Introduction
We reviewed VSO's PhotoDVD v0.9.8 back in December 2004, and we released a quick article on how to make a Photo DVD slideshow using PhotoDVD v1.0.10.476, which was actually a pre-release of v2. So we thought it was about time to release a more indepth review on PhotoDVD version 2, version 2.0.13.1013 to be precise.
Intallation
We downloaded the latest version, a 3.96 MB file of VSO's download servers. The installation wizard is like any windows installation, plain and simple. The only downside here is that your PC needs to be rebooted after installation, which is something that always annoyes me.
Starting the program
After we succesfully installed the program and rebooted the PC, we fired up PhotoDVD. It will ask you to enter your serial number, or to use it in trial mode. Since Fabrice Meeuwissen of VSO supplied us with a valid key (thanks for that!) we entered our serial number. The serial was accepted and the program continued by asking whether I'd want to check for updates. There were no updates available, so nothing was done.
Language selection
It came to my attention at this point, that PhotoDVD had taken the liberty to install itself in Dutch, my native tongue. I don't prefer my applications in dutch, and besides that, the review images would be partly unreadable for you, the reader. So I wanted to switch my language back to English. That's where the first bug kicked in. I went into the language settings by choosing the "settings" button. When I selected any random language, the buttons available in this screen changed to this language. Except for the english language one. I ended up with some combination of a Polish and Dutch interface. Since I dont speak Polish, this was quite confusing. I went ahead and selected the English language anyway, which didn't seem to affect it. After a restart of the application however, the language was set to English. This bug is not a real problem, it's just not how it should be. Fortunately later on in this review PhotoDVD makes up for this minor glitch! Read on to see what we think about the rest of this application!
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