Windows Media Center: not ready for prime time

When my ReplayTV 4040 finally gave up the ghost last fall, I thought very carefully about its replacement. I had three main options: 1) Buy a TiVo. 2) Pay someone on eBay for a new hard drive formatted and loaded with ReplayTV's proprietary software. 3) Get a Media Center PC (or upgrade my existing PC to handle TV recording).

I didn't like the TiVo option, because that would have meant shelling out for a monthly subscription fee, and feeling left at the mercy of TiVo, which can change its terms and features at will.

Getting a new hard drive for the old ReplayTV would have been a cheap option, especially since I had gotten the lifetime subscription option when I bought it in 2001. But I wasn't sure how much longer ReplayTV would stay in business. For all I knew, the only reason the device was still getting programming guide info was because someone forget to turn off a server somewhere.

So the Media Center PC option was looking more attractive. I liked the idea of being able to easily add on more capacity by adding standard hard drives and new features with software upgrades. And the programming guide info was free.

Still I had no intention in paying $2,000 or more for a decent-looking PC for the living room (my new wife was clear that she wouldn't tolerate an ugly PC tower next to the TV). Fortunately, I knew I could use the Xbox 360 I had received as a wedding present -- which was already connected to the TV and stereo system -- as an extender. In other words, the ugly tower PC would remain in the computer area, where it belonged, but record all my shows and play them through the TV.

Since I already had the Xbox 360 and could find cheap tuner cards for my Vista-ready PC (the Media Center software is now standard with Vista Home Premium and Ultimate), the economics looked good too.

I encountered a few hiccups along the way. Vista ran poorly on my old machine, so I had to upgrade the memory. But this is something I would have had to do anyway. And my first choice of tuner -- an external USB tuner with no hardware video encoder -- was, ahem, a learning experience.

But after some trial and error, I got everything working.

Six months later, I find the setup more and more frustrating. I don't know whether its a hardware issue, still-poor driver support from ATI (tuner) and Nvidia (graphics card) or Vista, but the setup is getting less reliable by the day.

Sometimes the PC crashes when the Xbox tries to connect. At other times, tuner failures mean a show never gets recorded at all. And then there's the all-in-one ehrecvr.exe hangs, which mean shows don't get recorded and already-recorded shows can't be played.

I understand that new operating systems need time to work the kinks out. But Vista has been publicly available for 18 months or so already, and my patience is wearing thin.

When it works, the Media Center setup is excellent. But it's just not reliable enough to recommend. And if a geek like me can't get it working reliably, I'd hate to see the average consumer try to use it.