It's alive! Finally got the cable card last night. Windows media center is really awesome for live TV and DVRing. Setup wasn't too bad either. The Harmony is all configured and it works pretty much like a regular cable box. There are a few issues I'm still working on. Sometimes Media Center gets tripped up when the TV and receiver come on and I have to restart it. Sometimes it flickers on scene changes but that problem doesn't stick around long enough for me to figure out what causes it yet. I don't have the remote working with power on/off yet so for now the pc is on all the time. Eventually the PC should be able to shut down or at least sleep and wake when it has to record.
I use my xbox as a media center extender in my bedroom and it also has full access to live cable TV and everything I've DVR'd. At first I didn't have a good enough internet signal to stream to the TV with the powerline adapter, so I ran an ethernet cable to a different outlet closer to the bedroom and now it's full strength. I wish the XBox were quieter. Are the slims any better than my XBoxFat?
There are a few customizations you can do to windows media center. I installed My Channel Logos and it replaces all the channel text in the tv guide with logo icons. I installed another extension that adds a Hulu option to the main menu. It'll launch Hulu Desktop from media center and exit back to WMC when you close it. Hopefully I can find something similar for Steam and its big picture mode.
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