to its inbuilt Blu-ray player. So with this in mind, what follows is a compilation of the top 5 DVD burners and players that support Blu-ray so you can be ahead of the pack when Blu-ray really takes off. As it does of course, this list will need revising as developers concentrate in creating burners and players dedicated soley to the new format.

PowerDVD - The ultimate player for your Blu-ray disks

Nero - It may be bloated but it still remains the people's Blu-ray burner of choice

CyberLink Power2Go - Simple but powerful burner that supports Blu-ray

Pocket Movie Master - Compress and take your Blu-ray movies on the move with you

StarBurn Evolution - Semi-dedicated HD burner including for Blu-ray