Sure, WinDVD 9 supported those fancy audio codecs right out of the shrink-wrap, but up until now, WinDVD 8 users have been shut out solid. Thankfully, Corel finally saw fit to pass down a little love to its loyal end users still rockin' the ocho, as said software picked up DTS-HD Master Audio certification over at Computex. As you very well know, this now enables the application to play back Blu-ray Discs with 7.1 discrete channels of lossless audio, which surely makes the audiophiles in attendance remarkably jovial.

DL.TV has a clip up showing a preview of the HD Upgrade pack for the Intervideo WinDVD 8 player. Although the software was slated to be available already, it's still not up on Intervideo's website. The Blu-ray / HD DVD playing add on is priced at $26 and the DL.TV guys hooked up the cheapest HD DVD drive they could find to test it out. They confirmed you'll need a pretty powerful PC to play back movies smoothly, and they weren't able to get it working over non-HDCP connections (no word on if they tried VGA) at all. While Sony BWU-100A owners got their Cyberlink upgrade recently, other HD drive owners will have to find a player by other means until the HD Upgrade is available.

All those looking to add Blu-ray and/or HD DVD playback to their existing PC get ready, Intervideo's WinDVD 8 is finally coming to US shelves. Already available overseas and as a pack-in with some Sony and Toshiba drives and laptops, it will finally be available as a standalone for those who bought a Blu-ray or HD DVD drive with no playback software. Set to run on Windows XP and the upcoming Vista, the Platinum edition of the software can also act as a UPnP server, streaming media to compatible devices. Out of the box its not ready for Blu-ray or HD DVD playback, an add-on HD Upgrade Pack will be necessary but no word yet on the pricing or system requirements there. The Gold edition has a price of $39.98, while the Platinum version with the media server and support for advanced HD codecs is $59.95. Look for it to show up on Intervideo's site...any minute now, and on store shelves in the next few weeks.