If I was willing to use WMV, I'd be looking into it. I'm not though.
I hear ya. I just installed Vista on my home PC, fired up MS Media Center and set up my Xbox 360 as a Media Center Extender. I'm starting to think I might switch over to that from using MC on my HTPC. It's got it's pros and cons.
Pros:
- It's gorgeous
- By using my Xbox for media streaming, I can get rid of a PC out of my livingroom which will save on noise, electricity and the cost of upgrading it to actually make it run MC's Theater View well.
- Playlist/Playing Now creation and editing are much easier than in MC's TV
Cons:
- It has really limited file format support - so I'd have to convert everything over to a format it supports. This might be the dealbreaker for me. I know I can convert everything over to WMA Lossless and always go back later if I want, but I'm not sure if it supports gapless playback. If not, I'll have to decide how important that is to me.
- It's nowhere near as customizable as MC is. I'd pretty much be stuck using whatever "view schemes" MS decided I need. Which in my case, is probably fine.
So really, my choice of format is being driven by my desire to use MCE, basically. Although I was leaning towards WMV anyways because I'm getting really tired of having video formats that aren't taggable, so every time I start a new library, I have to re-tag all of my video files. I know there are other formats out there that are taggable, but WMV is kind of the sweet spot that's taggable and readable by MCE. :P
And honestly, even though MCE's interface is nicer, it's really the secondary reason I'm switching. The big reason is that my current HTPC is dog-slow and noisy. Last time I checked, upgrading it to an acceptable level would have been in the neighborhood of $300, which isn't bad, but if I have the Xbox 360 there already, I figure I might as well use it.