"Why would anyone buy an xbox 360?"

One word... Halo.

well that does it for me. I have vista premium and an xbox extender. i run a variety of VMC plugins (the best is msdvrtoolbox to skip commercials automatically) as well as hdhomerun, qam tuner hybrid hauppauge card. But I'm done with microsoft. i've been awaiting this for a year and a half, searching frequently for fiji updates and so forth. An OEM only update. You just lost a VERY loyal customer. So now what? what's the best bet for me? MythTV, BeyondTV, sage, etc? any suggestions? i'm very tech savy with terabytes of space and willing to build my own box. Do I go linux? is there good media center support there?

Now this is a REAL solution. Shows you brought your A-game. Though, you did get taken on the HDD. You can get 500 GB+ for under $100...

"BTW, if any one has another couple 500GB harddrives around I could really use it."

That's because you didn't encode your files...this is the biggest draw back to leaving in ISO or VOB format. I have the entire seinfeld collection (roughly 8 volumes of 4 disks each with about 5 episodes = 160 GB) Mines under 50 GB because I encoded the VOB files to x264. Looks just like DVD quality but 1/4 the size.

That's why the solution is more complicated that people are making it sound. Plus streaming a VOB isn't quite right with seeking and other features because it's "faking" like its an MPEG file, and it's not.

Once your collection is digital it is portable. The effort is worth the work! Do you use mp3's at all? Why? That's a lot of work to take CD's and rip them...

Right, because you can take it on a portable player, burn a backup copy, take a clip using editing software, watch it in multiple rooms using a network, share with others (illegal and I don't condone, but people do it), etc.

Think about it. Worth the time.

Actually, vypergts, that guy didn't come up with the same thing. His doesn't allow the use of watch now on the extender (xbox 360), which is what the article is all about.

I'm in healthcare and would love to use this to replace my limited PDA.