As I turned off GT4 and fired up the (recently neglected) Media Center last Wednesday, I thought to myself that I should probably write some more about how much I love XP MCE. Then Murphy came knocking. He told me that he was unable to start recording Lost and that I should reboot and re-schedule the recording. So I go to the Guide, hit OK on Lost, and it starts playing. Hit Record and Murphy again tells me to reboot and re-schedule. Jump back and forth in what it’s buffered. Hit Record again. Wait for a commercial on Smallville, which is recording just fine on the other tuner, and reboot.
So it comes back up, and I’m a little ticked that it didn’t re-schedule Smallville and Lost itself. So I go to Smallville and hit record, then on to Lost, and Murphy comes back telling me to reboot. Being under the time crunch of a commercial break I decide on a full shutdown, come back up, same shit. So I stop Smallville, hit Record on Lost, then back to Smallville, and it’s all peachy. Until it’s time for West Wing and Alias.
Thankfully my preferred Torrent hub is still ticking and I was able to get the full episode of Lost…
Up until that night there hadn’t been a single problem with this setup and I’ve been exceptionally happy with MCE — it’s television features aren’t as comprehensive as Tivo’s, but there are so many other things it does better or beyond Tivo + HMO. I pray that this is a one-time event… It won’t take much more than a single missed episode of Lost or Battlestar Galactica to have me rushing to Best Buy for a second Tivo.
It’s sad that Media Center’s greatest strength — being built on a fairly open general-purpose OS — is probably also it’s greatest weakness…
