And MS has shot themselves in the foot by no supporting Xbox (pre-360) in Win 7 MC. Between that & the lack of driver support for the OEM Conexant tuners, I’m may be out $300 in new hardware to get MC working when I upgrade to Win 7!

Blue is really on the cusp of the point. With the advent of the Atom processor and Nvidia ion the media extender is rendered obsolete. Why in the world would you buy an extender with all of the limitations when for $100 more you can have a full blown pc.

I have 3 Acer R3610’s and 1 Xbox for my son. I’ll take the Acer all day long with the additonal functionality.

The whole thing just makes too much sense. Why is this not catching on? There must be more to this story than meets the eye.

Now, everything has completely changed – and all because of my new HP MediaSmart Windows Home Server. I suddenly find that I have a real need to to have a dedicated media center extender to access content on WHS.

However, I’m completely stunned that they have practically all stopped manufacturing these. The best one being the HP MediaSmart Connetor which would have been perfect except that it is now discontinued and it doesn’t look like they ever manufactured these for UK use!! I need a PAL version rather than NTSC.

The whole situation is now ludicrous. Now that there are so many people beginning to use WHS, what are we supposed to do.

I am not in agreement that the new TV’s will have dlna and network functionality to satisfy me. Simply because I only bought my tv, two years ago and I won’t be looking for another for at least another 5 years. At any rate, not at the current kind of prices.

I wish I could petition HP to bring back the MediaSmart connector. Also, I wish that the software also supported web browsing, and could handle sites like youtube, twitter, facebook, even email, if only in a limited fashion.

We receive TV broadcast over the air through our antenna and get great HD reception and enough channels to keep us happy. Husband just cannot stand the thought of paying for TV just to get DVR service. I just want a nice way to record the shows I want and watch them where I want instead of at my desk.

Thanks in advance.

1) cable company doesn’t care about DRM – really they don’t (I work for one the the top 3 cable companies in the US) – MEDIA companies care about DRM. They seek and destroy (or shoot in the foot) every major device that’s designed to stream seperately…

Don’t believe me… do searches for the Digeo “Moxi Mate” a nice little device that allowed a cable DVR (moxi) to be extended to a second TV. They not only had that idea, but plans for built in Wi-fi router (consolidate your DVR and home network…) DVR player and on high end models, DVD Recorder…

all of these pulled because Media companies put pressure on them… how dare they suggest a cable box be able to RECORD content to disk… afterall, someone might actually burn it to disk then give it to someone else who didn’t pay for the box, channel, etc etc.

They seem to forget the fact that this technology is out there and we do it all the time reguardless… they forget the fact that people who are determined will find a way. and most importantly they forget the fact that the could really SELL something that did all these things more conviently.

As for MCE… I’m running it from Win7 64 and love it… got a $25 remote and I run it over my 22in flat screen monitor… since the computer is in the bedroom, it’s nice to stream netflix as well as my own downloaded content. Seems alot of MCE addons aren’t working so hot (perhaps it’s just Win7 64, but that would be odd given how well everything else is running on it)

Anyway… sad but true, about the best solution for video through MCE would be to run the output of a cablebox though it… yes, this makes using the DVR functionality a pain – but if you pair it with a good cable co DVR (like a motorola DCH 6416) you’ll be able to “rip” any programs you really want to keep, and watch TV through your Media Center setup.

Personally, I’d prefer to keep it a little seperated… given the MPAA’s lockdown on Digital broadcasting, you’re only going to be able to really rip via Analog unless you’ve got some sweet hardware indeed.

So I keep my MCE for Netflix streaming and playing my music collection and my DVR for TV programs… would be nice to intergrate the two, but coming from a cable insider, cards are not ready for primetime