Bugger

My Media Center started to show signs of hardware instability at around Easter. Then, after returning from the US about a week ago, I noticed the thing was coughing and choking, in an "unbootable" state. It's either the CPU, the memory, or the board, but my biggest issue has been finding the time to diagnose/test/fix.

However, with a problem comes opportunity.

There's been a number of things I've been unhappy about under the current Vista set up, and I ponder whether I should redesign the whole shebang. Let's face it: Vista is The Thing That Should Not Be. I've seen various people manage to work around Vista's shortcomings to create an efficient work environment, but anyone who thinks this interface is well designed has their head in the sand.

(It reminds me of the South Park episode where Mr Garrison invents the gyroscopic motion vehicle that puts the airline industry out of business, but has a rather uncomfortable operational shortcoming.)



Anyhoo... I do think Windows continues to be the "easy option" for an underlying OS due to the requirement for an MCE to have a lot of unusual hardware drivers, but my natural UNIX biases are now whispering in my ear from both shoulders.

What tends to give those "angels" even more credence and momentum is that I think the main application -- Vista Media Center -- is merely competent in it's design, but a little frustrating in providing users minimal choice in customisation.

A possibility that has piqued my interest is MediaPortal, a port of XBMC to take advantage of modern hardware, while also allowing to record off a tuner (yay!) I will minimally evaluate this option before I undertake any major changes to the underlying OS.

Anyway, I just need to summon the willpower to start the hardware troubleshooting process...