There were three primary reasons I retired my ReplayTV in favor of a Windows Media Center.

First, the Media Center user interface is totally superior.  The ReplayTV interface was as clunky as you could imagine.  It often was unresponsive or difficult to use.  The Media Center interface is generally speedy, animated, elegant, and all-around delightful.

Second, I wanted to be able to upgrade the system.  In this early stage of convergence, equipment becomes obsolete rather too fast.  The numerous bugs in the ReplayTV, often requiring a full reboot, don’t have a prayer of being fixed in the current version.  There isn’t generally an upgrade path for consumer electronics.  By contrast, through Automatic Updates, Windows is constantly improving.

Third, I wanted to be able to share the recorded shows with my laptop (for plane travel) and other devices in the house, especially the Windows Media Center Extender that was still under development at the time.

I ended up with a Gateway 901X for two reasons - they had a local store where I could try before buying, and I liked the audio-visual component styling better than the sameold tower chassis.  Because they were also pushing large plasma TVs it seemed to me they were on the leading edge of PC/TV convergence.  In hindsight, I’m not sure any of these reasons was wise.  And I should have known better…

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I had a Sony VAIO laptop at one point.  I liked the styling and the individuality it had, as well as the small size and weight (about the best you could get at the time).  One of the first things I did though was update it from Windows 98 to Windows 2000.  A nice clean upgrade, to get rid of all that Sony-specific widgets cluttering up the system.  But then when I went to upgrade drivers, I learned they weren’t available for download, even though they were available for new Win2K purchases!  I lived for many months without a working modem or function key support.  But the system was rock solid, through months of standbys without a reboot (which was pretty miraculous at the time).

When I finally saw updated drivers posted on the web and installed them, the system started to bluescreen once in a while.  The culprit was pretty obvious.  I resolved not to trust a consumer electronics company with my PC needs again.

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Little did I expect a fairly major computer company like Gateway would turn out to be similarly deficient in their support of customers.

When I started researching the Windows Media Center Extender I found it only works with Windows Media Center 2005.  So I needed an upgrade.  Shouldn’t be that difficult, should it?

Well, Windows Media Center was originally only available through the OEMs.  I called Gateway for an upgrade and they quoted me $385.  That seemed a bit steep so I didn’t say yes right away.  When I finally decided to take the plunge, it didn’t seem to be available any more.  Actually, it turns out it was never available.  Gateway decided not to provide upgrades to their customers, many of whom are quite upset about it.  And Media Center customers are likely to be high spenders, more likely than not to come back for a plasma screen or something.  But not after the bad taste they’ve gotten from their first purchase.

Not to be deterred, I’ve been sleuthing out workarounds.  You can now buy MCE 2005 at retail outlets for about $150.  I’m partway through my attempt at a homebrew upgrade, and I intend to document my success or failure.  Stay tuned, thou disenfranchised former Gateway customers!