My TV tuner card arrived today. Watching TV on Windows XP Media Center Edition is glorious. Pausing live TV, commercial skipping, etc. are awe-inspiring. And, a couple clicks of the remote, and every new episode of Enterprise, The Simpsons, Malcolm in the Middle, and Arrested Development for the rest of the season is recorded. Sure, it's all been done before, but it's kind of nice to have it all work through my computer, and not have to have a bunch of extra hardware sitting around.
Getting rid of my DVD player, TV, and VCR has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for me. The only things that come to mind that suck about my current setup are that I can't use the My Pictures view to show a slideshow of pictures I take with my new camera (because they're not in JPEG format), not that I planned on doing this with any regularity anyway, and my Windows remote uses some weird signals that can't be memorized by my universal remote. I'd be perfectly happy with the Windows remote—it's a great remote—except it doesn't have a backlight, which is annoying. Anyway, it will all be put to the test in a week when I leave my computer on 24/7 to record my shows while I'm on vacation.
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