ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre gets reviewed, loved

Considering how fresh ArcSoft is on the scene, it pulled a decent amount of respect from a recent poll of ours asking which Blu-ray HTPC software was preferred. For those who've stuck with the big names (you know, Corel / CyberLink), you may be considering making the switch -- after all, at least ArcSoft's TotalMedia Theatre still includes support for HD DVD (unlike some others). Reviewers over at Missing Remote were generally thrilled with the software's performance, noting that Vista Media Center integration was top notch and even the customer support was on par. All in all, it doesn't sound as if you could really go wrong with slapping this into your next HTPC, but check out the read link just to make sure.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 12th 2008 6:10AM]

I've really been looking at alternatives to Windvd and Powerdvd... looks like this may be it for Blu-ray and HDDVD HTPC playback.

[Dalhectar Posted Jul 12th 2008 8:31AM]

After seeing this software in action the mkv support seems to be fairly limited. Doesn't quite seem to like multichannel sound all that well. Haali used to conflict with the software, they got around that by adding in mkv support natively, but there was no way to set subtitles or alternative audio tracks from what I could tell with ArcSoft's mkvs. I could not remember the sound issue I saw, either DTS encoded files didn't play, or AC3 was only 2 channel instead of 5.1.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 12th 2008 1:09PM]

Bummer that it breaks MKV playback and that is doesn't play back HD-DVD and Blu-Ray from hard drive. Other than that, it sounds like the perfect player to connect to a media server.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 12th 2008 2:04PM]

Unfortunately it does not support Vista x64 bits. I have been waiting for more than a year for them to support Vista x64.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 12th 2008 6:23PM]

BluRayisDead: I can't really tell my client to re-rip his entire HD-DVD collection, and rely on installing more software to play ISO images. The ability to play a disc's native structure is sorely lacking in all recent software packages and it really underscores the immaturity of the market.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 12th 2008 6:14PM]

can this software playback truehd sound from hd-dvd and blue-ray disks?

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 12th 2008 6:27PM]

But this is interesting:

"...Fiji comes out, with its native support for BD folder structure playback in DVD library..."

Is that for real? Or do you mean playback from Blu-Ray disc, directly in Media Center, which is still cool, but doesn't help my guy.

[(Unverified) Posted Jul 13th 2008 2:48AM]

Not a relevant product until these morons "update" it to work in a 64-bit OS.

[PeterFnet Posted Jul 14th 2008 8:53AM]

Compared to windvd and powerdvd, the VMC integration is pretty good. Probably the best they could do with the current for of VMC. I only heard of this app after they did the poll here, and I'm loving TotalMedia Theatre

[(Unverified) Posted Aug 6th 2008 4:28PM]

I have been very impressed with this product. It came with my Fuze system; hadn't heard of it before, but works great. I used PowerDVD in another system I built and it never worked right.