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  Freeware & Shareware
April 2003

Tim Hoke

Tim Hoke is the Sr. Pastor at Faith Presbyterian Church, a long-time member of Alamo PC and an avid computer user who loves to try out new programs, especially shareware and freeware. He gets excited about a good deal.  More than that, he enjoys sharing good deals with others.

Why not send him a note about your favorite shareware or freeware programs.



Commercial DVD media is getting more affordable every day. Not to be outdone, shareware and freeware makers also have a lot of products available for DVD lovers. Below I include a sampling of these.

DirectDVD 4.48 is a full-featured digital DVD player and software decoder for Windows that brings the most powerful DVD movie capabilities to your PC. With DirectDVD's Software Decoder, you are able to watch all your favorite DVD movies on multiple CPUs, regions, graphic controllers, and DVD drives. DirectDVD includes advanced theater-quality audio such as TruSurround XT, Dolby Digital, Dolby Headphones and it is the first DVD player to offer Circle Surround II from SRS Labs! Unique features inside include, DVD to MP3, proprietary de-interlacing algorithms for reduction of motion effect on VGA monitors, and CSS software support for playback of all your favorite movies or other encrypted content. Change the playback view of your DVD using letterbox, pan, and crop technology. The skins package allows the user to easily change DirectDVD's look and feel and easily take full control with amazing realistic overlays directly inside the interface. Update 4.48 adds SRS Surround Plug-ins, New Control Panel, Web Plug-ins for DVD. You can try it for free but must shell out $40 if you want it for keeps. I should add that DirectDVD 4.48 is the current ZDNet popular pick. 
$40.00
Download

With Surfsecret DVD2CDR 1.4 you can make perfect copies of your DVD movies - and you don't even need a DVD recorder! All you need is a DVD-Player drive in your computer, and a CD-R drive to burn the movie to. You will be able to create perfect copies of your DVDs to a disc that can be played in DVD players, your computer, or portable DVD player, anywhere! Now you can keep backup copies of your own movies in an easy to use format. If your movies ever get lost, stolen, or scratched, you still have a backup copy! All it takes is 3 easy steps. Free to try for 30 days.
$40.00
Download

Hero DVD Player 3.0 is a powerful DVD player software that offers advanced video and audio playing entertainment on the PC. It can deliver the highest quality viewing and listening experience. As well, Hero DVD Player 3.0 offers feature-rich navigation controls, background playing mode, local zoom in function, excellent crash disk correcting, caption processing capability and other DVD experience. Some of its features are: Drag/drop sound box technology, background playing mode, digital zoom, caption process, 2-channel surround technology, SPDIF output technology, optimized varied CPU instruction set, DVD correcting technology, double screen VGA cards. 
$35.00
Download

EASY COPY DVD TO MPEG 2.1.2 enables you to copy DVD to MPEG or AVI files on your PC, includes DVD to VCD/SVCD, DVD copy software, provides a powerful tool to backup DVD movies to VCD/SVCD with just one click on your PC. It also lets you copy DVD movies to CD-R discs and convert DVD to VCD / SVCD. 
$40.00
Download

1st DVD Ripper 2.1 enables you to rip DVD to mpeg files, copy DVD to VCD, dup DVD to cd, Copy DVD to SVCD, dup DVD to cd, Convert DVD to DIVX, DVD to AVI files converter. It also provides great video audio quality to dup dvd copy, and backup DVD copy. 
$35.00
Download

The Core Media Player 4.0RC1 features an advanced DirectShow based Core that is easily extendable by simply installing new DirectShow Audio and Video filters. Managing files could not be easier with our XML/DTD based Playlist and Media Manager. This allows you to set properties for each Playlist/Library file entry. TCMP also Supports both Winamp(tm) 2.xx Digital Signal Processing (DSP) plug-ins as well as Winamp Visualization (VIS) plug-ins. Advanced users will like the builtin Graphedit Server for manipulating audio and video streams, Multithreaded capable for optimized speed, Console mode with Full Command Line Interface Features, Easily customizable hotkey support, Player database statistics. 
FREE
Download

Copy DVD to CD-R 6.0.2 enables you to copy DVD is a DVD conversion application that converts DVD to VCD/SVCD/AVI. It also burns VCD/SVCD directly. You can view the movie in the VCD player. The application will automatically burn more than one VCD. You can view the status of conversion any time and stop it. So you can copy small parts from the beginning by pressing Stop. You can make various settings from the Settings dialog. The attached Driver Configure application is useful to detect supported drives for your CD-writer device. Developer Changes: Copy DVD is a DVD conversion application that converts DVD to VCD/SVCD/AVI. Support different languages. It is shareware.
$25.00
Download

True to its name Power DVD 2.0 is indeed a powerful DVD copier makes identical copies from an original DVD in true DVD format including the same menus, same features and you can even play the DVD on any DVD player that is DVD-R/RW compatible or on PCs. This version is now compatible with virtually any DVD Burner and has a very easy to handle self explaining interface. Easy enough for beginners yet powerful enough to suit advanced needs. This is shareware.
$60.00
Download 


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