I was interviewing a custom installer about using PCs as video scalers, and he said something that applies, more or less, to any serious use of PCs for home theaters: the only way to have a reliable PC-based A/V system is to have a PC dedicated solely to A/V. I've had several XP Media Center Edition systems in over the past couple of years, and that's certainly one way to do it. The downside to Media Center PCs is that they're pricey if you don't need the full suite of functionality, and though they've gotten much better, they are still more complicated than a standalone ReplayTV/TiVo/iPod/DVD player.
But dealing with regular XP on my test PC has been a nightmare lately, proving the basic truth to the dedicate-it-and-forget-it ethos. Logitech was kind enough to send over a Z-5500 THX approved multimedia speaker system last month, so I felt obligated to review it at some point, rather than have the large box just sit in the corner, unloved. But before I installed it, I wanted to run my regular audio tests on the competition - Klipsch's ProMedia 5.1 system, another THX multimedia system I've had for the past year or two. I barely got started.
Preventing me from getting consistent, accurate multichannel audio:
- Unreliable audio drivers for my aftermarket 7.1 audio card. Even for just stereo listening I needed to set the bass redirection control manually three times.
- Random system slowdowns when playing back DVDs (it appears to skip a frame every second or so).
- Poor software design, specifically the bizzare placement of audio settings enabling 5.1 DVD playback buried four levels deep in one of the media player software's most obscure menu trees.
True, much of this is my fault. It's a test box, after all, and I've put countless versions of video rendering software, media playback software, aspect ratio control doodads, music device sync software, DVD-Audio and DTS decoding engines, etc. on it. I also use the box for web surfing, finance, photo editing, vector graphics, children's software - you name it. Somewhere along the way, the basic audio drivers and system performance got warped. Given enough time and PC expertise, I can fix it. But it's a clear reminder that the flexibility of PC-based systems can be in direct conflict with ease of use and reliability.
-avi
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