I'm listening to tunes and watching video this evening, both via Media Center.
Aside from the "it just works, and works excellently" aspect, I've noticed something else.
I have a MC client (Windows 7, 64 bit) that feeds the TV. The MC server is the desktop PC (Windows 7, 64 bit) in the other room. Connected via gigabyte Ethernet. Infrastructure aside...
The MC client is in my media center cabinet, as such it uses the Ethernet switch in that cabinet, complete with blinking LEDs for network traffic.
Long story short - I know which blinking LED is the MC client, so I know when the MC client has network traffic.
And that brings me to the point of this rambling comment...
The MC client has some rather intelligent caching of media content.
I haven't turned on tcpdump to watch the details, but based upon the network traffic I see on the blinking lights, it looks like MC client pulls the content to the client as quickly as possible so that it can effortlessly stream that content from the local source.
Then the playback occurs from the local disk drive (as I noticed from the disk drive light blinking on the MC client PC).
OK, yeah, this is just common sense to assure a reliable playback of the content, but, wow, it was amazing to see it occurring in the blinking lights.
It was also cool to see the quality of the engineering that goes in to Media Center. To be honest, this caching was interesting to see, as I watched it occur. But given the other quality engineering aspects Ive seen in Media Center, it was not a surprise.
(apologies for my techie ramblings, but this aspect impressed me...)
