The driver for the integrated video in the Sandy Bridge Intel chips has a serious bug. Using FSAA (full screen anti-aliasing), which the driver reports it supports, results in a black screen. There are some technical details
here.
This means a new user with an Intel will get a black screen for Theater View, image playback, and anything else that uses hardware accelerated drawing.
Media Center disables FSAA for known Intel video cards, but I'm not sure we have them all. Currently we have this list:
#define VENDOR_ID_INTEL 0x8086
#define INTEL_I5_2500K 274 // Intel HD Graphics 3000
#define INTEL_I7_2600S 258 // Intel HD Graphics 2000
#define INTEL_I7_2600K 290 // Intel HD Graphics 3000
If you have one of these Intel CPUs, could you enable logging (Help > Logging), then enter Theater View, exit Theater View, view the log, and look for these lines:
0018517: 2900: General: CDXCore::Initialize: Vendor Id: 32902
0018517: 2900: General: CDXCore::Initialize: Device Id: 274
Post the type of CPU you have and the results.
Thanks for any help.