Media Centre / Sky+ / Reliability

["Mark McCall" <lists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

For me, XP MCE wasn't stable or reliable.  But I've had Vista Media
Center
on the AV Room PC since February, and since TiVo died around a month ago
its
been our full-time PVR.  It ran faultlessly until last week's critical
updates, then it barfed!

It seems to be a known issue with my particular hardware setup (Cinergy
2400i tuner card) and killed all recording and playback,, even though the
critical updates don't seem to have contained any new drivers etc.

Couple of things spring to mind.

1. I'ts just not acceptable at this stage in MC development for it to be
able to be completely tubed as easily as this, and
"automatically" with just
security updates.

2. Will a PC based system EVER really be reliable enough for what is
becoming a "critical" application - in our house anyway.

3. If I had enough space on my Windows Home Server trial box I would have
had this fecker backed up and would have been able to get it up and running
in something considerably less than the 3 hours it took me!

4. With the recent cut in Sky+ price I can see myself re-subbing to Sky. It
may not be everything, but its probably more reliable than this.

:-\

M.