ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum
The ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum is your top of the line media player with all the perks of a Blu-ray and standard definition player including full surround sound and a simulated high def for those regular definition movies.
Ease of Use, Performance: 20/25
Look & Feel: 22/25
Features 24/25
How much I enjoy 21/25
Total: 87/100
ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre Platinum is a great media player including play for standard definition movies and CD’s as well as high definition Blu-ray and HD-DVD’s in full surround sound. The ArcSoft TotalMedia program is very easy to install and works well without any hassles and very few problems during playback that allows for both CPU and GPU acceleration.
TotalMedia Theatre Platinum includes the software media player that includes support for high definition media including Blu-ray and HD-DVD as well as high definition media such as camcorders. The player will also play all those regular definition media such as DVD’s, CD’s along with media and audio files using Codec’s including Dolby Digital and DTS-HD Master Audio.
The high definition theatre experience comes complete with full 7.1 surround sound support including HDMI pass through of audio for use with an external receiver audio system. The SimHD plug-in adds up scaling of standard definition movies to high definition to improve clarity and color that works fairly well.
While the best you can play your regular movies may be standard definition up converting them to high definition is one way to enjoy those movies in even better quality. The SimHD feature is a filter that cleans up the picture and tries to scale it up to 1080p but it may not be worth the extra expense.
I found the SimHD easy enough to leave off for regular movies and did not really miss it all that much but if you’re watching on a larger television or screen it may be something of a bonus feature you would want to have. It does make some scenes and objects clearer but these are simply fleeting glimpses at a whole and may not be all that much when taken as a full movie.
Other than the SImHD the ArcSoft media package of Theatre 3 Platinum is a great way to watch movies and Blu-ray discs from your computer in full surround sound. I found setup just as easy as any of the media players I have used and the problems encountered were mostly due to updates.
When playing Blu-ray discs often the player would have to update the first time so the movie would play and when installing the program you do need to ensure you have updated it. Once I patched the program I did not have any problems and playing Blu-ray movies was great on my computer.
TotalMedia 3 easily integrates with my surround sound setup using 7.1 surround sound through an Auzentech X-Fi Forte soundcard and Logitech speakers with real clarity and great positional surround. The player did very well with music and played really well for some of my test audio discs like Hell Freezes Over by the Eagles.
The media player’s screen and menu interface is easy to use and pretty self explanatory while the help and settings are simple to use as well. Finding things you need for setup was simple and going through the pages one by one shows just about everything you could think of for both setup and use of the player.
You can customize the player some with various colors to accent things on your desktop or to ones you prefer but that about ends the customization. You can undock a mouse control panel for movies like Blu-ray that does not allow mouse use but that is really all for moving parts of the program around.
The mouse controls work well for the high definition movies and your standard arrows and enter buttons work well for other controls while playing those Blu-ray and HD-DVD’s. The other features like skip forward and back all worked well and I found the program could easily keep up with some quick skipping around and playing without crashing.
The screenshots also work well and you get simple power management settings for use with a laptop that works well for a quick additional power management beyond what the laptops power settings can handle. The Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum does a great job of playing both regular media and high definition Blu-ray movies in full surround sound without any real problems at all.
I found the TotalMedia Theatre 3 played well and could easily handle both playing movies and high definition content and doing other tasks at the same time. The program does not tax a system to the point of not allowing others to run at the same time and the use of CPU or GPU acceleration allows for system by system setup.
The Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre 3 is a great entertainment media program and well worth the cost of $90 while I may hesitate at recommending the SimHD plug-in for an additional $10.