Windows Media Center Peeves

_{(or "Things that'll make you wish you picked Apple TV")}

1. The Media Center Menu - I touched on this in another section, but the menu is a piece of junk. It's not intuitive in the least. The classic example I always use is that your ripped TV shows and Movies are not in the "TV & Movies" menu - they're in "Pictures and Video". That's the most obvious example, although the entire menu system reflects that mentality. The majority of people will also find a lot of other menu categories they'll never use, which just add to the clutter. It's one big mess that for the most part doesn't make sense and that you also can't configure/change to make better.
2. Slow navigation - I had this happen on both of the machines I used Media Center on. Every so often (and on a regular basis) the computer seems to get "busy", often for no apparant reason, and the menu navigation just hangs for a few seconds. Very frustrating when you're trying to navigate quickly. Had it happen constantly on both a slow machine as well as a relatively quick dual-core machine.
3. Watched folders - They're clunky. If you're very careful about organizing your videos, pictures, and music, and keep those folders "clean", it's not so bad. If you're like most people though, things will be a huge mess until you spend hours organizing it. It would help if it would allow you to break things into categories like "watched music", "watched video" etc.
4. Slow navigation over the network - Watched folders with videos that are on a different computer on the network cause massive slowdowns while Media Center pulls thumbnails for the videos while you're browsing. Network access also makes many of the small access delays a lot longer.
5. Cost - No doubt about it, it's more pricey than an Apple TV, even if you go with a bare-minimum system that will just barely run Media Center and doesn't have the extra frills like a TV tuner etc. You're basically buying a computer that is going to cost a good chunk of coin, and will typically be hooked up to the TV in the living room full time.

Media Center Pros

1. Codecs - Throw something like the K-Lite codec pack on there, and you've just enabled Media Center to play videos encoded in just about any format.
2. The Media Center remote - For all the buttons it has, I've seen much worse. The commonly used buttons are well placed and easy to use, the remote lights up, and the power/volume buttons can be programmed based on your other remote, meaning you may be able to eliminate the others. "The green button" as it's called was actually a pretty smart idea and makes navigation a heck of a lot easier.
3. Ability to customize hardware - If you want a higher resolution, better video card, better tuner, better sound card, faster system, blue-ray, etc, all you have to do is..... upgrade! Sure you can only upgrade to the extent that Media Center supports, but even that allows a lot of leeway to improve the system if and when you need to.
4. You can watch/listen while browsing - You can keep whatever program/movie you're watching (or whatever music you're listening to) running while you browse the menu for something else. It can either play full-screen in the background (slightly faded) which actually looks really nice, or in a tiny window in the bottom left. This means that you can browse your media while you watch it.