ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre 6 6.0.1.119

Overview

TotalMedia Theatre 5 is a powerful and highly reliable media player for Windows that supports several audio and video formats like WMV, WMA, MPEG, AVI, FLAC, AMR, 3GP, MKV, FLV, AVI, as well as DVDs, VCDs and Blu-ray discs. Version 5 includes an intuitive SimHD upscaling technology which allows you to watch low-resolution videos as if they were high-definition, and also gives you the ability to watch all your videos and photos in 3D style. These are just some key features of this affordable and user-friendly software.

Installation

The installation process is simple and has no special options to configure. Additional software is not included within the installation package. Speaking of which, it is quite a big program (needs at least 600MB of free space on the hard drive) and might take a while before all components are extracted and installed. It is highly recommended that you restart your computer before launching TotalMedia Theatre so that some changes made to the system are applied.

Supported operating systems are Windows XP, Vista and 7.

Interface

It has a sci-fi interface, with cool buttons and menus. The player controls are located at the bottom, and the file manager at the top. In the middle is the video screen, where you watch the videos or view your photos. By clicking the arrow that is right above the play button, a small menu appears with the most recent files opened. It can be hidden by clicking on the same arrow.

The settings menu is accessed by clicking on the gear icon on the top right corner, and has a lot of options to tweak, like playback, file association, power manager and others.

Pros

One of the most impressive features of this modern multimedia player is SimHD. SimHD uses advanced algorithms that improve the quality of the playing videos and makes them look like they are high definition. Not only can it be used in files you open from your computer, but online Youtube videos too.

In addition, it can play 3D movies and video files (including Blu-ray 3D movies). You can even adjust manually the depth perception and other settings to transform 2D videos and images into 3D.

The media management panel helps you add and manage your files at ease. With Magic View you can browse media files quickly, without effort and sort them by title, date or duration.

Cons

It is a very demanding software that requires a lot of CPU power and RAM. This is due to all the enhanced features and the general environment, which is rich in graphics. Other than that there are certainly no other cons, as it is lacks absolutely nothing.

Alternatives

VideoLAN Client, most commonly known as VLC, is possibly one of the better media players out there. It costs nothing, and has a large support for almost every kind of video and audio file type available, meaning that playback of even the most unusual formats is guaranteed. Surprisingly, it includes and uses its own built-in library with filters so there is no need for installing any separate filter packages. It is regularly updated to fix any existing bugs or to make general enhancements and improvements. Media Player Classic (MPC for short) is another free, overly versatile media player, capable of playing smoothly most media file types. In contrast to VLC, it loads the installed filters it finds in your system for better playback and quality.

Other media players are BS.Player, Winamp, foobar2000, Zoom Player Home Free and RealPlayer.

Conclusion

TotalMedia Theatre 5 is actually a monster compared to typical media players, packed with some unique features that you rarely find in such software. The trial version is more than enough to convince you of its abilities, so give it a try now!