Last weekend we stayed with my sister and her family in Canada during the Northern Voice conference and interestingly they had recently purchased an HP Media Center PC and asked me what I thought about MCE 2005. I noted that their HP MCE 2005 wasn’t currently hooked up to the TV. My brother-in-law explained that he didn’t like how the picture looked and how it worked. One thing he did like that we discussed was that if he bought an extender he could move their movies around to other computers. He also seemed to agree that MCE 2005 is just not there yet with running everything through your computer picture-wise. We talked about how getting HD to record through MCE isn’t completely available yet (yes, some over the air stations can be recorded, I know). 

We saw some cool Media Centers at CES that weren’t ugly looking towers, but those aren’t in the retail stores in great numbers yet. I think when Media Centers are more like set top cable boxes size-wise and DVD players (yes, some already exist like this) they will become a part of the living room instead of the office. In the meantime, either people will take them back and pay a restocking fee like I did or use them as an expensive PC like my sister’s family currently is doing.

So two people I actually know and have seen who bought Media Center and one took the Media Center back (that’s our family) and the other doesn’t use it connected to their TV! At the Northern Voice conference, I only saw one other Tablet PC user besides myself: Robert Scoble. Hmm.

• Scoble (sort of) points me to Fry’s for $1,000 Media Center PC
• Replace TiVo with Media Center PC?
• Off to get my birth cert and shows #227 and 27 respectively
• $599 eMachines Windows Media Center PC 2005
• Windows Media Center 2005 the Nordstoms of digital media?
• Northern Voice afterthoughts and review