Cyberlink PowerCinema 5 Digital TV Edition review

Windows XP Media Center Edition is designed to turn a PC into the centrepiece of your living room's entertainment system.

A media centre PC is pretty expensive and complicated if you just plan to use it as a glorified VCR, but this hasn't stopped various software developers coming up with their own spin on the media centre concept.

CyberLink's PowerCinema 5 is the best imitation we've seen. It comes with a PCI hybrid TV card, which tunes to either analogue or Freeview digital broadcasts and takes the gamble out of finding a compatible card. Installation went without any fuss and the friendly setup routine found the full set of Freeview channels once we had ditched the supplied mini aerial and plugged in a rooftop aerial. The card also incorporates an FM tuner and PowerCinema found 20 stations using the supplied aerial, but sound quality was poor.

On top of the usual DVD, TV, music, radio and photo options, Version 5 adds weather and news, the latter drawing on RSS newsfeeds, news-related podcasts and videos. However, it's disappointing that news isn't localised for British audiences, and that stories are simply displayed as a webpage rather than reformatted to be legible from the sofa. The weather is localised, and includes humidity, wind speed, UV index, sunrise and sunset times plus a weekly forecast.

The restyled graphics are attractive and polished, and on the whole the interface is a pleasure to use. The internet-based electronic programme guide (EPG) is free for only 30 days but we had no trouble getting EPG data directly from the Freeview signal, despite some odd warnings during setup about "bouquets of programs". The channel guide closely mimics the one in Media Center Edition, and makes browsing programmes and scheduling recordings easy, although a bug caused some text to become garbled. Schedule clashes are handled sensibly but, unlike Media Center Edition, PowerCinema can't wake the PC from standby to record a programme.

There are a few other kinks to be ironed out. We weren't able to change the location for storing recorded video, and subtitles were on by default each time we launched the software. Music libraries can be sorted by album or artist, but tracks by a particular artist weren't arranged into albums. Clicking the DVD option produced an error stating that we had no DVD drives, although inserting a disc convinced the software otherwise. None of these problems was serious, but they took the shine off the otherwise polished interface, as did the occasional adverts for add-ons and other CyberLink products.

We found ourselves enjoying PowerCinema in spite of its blemishes. However, when you consider that Media Center features are built into Windows Vista Home Premium (What's New, Shopper March 2007), CyberLink might be facing a dwindling market. PowerCinema requires a remote control for best operation, but this will set you back a further £14. This, for us, makes it too expensive.