Hands on: Beware Windows updates

A perennial subject for us is the attempts of enthusiasts to build and maintain the perfect home theatre PC.

PCW reader Roy Houghton writes: “I have a media PC that no-one’s allowed to use for anything else. Recently it started crashing after and during using My Pictures. I tracked the problem down to a Registry Key corruption. I found a fix which involved changing the long string of numbers in ‘Hkeycurrent_user/Software/Microsoft/Windows/Current Version/Media Centre/MRU/PicturesMRU’ to 0. I believe this may have been changed by a Registry cleaner.”

Like Roy, I’m a strong believer in dedicating a home theatre PC to the job of entertainment alone in order to minimise the chance of anything going wrong. The trouble is, PC enthusiasts often find it hard not to tweak and easily forget the home theatre PC mantra of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.

For me this even extends to many Windows updates. While essential for the smooth and secure running of an everyday PC used for web browsing and email, I’d question their relevance for a home theatre PC. Mine isn’t sending or receiving email, opening attachments, clicking between websites, or copying data across systems. It simply plays DVDs, videos, music and slideshows of photos.

During years of using Windows Media Center Edition and Showshifter before it, I’ve never encountered any viruses or security issues with my home theatre PC. I have, however, experienced several serious problems with tweaks or updates that have rendered it unusable. The latest was a failed attempt for my XP MCE system to update itself to Service Pack 3. With updates turned on, it had been badgering me for some time to install it, but I’d deliberately avoided the process – after all, there was nothing wrong with my PC, so why risk it?

But one night, a slipped click saw the update slowly begin to install itself. The following morning I was met with a blue screen. Restarting the system failed to resolve the situation, and even the Windows installation DVD claimed the disk was corrupted. Luckily my TV recordings were on a second disk, but I still had to waste several hours reinstalling Windows before getting back to where I’d started.

I have no idea how or why this happened and should mention I’ve never experienced issues with Service Packs before. But if I’d left the PC alone, it would still be working today.

Less catastrophic, but still annoying, was Bob Andersson’s issue. He couldn’t select the audio or subtitle options from DVD menus when playing under Vista Media Center. The strange part was the menus were appearing in Windows Media Player.

After some head-scratching, Bob discovered the DVD Language options under Media Center Settings were all set to ‘English’ for Subtitle, Audio track and Menu. Changing all three to ‘Title default’ allowed the menus to appear during playback under Vista Media Center. So if you can’t change your DVD audio or subtitle options from within Media Center itself, you know where to look.

DVD playback under Media Center can cause a number of configuration headaches, mostly because the decoding is performed by third-party software, such as Cyberlink’s PowerDVD. Consequently any video or audio issues are often resolved by entering the decoder software’s control panels rather than Media Center’s own.

For example, I use an S/PDIF connection to transport audio from my media PC and, while system sounds are audible without modification, I have to set PowerDVD’s audio options to ‘use S/PDIF’ and register the software before I can hear any sound from TV recordings.

PowerDVD is currently causing me and other HD DVD owners headaches, as HD DVD is only supported in version 7.3, while the latest version 8.x is for Blu-ray (and DVD) only. While 7.3 will also play Blu-ray discs, it’s missing support for some of the latest Blu-ray technologies, so Cyberlink’s bizarre solution is for owners of both formats to buy and install both versions.

While I don’t expect Cyberlink to enhance its HD DVD support now the format is essentially dead, I equally don’t see why it should be removed from its latest versions. Owners of LG’s dual-format HD DVD/Blu-ray drives should also beware as the supplied PowerDVD 7.3 features an advert to ‘upgrade’ to version 8 without mentioning you’ll subsequently lose HD DVD support. Naughty.

As always, if you’re having any successes or failures with your media PC, let us know – but if you only remember one thing from this column, it’s ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’!