Remove TotalMedia Theatre DVD Prompt in Media Center

Dec 15, 2011 by Richard Gunther

ArcSoft’s TotalMedia Theatre is one of the best solutions for adding Blu-ray (and HD DVD!) playback to your Windows Media Center. The hooks into Media Center make the experience fairly seamless—perhaps too seamless, since it also adds a new menu that prompts you about which software to use each time you play a DVD. That’s annoying enough to lose critical acceptance points in most families.

Credit goes to Entertainment 2.0 listener Mike for getting us to dust off this old hack and adapting it to the latest version of TotalMedia Theater. To eliminate the prompt screen and always use Media Center to play DVDs and TotalMedia Theatre to play Blu-ray and HD DVD media, you’ll need to use the Registry editor, regedit.exe. If contemplating that raises your blood pressure, you may want to just put up with the prompt. If, however, you feel plenty comfortable mucking around in your registry, then follow these directions. But remember: you can seriously screw up your system if you don’t know what you’re doing here. Tread cautiously. As with any system update, it’s a good idea to create a restore point before making changes like this.

First, find and delete the following registry branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\AutoPlayHandlers\Handlers\ArcSoftTotalMediaTheatre

Then find and delete the ArcSoftTotalMediaTheatre key in the following branch:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\AutoPlayHandlers\EventHandlers\PlayDVDMovieOnArrival

After making these changes, Media Center will no longer prompt you to select a player for DVDs—it will just play them the way it always did.