TDavid, Reasons why we returned Windows Media Center 2005. I certainly don’t expect TDavid to unreturn his Media Center but I’m sure he’d appreciate a response to his complaints about it.

It took an embarassing amount of time to figure out how to exit MCE 2005 mode

This is where I admit that I was the one who designed this. I’ll post something later explaining the design process but the short answer is that if you want to exit MCE it is because you want to use a traditional desktop application. All desktop applications require a mouse and so using a mouse to close MCE by clicking the top right ‘x’ is a discoverable task.

No auto recording feature based upon user ratings like TiVO

We do not have this. I wasn’t involved in the process of deciding why not, but I can imagine that we simply prioritized other features as more important than this one. I imagine, one of those features would be our movie portal which you can access by pressing Start > My TV > Movies. It shows you what movies are on now, on next, and enables you to browse all the movies you might watch/record on tv. Was this the right decision? Wrong decision? That’s a question that is very hard to answer.

Inability to watch a different program while recording

With two tuner cards in your MCE or a dual tuner card you can do this. You can even do this for digital cable set top boxes though it requires you to have two cable set top boxes.

DVD playback as mentioned in my other post was better through our $79 progressive scan DVD player directly into TV

Without knowing which MCE you had bought or which TV you have its hard to discuss this one. Though it sounds like it was not connected with the best possible connection to your HDTV.

To extend the media capabilities into another room would require the addition of another $300 Media Extender device?

Yes, or an XBox plus the $54 XBox Extender kit, or another networked computer or networked Media Center. I imagine OEMs do not bundle Extenders with Media Centers because it would significantly increase the base cost.

What’s up with the power consumption?

This is interesting feedback that I haven’t heard before. There are a large variety of different Media Centers on the market, each, I imagine, with different power comsumption levels. As we do not manufacture the hardware the best we can do is make a recommendation to OEMs to consider this when designing their machines.

Multitasking as computer with TV watching option (not!).

It would be quite difficult to setup a MCE box to be used both as a TV and as a home office computer. which is why we have the Extenders which would accomplish this for you, though as you mention the price is too high for you.

Sure, you can listen to your music through the TV, but how many families actually do that?

In our apartment we listen to our music exclusively through the MCE TV. In fact, we probably spend more time listening to music than watching TV. The reason I prefer using MCE to listen to my music is because I couldn’t imagine any other way of quickly accessing the 700 albums that I have. Especially considering my tendency to throw out CDs after ripping them.

Who is the MCE 2005 for? …Unless Microsoft answers these relatively easy questions from a marketing standpoint…

Great question. Sean, are you reading this? This is more your department than mine. (Sean is our marketing guy).

Again, I’m sorry to hear you returned it, we work hard every day to make it simpler, easier to use, and it won’t be long before Media Center as well as the Extender reach a palatable price point.