I'm sorry if you were offended. I was at least half joking.
As rick.ca mentioned, it's not clear what people want. We hear the general grumbling, but without specifics, we'll never get anywhere.
Our point of view is this:
1. I like simple.
2. Matt likes what it is now. It's more than what I would call simple.
3. Taste is so subjective that we could fix it for you and break it for others.
4. It is functionally pretty good. It works with a keyboard, a mouse, a touch screen, or a Media Center Remote. It was no easy feat to get it there. We don't want to break that.
5. It can be customized now. xplain did a nice job. Others may do so in the future. We've never documented this well.
I can see some obvious things we could do. We increased the default text size last week, for instance.
We will do more. We just have to weigh the costs and benefits of the very long list of changes that both we and our customers would like.
I wish we had 2x or 4x the budget to work with. It does feel like we're getting there now. Our sales grew more than 50% each of the last two years.
I agree with number 3. That is why what you, matt or I like doesn't matter all that much (of course there is some central design guidelines that most people can agree on, but you get my point). The point is to make a flexible system. I don't see anything with the look i posted that would brake any navigational features.
Maybe it can be customized, I have no experience in skinning, so maybe you can make the exact same thing, but I don't know how, that the problem is that nobody has done it more than it can't be done. Let me tell what i like with the skin i posted, and maybe we/I can get some more light shed on it.
What i like about the skin:
1. The grey continuous background around the the menuchoices (tv shows, musc, movies and so on), can this be done with Theatre view-skinning today?
2. The lighter grey info bar underneath the menu-choices, which has rss-feeds or other info about the menu-choice, can this be done with Theatre view-skinning today?
3. The font-size and type, and the fact that the menu-choices can be placed at the bottom of the screen instead of the middle, can this be done with Theatre view-skinning today?
4. That the menu-choice is signaled by a color-change, not a white box around it, can this be done with Theatre view-skinning today?
5. That if all the menu-elements fits on a single screenwidth, the menu-choices are locked in place, (in MC, it would be that only the white selecting-box moved, but the menu-choices where locked in place on the screen), can this be done with Theatre view-skinning today?
6. That background images are non-faded in the menu and change very quick when you change what menu-choice is selected, I haven't found a way to do this in MC.
If anyone is really interested, I guess i could do the same treatment deeper down in the selections too, (showing movies, movie-info and so on).