Okay, that's TOTALLY sexist, but hey - most of you here on my forum (at least those who post!) are guys, and most are fairly techy.

So let's talk about the "Wife Acceptance Factor" (or gf, or hubby if you're me and you're married to a blue-collar guy).

What do we need to do to get your families on board with Media Center? What features are missing, what specific things need improvement? (This is a different question from what features YOU want - we've got that thread somewhere else already, and you should keep adding to it as things occur to you.)

For example: My husband brought home a new projector for our home theater. He hooks it all up to both our cable box and our Media Center with digital cable support. He turns on Media Center and attempts to play back a recorded TV file.

"JESSICA!!! THIS is why Media Center will never be a viable product!!!" he yells.

I come into the room, and I see a 108-inch "Restricted Content" overlay on my screen. Sweet. (not)

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This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

My wife want to be able to stream VOBS to an extender.

Frank

To be honest, since adding the R5000HD and FireSTB, my wife has been nothing but smiles every time she sits down and uses our Media Center system.

Prior to that, at times it was a huge struggle, with her sometimes going as far as to exclaim how she "HATES" Media Center (after it crashed or locked up while she was watching SD content).

What she wants is to sit down and watch ER, CSI, Desperate Housewives, Numbers, and a few other shows with a clear image and "nice" sound.  Everything else (music, photos, Internet access, etc.) is just a bonus.  We do use these features, but the 10' interface isn't of value to her.

Prior to getting HD it wasn't a huge thing for her (it was something I wanted), but now she can't stop telling everyone how beautiful everything looks, how you can see details, facial expressions, etc. and at the same time pause, stop, rewind, etc.

The other thing that has changed her tone is the system stability.  I recently rebuilt our entire system using fairly high end components, lots of RAM, and a Quad core CPU.  She doesn't care specifically about that (other than we spent $$$), but what she does care about is that it doesn't crash and that when she clicks on the remote the system responds right away (she has no patience for delays at all).  With the new build Vista has not crashed or blue screened even once.  We have had MC itself stop and automatically restart a few times when clicking "play" (at least once per week) and this creates a loud "groan" and sometimes a "not again", but so far it has recovered quickly and her positive attitude returns.

I should add another thing that she likes is the ability for us to watch Recorded TV anywhere in the house.  She likes to do her exercise in the basement and we have another old computer setup there running MCE2005 connected to a 32" TV through s-video.  She will also often take a break from doing work at home and start up Vista's Media Center in the study to watch a show.  Finally, even though at first she wasn't sure about this, she now agrees that having the ability for our children to watch TV on their PCs (MCE2005) is great when we need a break (they rarely watch TV in their rooms and prefer to use the big screen TV, but probably once or twice a month for 1 hour or so they do).  The other situation where using their PCs as a TV is very useful is when they are home sick with the flu or something (we rotate their monitor towards their bed and they can control it with the remote).

Last week she was also watching a cooking show, taking notes and running back and forth between the family room and the kitchen.  I brought her the laptop (into the kitchen), started up Media Center and started up her cooking show, running on batteries and using the wireless network.  She thought that was cool, but I don't know if it will really catch on.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

Well the things I notice the other half enjoys and get frustrated when it fails is mostly 3rd party stuff.

 

My Movies:  Very rare it fails but it does occasionally  she loves having our newest titles in reach and not have to go find them is a very sloppy cabinet we keep all our titles.

Commercial Skip:  Too bad its not part of MCE originally because that is the only thing that let me do anything with media center.

Now as for built in stuff.

Recording ability:  She loves to be able to record anything anytime but using STB's we occassionally get a missed recording or the IR didnt work.  If that happens I can almost sense that she is ready to take our MCE PC and throw it out.  I know that CableCard is the ultimate answer eventually.  But as for us that built prior to this generation of technology its not an option.  We would love to use our device until it fails.  I guess if the team could find a better solution to connecting Cable companies hardware (firewire) to work with our exsisting OLD generation of equipment that would be a major selling point.

Let's expand on the "Wife Factor".  You guys do realise that people using your product are the best form of advertisement?  I have had alot of friends and family come over and be awed my the MCE.  But it never fails being very proud and excited I get aggressive and forget its software.  Well eventually I will have to reboot or at minimum restart MCE.  This is not a good selling point.  I know why I have to reboot or restart its my 3rd party applications.  So if the team could take the most popular 3rd party applications and integrate their own and make sure they are as stable as it should be then selling anything post MCE 2005 as an upgrade and expansion would be viable to the new comer.  I have had alot of friends/family say I might just do it until they realise that the stock MCE is not really so wonderful.  A proper DVD integration be it changer or somehow use encrypted storage.  Is a major selling point and totally missed out on in the experience.  Commercial Skipping is the only reason I went MCE instead of cable company dvr.  You guys really should invest it adapting the sources into your design.  Bottom line MCE 2005 is not finished and there is no way I will ever get the wife factor to approve anymore upgrades until she feels that these things have been addressed.  Hope I was clear enough on my view.

 

My wife hates that we have 2 of the sony dvd changers loaded with all of our movies but she has to watch them in the living room where the media center is.  She likes to lay in bed and watch TV so I often have to either rip the disk to the hard drive or just pop it out of the changer so she can watch it in the bedroom.  Before I got the cablecard system in I'd hear about the wrong show being recorded because the ir blaster didn't change the channel correctly but thankfully I don't hear that anymore.

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My Media Center Blog

mabrown:

My wife hates that we have 2 of the sony dvd changers loaded with all of our movies but she has to watch them in the living room where the media center is.

I second the stream DVD changer to extender point.  I hear this complaint loud and often!  She would rather have the ability to watch DVDs in other rooms over recorded TV!

My wife wants one remote control for the TV and media center.

My wife wants one remote control for the TV and media center (repeated on purpose).

My wife wants a media center that is very quiet (the XBOX 360 will NEVER make it to the family room).  But the Wii is there!

My wife never wants to see the OS for a media center.

Since we have 2 media centers (family room one acts as a client) my wife NEVER wants me to say "Wait while I reboot this PC so that I can get a refresh of the Recorded TV shows that are stored on the PC upstairs".

My wife does not like or want cable boxes since they require too many remotes, or a harmony that is too hard for her to understand (go figure).

My wife (I) wants a media center that looks like stereo equipment, not an ugly looking PC (she used to be a fashion designer). 

My wife wants me to spend more time with her, rather than endless hours hacking VMC to make it work better.

We live in Canada, so my wife DOESN'T want an option saying INTERNET TV, where clicking it says "The service is not available in Canada".

My wife wants a menu system that is customizable, so that the 4 items she NEEDS, are where she wants them (on the main strip), not hidden three clicks to the right. 

My wife is a wonderful person, and she deserves a better media center!!

 

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Asus P5E-VM HDMI (onboard audio/video), Core 2 Duo E8200, 4 GB RAM, Hauppauge HVR-1800 (x2), LG-GGC H20L, DMA-2100 (x4), Yamaha RX-N600, InFocus IN76, D-LINK DIR 655, Vista Ultimate

I wanted to add some not so obvious things.

One of the reasons she doesn't want us to get a standard Bell PVR is Recorded TV storage.  She tends to not be very consistent on when she watches her/our shows (some shows, especially cooking shows, will often be kept for months) and the idea of only 35 hours of Recorded TV shared between the 4 of us is a huge negative.  She wants the ability to record up to 200 hours worth of recordings or roughly 50 hours per person.  By pure luck, 1 hour of HD takes up just under 5 GB with the R5000HD/FireSTB tuner so we actually have her 200 hours worth of HD storage.

She also really likes My Movies, not for herself, but for our children (who used to shred DVDs and the old VCR tapes we were still using).  She is the type who will almost never watch a movie twice, but the value is still there for her.

Another bonus with Vista is the Icon based Recorded TV.  For example, if our 6 year old convinces us to let her watch 20 minutes of TV while we are making dinner and her sister is doing homework, with Vista we can now just say "OK" and she can do everything (and we can still hear it to make sure it is appropriate).  Previously we would go with her to read through the list (over and over) to find a show she wants (admittedly her reading is now, very recently, good enough that she could find an appropriate show, but the icons still help).

Finally commercial skipping.  Again a ("very") huge bonus that helps to add value to MC.  I'm not sure if MS could really support this sort of thing directly though since you need to be on good terms with Hollywood.

One feature that she would like is an integrated weather forecast.  Being able to quickly turn on the TV and scroll through our local forecast was something she regularly did with MCE2005.  I have to admit I haven't put any effort trying to find a weather addin for Vista Media Center, but I don't think there is a good one available yet.  Right now she has changed her routine a little and instead logs into Vista in the study to get the weather forecast.

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STB w/R5000HD USB I/O, Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, Quad Q6600, 4.0 GB RAM, ATI HD 3870 512MB, Ultra XVS 600W PSU, 3x SATA 500GB, 2x SATA 300GB, LG GGC-H20L, PVR-250, Toshiba 51H83 (51" HDTV), Yamaha RX-V2400 Amp, 5x Energy Speakers, SVS Sub, Harmony 880 Remote

My wife wants:
1.  Stability.  No missed recordings due to tuner failures or OTA HD signal dropouts.  No crashes.
2.  Easy setup and low maintenance (well, she'd need this if she didn't have me).  You're doing pretty good on the setup, buy she doesn't want to mess with anti-virus, automatic updates, rebooting, defraging, etc.
3.  Stream VIDEO_TS (VOB files) to extenders.  I told her I eventually want to move the PC to the office and use extenders in the living room and bedroom, but we wouldn't be able to view our home videos or online DVDs.  She said no way.  She's already doesn't like that she can't view them in the bedroom.

My wife wants to be able to flip thru the channels and it not lag before going to the next channel. She wants it to respond like Standard TV is when flipping thru channels. Yes I know why would you flip and not just look at the guide.

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Windows Vista Home Prem. SP1 x64
AMD Athlon 64 x2 dual core CPU 5200+
G.Skill 3GB 240pin DDR2 800MHz
ASUS 7600GS 512MB GDDR2 PCI Express-2x
Hauppauge WinTV-PVR 500MCE
ECS Elite Group Socket AM2 ATX Motherboard

my wife wants the DirecTV tuner card to be available for DIYers. 

when I told her about the cluster eff that cablecard is with the cheapset system being $1500 and that the same would likely happen with the directv tuner card as well, she said no way are we spending that much on a computer to record tv. 

So basically when the DirecTV tuner cards come out and the only way to get them will be as part of a system, we will be ditching media center in favor of a standard DVR.  We plan on buying a couple of HD sets in the next year and will definitely want to watch HD content.

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Marvin on Disapproving Rabbits

My wife LOVES our Media Centers...

My wife says...THEY DON'T WORK! (reliably)

End of story.

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Founder and President.
The Digital World, Inc.
http://www.thedworld.com

My wife likes MCE alot considering the lounge real estate that's been reclaimed from the various boxes under the TV, CD's on shelves etc

However, the lack of DVB-S integration (Floppy DTV user) and a fully populated EPG for Sky Digital in the UK causes many a frustration for her.

there's really only a couple of issues I hear

1 viable remote(she hates the harmony 880 i have downstairs. upstairs, the tv is smart enough to auto-sense a signal coming to it, and turn itself on)

the absolute main thing she hates is that if she records something upstairs, she has to watch it upstairs(or vice versa)


make is so that you can pool recordings NATIVELY not thru a hack/kludge/3rd party software

1. Very simple dedicated universal remote. She loves our HP media center remote but she can't control the vol. on our AVR or turn off/on the TV. She is not using the universal remote I bought because it has too many buttons and no dedicated media center buttons. Forget about using macros or flipping through menues in the remote. She wants the button to "say" the actual command.

2. Simple DVD ripping ability through the media center interface. We are using MyMovies now and she loves it, but ripping DVDs is too complicated for her. She wants to be able to insert the DVD and rip it the same way as regular music CDs. I understand that MS can't assit in decrypting copy protection, but you can add this option to non-protected DVDs and let us figure out the rest.

3. She wants a reliable TV guide. She is pissed that she don't have programing (and therefore can't record) for sub-channels.

4. She wants a lot less tiles in the VMC screen (we are not using 50% of them). I assume the ability to customize the interface will resolve this issue.

5. She would love to connect our VMC to a cable service but this should be simple and clean as putting an internal cable card tuner in the PC that she doesn't have to look at. She won't let me spend more money on a new cablecard system and there's no way she will agree to add those big USB cablecard tuners to our AV rack.