For those with windows media center... a few questions...
I have a Windows 8.1 PC in the office. No TV in there, just dual dvi monitors on a dell precision t3400 PC. Cable, phone and Ethernet jacks on the wall.
In family room I have an xbox 360, Yamaha avr and 40" westinghouse TV. Two Ethernet ports too (one to AVR and one to xbox).
In main living room I have Ethernet ports there as well, along with two coax (right now one is DirecTV and one is Cable clearQAM), and another port is phone line to DirecTV for caller ID.
If I would go media center, what would I need? Already have an xbox in the family room, and a logitech harmony controls it. But nothing in the living room. Would I need another xbox, or is there something smaller and more silent (that xbox fan is noisy). Also wouldn't the xbox use more power than a DirecTV box?
With Windows 8.1 PC in the office, can that still run Media Center? I thought Microsoft discontinued Media Center after Windows 7. I thought no more development has been or will be going into the platform. Do you see an issue if this happens?
If cable starts to roll out MPEG4, will the Ceton and Media Center / Extenders be able to tune and record the feeds?
If I hook a phone line to a dial up modem in the media center PC, would it be able to display caller ID on all TV's / extenders?
Can you customize the channel lineup on media center? I would want to replace all SD equivalent channels with the HD ones where available. The nicest thing with DirecTV is you type in the channel number and its automatically in HD. No seperate set of numbers to remember. No nagging the wife or guests to "put the TV on the correct, HD channel!". I would want to ensure that if I typed in "3", or "10" or "32" or whatever... I would see the HD feed. Basically eliminate all SD duplicates from the guide. In my area HD is 500+ the channel number... but instead of typing in 503 I want to just type in or select 3 in the guide.
Our cable provider is going to roll out an Arris home gateway in the next month or two. It's 6 tuners in one huge box that also contains a DOCSIS 3 modem, eMTA, 4 port switch, router, wifi. Basically its an all in one gateway that does the tuning with its cable cards and creates a moca network on the coax. The TV's get smaller boxes with a blue LCD on the front that connects to this moca network and via IP gets to watch TV. Its using the Moxi interface which kind of looks like Media center (not the guide, but the whole crossbar like look in the first media center menu). Not sure if I want to go this route because again, don't think you can customize the guide like DirecTV. Paul Allen from Microsoft had a huge investment in Digeo, the company Arris acquired... so maybe thats why it looks kind of similar.