Arcsoft TotalMedia Theatre - Page 3

to those wondering about the difference between the trial and the retail, ive tried both and they're the same. I cant verify that with numbers or serial codes but just by using them they offer the same features and have the same bugs

mind, im not getting all the trouble others are having. Its played everything i want (sometimes have to close app and restart but thats because of any dvd changing the blu ray region)

only major gripe is lack of vc-1 accel


system is vista 32 sp1, hd3870

I'd give this software a review if I could even open it. Installed the 15-day demo and all I can get is BSOD......running an AMD x2 4800, ATI Radeon 3870. PowerDVD plays Blu-ray and HD DVD with like 10% CPU useage. This program won't even load. I'll pass, thanks.

Okay, so if I only use it to play HD-DVDs (I have a standalone BD player which I also use for DVDs) I should be okay? I guess alld HD DVDs are required to have at least one of the lossless formats...

Another question: I'm heavily dependent on ffdshow to decode other, hard disk based formats. I hope the Arcsoft player does not have any problems coexisting with ffdshow?

This can probably be fixed, open up each .XPL file in the ADV_OBJ directory of your Terminator rip using notepad, then save without changing anything in the file. Arcsoft should now play the rip (It works for most of my old rips)

EDIT
I can confirm that hard drive rips of the Directors Cut and the Theatrical HD-DVDs of Terminator 2 play in Arcsoft

Most HD-DVD only have DD+ tracks, so if you use the analogue outputs right and centre speakers will be reversed. You can replug your phono inputs to your amp to correct this issue on a disk by disk basis, but that would be a total pain.

If we are really talking about the NEW VERSION than I can´t understand how such a product even is allowed to get released.

THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN!!!
Keyfeatures like BD+ and Sound-Decoding must work otherwise the product must not get on the market. Little bugs are ok but not main-features.

You can´t get a car out when you can´t use the brakes yet.

From http://www.arcsoft.com/products/totalmediatheatre/

Oops, I meant Total Recall HD-DVD.

The XPL has been stripped to the bone so it just plays the movie and plays fine with PowerDVD. The Arcsoft player seems to be less forgiving with XPL editing than PowerDVD.

I now have it playing with the TMT. It was being picky about the line with "" missing between "" and "".

Okay, that's not an option for me so I'll have to wait until that bug is fixed. Can't be too hard to fix.
I downloaded the trial version and it appears to work OK but I can't seem to find a way to get it to display the disc menu when starting to play a disk. It seems to always go directly into playing the movie. I have to hit the menu button to be able to go into the menu to set languages, subtitles, etc.
I'm wondering if this has something to do with AnyDVD (which I have NOT set to skip the menus)?

Also, I tried to play the "2001" HD DVD and it gets stuck on a black screen with just what I think is the background audio for the disc menu. Hitting the chapter forward key gets me out of this (starts playing the movie) so not a big problem but annoying nevertheless.

Any suggestions?

Sarah99,

I updated complaint # 42. I hope I understood you right and quoted your complaint properly.

My full apologies if you're already aware of this but this is how 2001 starts on film, BluRay, HD and standard DVD.

It's a black screen with music for the first few minutes.

As I say apologies if I'm preaching to the converted.

Keith

Item 42 should read
Arcsoft has problems identifying HD audio tracks when trying to playback .EVO files and incorrectly uses Arcsoft Audio Decoder for playback, when it should be using the Arcsoft Audio Decoder HD (causes fast playback of video on .EVOs with DD+ or playback with sound only on .EVOs with DTS)

Item 42a (as related to Item 42)
Arcsoft has problems reading .XPL files in hard drive rips of HD-DVDs created using early releases of Slysoft AnyDVD HD, playback just fails as if you had never selected the HD-DVD directory to play from (opening the .XPL files with notepad and resaving cures this problem)

We will be offering a 15 trial of our version. We are waiting on Arcsoft to provide it. We should have it by early next week. Sorry for the delay.

Look at post # 10?

Complaint 42 has been fixed already at least in our release. We had noticed this issue very early on in our testing. I know for a fact the trial version you guys are testing is 2 to 3 weeks old and might not have the fix implemented yet (apparently doesn't).

We noticed this problem with the HD DVD rips also but couldn't track down the exact problem. Thank you Sarah99 for getting to the bottom of it. I will report it to Arcsoft and hopefully they will fix it.

Most of the things on your list are related to analog audio output and we have beaten up Arcsoft about that and they will have a fix for it by the end of the week that we (VidaBox) can evaluate.

On the audio side, they told me that they don't downrez the audio. It does indeed sound very good in our demo room but there is no real way to test that other than listening to content. If there is a way to test, then please let me know and I will test it using that method.

Other things you list are related to playing ripped content and in all honestly, they might not be able to support this completely. We will work with them to try to get things implemented the best we can but no promises. This is a tricky issue.

I've already stated that ATI graphics support might be less than perfect so that might just be something you might have to work with.

We have to get the Resident Evil disc to test for ourselves and then present the issue to Arcsoft.

I'll try to work through your list but somethings might not be related to Arcsoft at all.

Another note for those of you using AnyDVD-HD. Arcsoft has problems when HD DVD & BD support is enabled in AnyDVD. It will not play BD+ or "web enabled" HD DVD discs correctly or simply fail to starting playing the disc completely. You need to turn off HD & BD support in AnyDVD when you are using the Arcsoft player. You need to restart AnyDVD when you disable HD & BD support before Arcsoft will be happy.

Hope this helps some of you.

Please list the numbers on the list not related to Arcsoft and I will delete them.

Also, if your version fixes some problems on the list. Can i ask you a favour, can you list the numbers on the list fixed by your version of Totalmedia?

Edit. Also, I see your comment about Slysoft in post 83. Please list the numbers on the list that's fixed when you turn the slysoft features you listed, off.

hopefully the vidabox trial will work on x64
Nero Showtime is by far the most impressive HTPC HD option I've yet seen though

There was a bug where only 2 channel PCM was being sent out via SPDIF to the a receiver for DD or DTS tracks. This meant that your receive would not get true DD or DTS. They have since fixed this bug and now the full DD or DTS track is sent correct over SPDIF and your receiver should show that it is indeed decoding DD or DTS. Your receiver would then take care of sending 7.1 audio to a 5.1 speaker setup.

None of the lossless formats can be sent over SPDIF and Arcsoft will simply send 2 channel stereo over SPDIF if a lossless track is specified for playback.

Hope that answers your question.

Arcsoft support for Vista 64bit will come at some point in the future. Our version will support 64bit at the same time.

This is the only thing concerning me at this point, and everything else seems like basic bugs that can be, and are being, fixed. The majority of PC's out there rely on acceleration as ~100% cpu usage just isn't feasible for good playback, especially considering you can knock 60-80% off of that with acceleration. A significant share of these PC's utilize ATI cards, which means this application isn't a possible solution for that entire segment.

In your dealings with ArcSoft have they indicated whether they are concerned about the ATI market segment, that it's a low priority, high priority, or possibly something they plan to address soon?

I realized ATI is tough to work with, but that seems a significant market share to drop from the business standpoint.

Any information would be helpful, no one seems to have any idea on when/if this could/will be fixed.

I would second that, after all it gives us an informed choice... should I wait for a likely upgrade to occur or would I be better opting for an 8500GT ?

KH

I wish I could be more informative on the ATI support. We at VidaBox don't use ATI graphics. We have tested ATI quite extensively but have always found NVIDIA to work better. I don't want to start an ATI/NVIDIA war in this thread. This is simply our observations and our experience with our hardware and software setup. Arcsoft has told us that they have a hard time getting 3rd party support from ATI. We know from personal experience that this happens to be the case. NVIDIA is fantastic with 3rd party support and hence why Arcsoft happens to support NVIDIA better. I'm certain Arcsoft is working hard to get the answers they need from ATI for better support and I'm sure that support will be better as the software matures. They don't want to ignore that market segment for sure.

My suggestion for those of you with ATI graphics is to either wait it out or sell your card on EBAY or pawn it to someone else and buy an NVIDIA 8500GT or an 8600GTS. From personal experience I can tell you that both cards work extremely well with Arcsoft.

Sorry I don't have a better answer for you.

Please don't flame me, but I am at a loss and figured others might be as well.

What are you all talking about with the Vidabox version?

Vidabox (the company, not the user here) - www.vidabox.com - are working with Arcsoft, and as such are reporting and having bugs fixed. As such Vidabox have slightly newer versions of the software with some fixes that arentin the Arcsoft version yet.

Vidabox, the user on the forum, is from the company and is kind enough to give us all this "inside info".

It seems Vidabox will have their own variant of Arcsoft TMT. No idea on when it will be available to buy though.

So are VidaBox and Arcsoft sharing code? Does VidaBox have access to Arcsofts source code?

I can vouch for this, having been involved in some third party driver development for some older ATI products. ATI was awful in the past when it came to third party support. I had hoped this might of changed when they were acquired by AMD, but it doesn't look like that's the case.

No, the company he's with is simply a business partner that utilizes ArcSoft's product.

How can VidaBox make improvements and fix bugs if they are only utilizing ArcSoft's product?