Still, at least you didn't come home today with your new Xbox 360, curious to try out the Xbox 360 integration with MCE that you'd heard about for so long, only to download the Software Extender software and be told:

"Media Center Extender Software does not support dynamic disks."

Just unbelievable. I checked, and Windows XP was written by Microsoft, and not some 3rd party.

Apparently, all I need to do to fix this is buy a new disk, back up about 380Gb of recordings, format, reinstall, blah blah blah, give me a break.

Sorry, but your moan about LinuxMCE was pretty bad timing for me :)

On MCE 2005 this is due to a bug in components below us. This should not happen in Vista. If it does, feel free to send me email.

hi Charlie just wanted to say thanks for the MCE remote and IR receiver you gave away at the dinner. I have been needing to get the IR receiver for a wile so I can get that cool MCE keyboard. Also I have a fusion remote ir receiver that I was using for MCE with my harmony remote, this will work much better. Thanks

I've just read this and I can't believe that someone that's a Product Manager on the Microsoft Media Center team, wasn't able to install a so easy and almost plug&play system. With the DVD install you have to just select the HDD where the OS will be installed, then you have the AV Wizard, that's so good explained, where you select the video/audio output, resolution&refresh, just selecting with the mouse/remote/keyboard the values that fit for you.(PS: everyone knows that the ATI video cards don't work very well on Linux, and that for alpha-blending you would need at least a Geforce 6xxx Series). Not to say that in the Video Setup there are movies, with a pretty girl ;;), that guides you on every step, you have just to enter the names of the users that will use the system, the room names where you have stations or other A/V equipment or home automation solutions, then the girl in the movies tells you to plug in all your devices one by one. LMCE detected and automatically configured my NAS,my jukebox, my voip phones(Bugetone 100), my zwave lights, my tuner card and automatically configured MythTV with onscreen tv quide for more than 2 weeks. Only my Alarm Panel I had to manually add and configure, because it's connected on the RS232 port, from the very easy to use web interface(Advance->Computing->WEB ADMIN).
I don't have words to describe how happy is everyone in the house, we have now just the LinuxMCE core that's in the same time our media center and automation system, gateway, dhcp server, pbx, we don't use anymore the Trix box PC(our old pbx) and the SmothWall PC(our old linux geteway&dhcp server).
I can't imagine how someone couldn't be satisfied with Linux MCE.
PS: Owen send me an e-mail with your phone, and I'll contact you when I'll past through your town, and I'll help you to get up&running your own LinuxMCE system ;).

"On MCE 2005 this is due to a bug in components below us."

Yikes - there are bugs with dynamic disks? Should I not be using them then? Is my data teetering on a precipice?

"This should not happen in Vista."

Yeah, I'll get right on that. At the moment, Vista will cost me the same as 1.5Tb of hard disk storage, for seemingly little advantage. I tend not to like paying through the nose for upgrades with features like "Now it actually works!"

Hi Charlie,

I'm a developer with LinuxMCE. A friend sent me a link that brought me to your article. My version of "how come it didn't work for you" looks like this: on what hardware did you install LinuxMCE? Currently alpha blending is supported only on nVidia cards. ATI cards have a condition where you can't have two things active at the same time (I don't currently recall what those are, as I haven't tried ATI cards for half a year now, but if I have the time I can plug one of those in and see again what the condition is), Intel and VIA cards have very basic drivers which lack support for a lot of things needed for X11 compositing (we had better luck with SiS integrated cards than we had with Intel, if it matters, but only slightly better).

The short version is: alpha blending will fail on anything that isn't nVidia. You can still try the "medium" which uses windows with holes and that stands a better chance of working for you if you don't have nVidia. Masking can fail too, but since we mainly test with nVidia cards, we don't have an exhaustive list of things that work and things that don't.

On the other hand, you say you managed to get it running with UI1 (basic). Can you give me some details on where you get stuck? It seems you can't get past the Setup Wizard (aka Video Wizard), the part where Sarah guides you step by step to setup your installation.

I'd love to hear from you with further details on this issue.

I only found out about LinuxMCE yesterday and have just downloaded the iso's. The time is now Sat 29th Spet 10:25 BST. Lets see how long it takes to get up and running. I'll post back here when done. :-)

Hmmm...well its now Oct 1st 14:00 BST and Im now on my 5th attempt at installing LinuxMCE. Its certainaly not a turn key solution, thats for sure :-S