A media center PC should be as unobtrusive as the rest of your Home Theater stack.
If it's anything else then I probably wouldn't like it either.

Who's the gal in the pic?..Lol

I was confusing "Sky High" with "Mile High." I couldn't make the connection to Media PCs.

Meridian Media PC: As good as sex on a plane!

After a while you might not care to care about wife approval.

I'm more interested in the wireless keyboard-trackpad combo. Anyone recognize it?

I love that whenever these manufacturers show their Media Center PCs, they never have any cables connected to them. Take it from someone who know...it ain't the PC that's the eye sore, its the CABLES!!!!

They'd be better off making a sexy looking extender so the ugly PC can be in a different room. (Girl sold separately (insert Client 9 joke here) ).

Jesus, seriously. You need your wife to tell you that hiding the theater gear looks good?

Can you see it? Can you hear it? EPIC FAIL.

Stick it in the attic or the basement, and you have a winning product. Who gives a shit about replacement panels? It's supposed to be unobtrusive, not fluffy and pretty. Why not just integrate a bowl-shape into the top to act as a potpurri holder to REALLY increase the wife acceptance factor.

I like the Zebra print myself and my girlfriend would really like the red one.

Do these things work yet?

No really - the 'not being able to save' issue and the Vista v. XP pro and so on, v. TiVo - I am confused.

Is anyone else like me - so old and out of touch - this just looks like fancy smancy PC case to go with the expensive cables, all stuff a strong media laptop could do (think Sony, etc), that you just put away after use....?

People should do what my friend did. Throws a server rack downstairs, no ugly electronics upstairs. 46" Bravia, no mess.

Expensive and nerdy, though!

Also, wives approve of this? I'm not really offended, but should we market this thing to 'wives' and husbands bent on pleasing their wives? That's failure in the works.

If you can afford a wife like the one pictured, I'm sure you can afford a custom vented cabinet in the wall where you're mounting your >50" plasma.

Then again, trophy wives do love to decorate. I'm pretty sure she's just going to complain it doesn't work right with her Macbook Air though.

@flyboy: I have an HP Media Center with Vista Premium on it. The Media Center functionality works exceptionally well. Yesterday there was also a post on Lifehacker explaining how to rip all your DVDs to the hard drive, so that you can pull them up in Media Center.

I've come up against two problems. The first is that some studios are sticking some sort of copy protection on DVDs which won't allow them to play in a computer. So far the only title that I haven't been able to get to work was Gone Baby Gone, but it wouldn't play on my laptop either. Why they would still do this, when people watch movies on computers all the time, I have no idea. It's a very rare problem though.

The second issue I had is that my Dish Network and PC don't interface. If I got Comcast cable then supposedly I could run the box into the PC and DVR it all, etc. but I have been unable to get the Dish and the Media Center to play nice, so I still have to DVR on the dish box if I'm recording from dish and DVR on the media center if I'm recording over-the-air stuff.

I haven't bought a Blu-Ray drive yet, but plan install one in the next month or two to see how that works.

I don't consider anything with an integrated Intel 950 graphics chip as a truly capable "Media PC." This is really just a status/style appliance.

I must admit though, I like that black one with the white tree etching.

@jetexas:
I don't see a ring on that finger, so likely a rental trophy wife. Can you get those at Rent-a-Center as well now?

Dress it up all you want... hell even make it from solid gold. But it still runs on windows....... And trust me.. My wife wont be happy with that.....!

@Y2KGTP: You just put an ad on craigslist that you're having a photoshoot/making a movie.

@Way: it's not really all that great.

yeah, shouldn't be able to hear hum of computers over your movie. Now what I would like to know, do they figure in the cost of the trophy wife to go with your trophy media pc? if so, that price is a steal!

Fanboys... Vista Media Center is actually a fantastic UI, works better than any other solutions for a media center and is easily expanded with add-ons. It is not perfect and still in the realm of hobbyists. However, dismissing it so quickly shows that you have not used it. Vista Media Center is also one of the better upscaling DVD players I have ever used. Standard Definition DVDs upscaled to 1080p look fantastic.

I have a media center PC, running Vista with the DaemonTools and MyMovies and MyNetflix add-ons and I have all of my DVDs stored as ISOs on a 4tb NAS. Even my wife enjoys using it.

Now, once Intel's Q45 chipset comes out and can handle Blu-ray effectively (meaning HDMI 1.3, with true 7.1 sound) and DirecTV releases their HD tuner for PCs, viable HD hardware will be available. You could have a true replacement for STBs. I doubt it will ever be mainstream, but we should see the technologies converge. Microsoft seems to be ahead of the curve on this.

@flyboy: yes you're just old and out of touch :)

Being serious though, media center (as well as the many other HTPC applications available) have been stable for a long while now. The only unstable stuff is the newer CableCard devices and the setup headaches they cause, but very few people even own them so it's hard to use that as an excuse. And no laptop would be up to the task of true media center duties. They don't really have the space (come to think of it, neither does this Merium device... I mean c'mon, 250gb when hard drive prices are so low?). Not to mention laptops aren't the type of devices you'd want to run 24/7 anyway (which is necessary for true DVR function as well as on-demand access to all your music, media and online info).

But anyway, I agree with everyone who has stated that you're supposed to hide the system away somewhere. It still amazes me that WAF (wife acceptance factor) even has to be a concern. Are that many guys that dumb? Are aesthetics really that foreign to them? Geez. I'm personally just hoping that media extenders evolve to be the cheap, quiet, good looking frontends they should be.

Also, I'm amused by Merium changing the remote to black. Especially odd when the CPU's default cover is white.

OS aside, a 945 motherboard with onboard video, a low power CPU, and a small, slow hard drive isn't going to get it done if you plan to do anything besides play your standard def DVDs.

And what kind of Gizmodo post is this that doesn't tease a media center PC for not having built in HDMI?

If you want a high powered unobtrusive pc in your living room check out www.pearingsystems.com or search mediacore on youtube. It looks like a small table and there are only two cables running to it because the cable boxes are inside with it. As for the wife factor well... what wife?

Sky High Wife: [us.imdb.com]
That's who I thought of first. Didn't know why she needed to approve it, though. Maybe it's a Scientology thing....

I think TVs, stereos, etc should completely disappear when not actually in use, but no way would I want one of those ghastly overpriced plastic cabinets. Give me something that doesn't look like it's got a TV inside, please.

she looks really happy with the computer....

Gyration combo is the best I've found. Their remote/mouse is AWESOME! I use it quite often and it has saved me from needing to use Bluetooth (which I used to use). I LOVE it. =-]
[www.newegg.com]

Windoz? Bleh. I'll stick with MythTV and Linux.