GWild wrote:As for MyDVD, in this day and age BluRay is the goto standard, and even that ability requires a user to upgrade to a new version of MyDVD ... so even it is adware.
Just on MyDVD, I would have to beg to differ on your characterization of it as adware. A couple of versions ago Corel made the seemingly strange decision to revoke the previously free Blu-Ray burner which had previously come as an integral part of VS. IIRC, even the ability to burn DVDs was withdrawn. It was apparently a victory for the Corel bean counters since they argued that few people these days burn DVDs, let alone Blu-Ray discs, any more, preferring to put their video on USB devices and plug them into HDTVs or stand-alone Blu-Ray players. So since Corel (and other NLE software manufacturers) have to pay a licence fee to some international body for each instance of the BD burner, the bean counters argued that they would save a heck of a lot of money if the people still interested in burning BD discs paid separately to get that function. The charge was just under $10, so not too expensive.
Needless to say, people objected and Corel threw in MyDVD as a sop. The problem was that MyDVD as provided would also not burn BD discs (though would burn DVDs). But BD functionality came to MyDVD if the user bought the BD licence for VS. Since that restored the ability of the built-in burner module in VS to burn BDs, this all seemed rather pointless since the built-in module is better and more flexible than MyDVD.
But my point is that you didn't have to "upgrade to a new version" of MyDVD, as you suggested, to get BD functionality. The version remained the same, but buying the BD licence gave it the ability to burn BDs, just as it did VS itself.
As for your other rhetorical question about how to use the various plug-ins, that is a valid complaint. Just about all of them (apart from MyDVD) have steep learning curves, with the Boris programs topping that list. But as you say, Corel provides no help with them. Fortunately, since Boris, proDAD and NewBlue provide the same or similar plug-ins for other NLE programs, they do have a variety of tutorials for them, mainly on YouTube. However, few of them relate specifically to the interaction between the plug-in and Video Studio or else become confusing because they relate to stand-alone versions of those programs which have features which don't exist in the cut-down plug-ins. But at least they provide some help...
So the bottom line is indeed that users usually have to tentatively try things out with these plug-ins to see how they work. Given the old adage that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, we like to think that some of our users here have experimented and learned more about those plug-ins, and are willing to share their expertise here -- which is often the case.
But I repeat that none of these plug-ins require extra payment. If you are getting that, it is an error which usually occurs (though very rarely) where the user has installed the plug-in independently of the installation set-up which comes as part of VS. And it can (usually) be corrected.
. While later the installer attempts to turn Autoplay around, it doesn't try to go back and enable Windows Update. Users beware 
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