VaroDVD was by far the most unorganized and difficult to use of the bunch. The buttons were poorly placed, and icons were a little too small, making them difficult to understand. The whole interface itself seems to have been reminiscent of the Mac, an exit square on the left as opposed to the standard windows exit “X” on the right.

Despite its fairly poor interface, VaroDVD did have rather good image quality. While not quite on par with the likes of WinDVD and PowerDVD, it was more than adequate for viewing movies. Pixelation and banding were at a bare minimum with only slight occurrences.

My test version of VaroDVD was the only player in this roundup that did not support S/PDIF Dolby Digital 5.1 audio output on my Aureal SQ2500. This was a shame because Dolby Digital is not only a major selling point of most DVDs; it redefines the meaning of “theater quality sound.” Hopefully VaroVision will better support Dolby Digital 5.1 in future versions of their DVD player.