Cyberlink support confirmed last week that they are not planning on fixing any of the issues they currently have with PowerDVD 8.0 player (that didn't exist in version 7.3). They are working on a future release (Version 8.5) which will eventually address the below mentioned problems:

Player bloat and user interface limitations:

1) Moovielive as an optional install
2) Movie Remix as an optional install
3) Being forced to see the Resume playback every time. <--This is too annoying
4) Redesigning UI skin completely to fix various limitations introduced in version 8 
Player's vertical/horizontal size hardcoded to stay relatively large
Player is forced to open up in the middle of the screen in a window.
Control buttons on the bottom of the player are unnecessarily big.

The solution...
Since we need to have the latest possible directshow filters from version 8.0 and needed the better player... included with 7.3. Here is a hybrid version which only requires one clean installation of PowerDVD 8.0 and copying a mixture of files from certain versions of 7.3 and 8.0.