Product Reviews

If you've built a Windows Vista Media Center PC for HD movies, you'll know the frustration of trying to get Blu-ray and HD DVD working properly. CyberLink's PowerDVD (now on version 8, which lacks HD DVD support) is the most common player, but it doesn't integrate with Media Center. Instead, you need a third-party plug-in that automatically switches to PowerDVD when you insert HD discs.

TotalMedia Theatre supports HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, and is £5 cheaper than PowerDVD 8 Ultra. It adds a new button on Media Center's main menu for watching HD movies. It also has two interfaces: a standard desktop application for normal use, and

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a '10-foot' interface for Media Center. Insert an HD disc into your PC, and TotalMedia Theatre starts the '10-foot' version. When you've finished, the Back button on your remote shuts down TotalMedia, returning to Media Center.

There's full analogue surround-sound decoding, so you can use computer speakers, but you can also use an S/PDIF output with a home cinema amplifier. Since both versions of the software have separate settings, you need to select the sound output in both. The audio decoder supports every surround-sound format for DVD, Blu-ray and HD DVD discs. We recommend using this over Microsoft's DVD decoder.

It supports hardware video decoding from ATI and Nvidia, so the quality of the playback is identical to PowerDVD 8. With full support for BD Live, you can play any disc flawlessly. The only absentee is image adjustments. However, ATI and Nvidia's control panels have these settings built in.

While there's a tweak to make PowerDVD region-free for Blu-ray, there's no equivalent for TotalMedia Theatre without installing third-party utilities of dubious legality. For most UK users, though, the Media Center integration and continued HD DVD support make this the best HD playback software you can buy.