Windows Media Center?

With Mark's goading I decided to install a "media center". Why? I have no clue. I've been using a Thinkpad T40 as a media server running VLC or Media Player Classic on an external HD projector. This works fine. I guess the "media center" is optimized for this sort of situation, but at the end of it I'm not convinced that it's worth the time - unless you're going to use it as a TV tuner (which I do not) or watch Netflix (which I do not). Here's how it went:

1) I tried Windows 7 Ultimate - which was a struggle. I finally got everything running but I had a very difficult time getting the ATI Radeon Mobility 9000 drivers running. Finally I got some Vista drivers but it ended up reversing the displays and I couldn't ever get them correct. Additionally it ran a bit slow on the old Pentium 1.7 w 2gb of RAM.

2) I thought about Vista, but realized that, too, would be a resource hog. Didn't bother to check it out.

3) Given that this machine is circa 2004 I tried Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. The install process is a bit grueling because it wants a Windows XP Service Pack 2 CD, as well. I used a VL XP CD with Service Pack 3 and it seemed happy. Then in the end it asks for some other CD - but I just popped in CD 1 and it finished. Then of course there are 100 some updates to install. So essentially at this point I'm back where I started - an XP machine except it has "Windows Media Center". Sweet! Actually it has more - it also has the "Windows Dancers". They dance above the task bar in time to the music. If you ever wonder why Microsoft is going to loose to Google it's because of things like this. It's sort of amazing that management green lighted "Windows Dancers". Anyhow there's also "party mode" for audio. I tried this later that night but it did not seem to improve the party.

There are few problems with this setup, however:
1) Windows MCE 2005 won't play DVD content out of the box. I tried a few community codec packs but Windows is still not happy with any of the MPEG2 codecs. Finally I found this. I installed this MPEG2 codec and finally Media Center is happy.
2) The next problem is that it seems to not recognize DVDs folders on the hard drive. I installed "My Movies" and in a few minutes had a really slick display with covers, etc.

Of course with MCE 2005 you can't stream Netflix like you can in Windows 7 and much of the Online content is totally outdated. If you can make Windows 7 go - it's probably a much better bet. Another option that I only scratched the surface of it http://xbmc.org/. This runs a bit slow on the T40 but seems to have potential...