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Hey kdot:

We use Media Center to record some TV sitcoms for the kids so that they can watch them on the computer. The plus side is that the UI for scheduling a recording is really great. The schedules are downloaded and the kids can point and click. The other packages require setting start and stop times, specifying channel numbers, and do not allow scrolling through a particular channel schedule. Kudos on that point.

There are several downsides. One is that the recording format is DVR-MS. I wanted to put a bunch of the sitcoms on a single DVD so I tried MS Movie Maker but did not like the UI.

So, I tried Adobe Premiere Elements, but it cannot read the DVR-MS format directly. I tried Sony's package, but that cannot read the DVR-MS format. I tried Roxio, but that cannot read the DVR-MS format. I tried a couple of others, all to no avail. I wanted something that could read the DVR-MS format directly instead of having to spend the time to read in the DVR-MS format and render in a second format that the other packages could read (rendering into a second format takes significant time).

Then I discovered that installing and subsequently uninstalling those packages kills MS Movie Maker. The install process records some info for MS Movie Maker which apparently is not cleaned up after the uninstall. It has to do with MS Movie Maker startup, not the uninstall of these other packages.

Eventually I found one program that had reasonable UI and could read the DVR-MS format. The experience was costly in terms of my time, and MS Movie Maker still crashes on startup.

rit, What an ordeal! You were more determined that I. I tried Movie Shaker, plus a few freeware programs, then gave up. What program eventually worked? I would love to be able to compress a few shows and burn them to a DVD. BTW, the media converter program I eventually went with was Digital Media Converter. It works as advertised, is easy to use, but takes a long time per file. I kick it off at night and let it run. Then, the resulting files are compatible with anything!

I agree that Media Center is great for kids. My daughter set it to record a whole series (Star Trek, I think) and then when a channel had a marathon, the hard disk filled up!

It would be great be able to hook a small piece of hardware to our TV and allow us to access the shared folder from the Media Center PC. Then, we could play our recorded content in the family room. Maybe that's what the xBox 360 is. I've been tempted to buy a small PC running Media Center just for the family room!!!