After installing the Windows 10 preview, I'm finally using Media Center on a device running Windows which is natively high DPI.
To be clear, these issues are not specific to Windows 10, they also affect Windows 8. (and possibly earlier, but I don't have anything to test with)
I don't know if the rendering issues with high DPI—which seem to be brought up at least a couple of times a month now—have simply not been a high priority item, or something that you have been unable to reproduce.
The key thing is that it seems to only affect displays which are natively reported as being high DPI.
If I set my TV at 200% scale in Windows, there are no scaling issues in Media Center.
For devices which are natively high-DPI like the MacBook I'm using, and the Surface Pro that I tested, when Windows is at 200% scale—which is the default for these displays—fonts in Media Center are displayed twice as large as they should be for any given size.
So if Media Center is at 100% size, the font size should be 9pt, but it is displayed at 18pt due to this bug.
If Media Center is set to 200% scale, the font size should now be 18pt but it displays 36pt.
This creates a very ugly UI where either the controls seem tiny since they are half the size they should be (with MC at 100%) or the text seems huge when you scale up the rest of the UI. (MC at 200%)
As a temporary work-around you can trick things into working by setting the font size to 5pt so that it gets doubled to 10pt (100%) or 20pt (200%) which is close to the right size—though not correct—but this is not a user-friendly solution at all.
With this bug, the installer is extremely difficult to use on these devices, since you cannot set the scale or font size before MC is installed. You end up with a very small window in the center of the screen and text which is too large to fit, so a lot of it overlaps.
Additionally, on the first-launch (only first launch of a fresh install, not subsequent launches) it might be good for Media Center to set the default size to match the current Windows scale (i.e. 200% in Media Center if Windows is at 200%) rather than requiring the user to manually find that option.
On Windows, the maximum scale in Media Center is limited to 200%. On OSX the maximum scale is 400%, since enabling "retina mode" doubles the size Media Center renders at. (so 200% with retina mode enabled is really 400%)
It would be nice to see an expanded range on Windows including at least 250%, 300%, and 400%. (note: Windows 10 introduces 250% as a standard option now)
And I really think that scaling should be offered regardless of whether the current skin contains 4x art or not.
Media Center should prompt the user to warn them, or somehow indicate in the list whether skins include 4x art or not—even just changing the names to something like Noire (HiDPI) rather than Noire—but since the skinning engine can handle it, I see no reason not to allow scaling. Even if there is no 4x art, the text will be sharper at higher scales, and the larger UI will be easier to use.
With more and more devices now using high DPI displays, I think it's really important to address these bugs in MC20.
