Of course it does require the PC to be on all the time, but most people do that anyway. If you aren’t playing games on the box chances are you won’t notice this one bit. The basic idea is that you can use you’re PC like you normally would, but it will record TV in the background and open up background streams out to the media extender boxes. With the rising prevalence of dual cores and the fact that the Xbox 360 will work out of box as a HD Media Extender this is becoming a more attractive option. Of course you can always take it as opportunities to upgrade your current PC and throw the remains in a box. The down side is that you have to build an extra PC and as it turns out those aren’t free. You won’t have to worry about a recording, or someone else in the house watching a show when you’re playing a game and slowing down you’re system and you won’t have to mess around with trying to get a single over to your TV.
The advantage here is that you have a computer that is dedicated to MCE so it will get, bar none, the best performance when using MCE. Windows Media Center Edition 2005 OEM is about $115 or so, and doesn’t require any additional subscriptions to Guide data or any other additional costs: There are two ways to go about building an MCE 2005 box: use a standalone PC hooked into an entertainment system that is dedicated to being just an MCE box or use a standard use PC that runs MCE and having it hooked to a TV with long cables or using a Media Center Extender (or an Xbox or Xbox 360).
At its heart MCE 2005 is just Windows XP Pro w/ a couple extra apps & services designed to record and view multimedia sources.
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