I like it.  Let's get that out of the way because it hasn't been as smooth sailing as I would have hoped.  For instance, a week after I installed the computer, it froze up on me during recorded TV playback on the Xbox 360 in our living room.  It did this just as I was getting the wife acceptance factor under control and I was showing it off to my brother-in-law.  Not a good way to convince someone that the technology "just works" (tm). 

Turns out that the freeze was caused by the computer and not media center itself.  The Ceton card was not firmly seated in the PCI-E slot and must have become dislodged while moving the PC.  Sadly, the freeze cause multiple issues with the OS drive and repair ended up not being an option.  I completely rebuilt the PC from the OS install forward less than a week and a half from the initial CableCARD activation. 

Since then, I have to say that the device has been running flawlessly.  It's plenty large enough to support three TVs and play a Blu-Ray on the main screen in my theater.  Blu-Ray playback occassionally skips a half second once or twice in a movie but I'm looking into what is causing the hiccup.  It could be channel switching on an Xbox 360 or any number of issues.  Aside from that, the device just works and does well streaming TV to my other TVs over the Gigabit Ethernet network in my home. 

Speaking of my home, we're moving and that has forced me to complete some of the projects around the house.  It's significant to this post because I left the media center powered down for a day while I painted the media closet where it is connected.  For some reason, I have next to no cable channels now.  The Insight Communications technician is coming Thursday to look at it.  I'm not sure how the CableCARD lost 90% of its channels but when I powered up the media center in the freshly painted media closet, I had far fewer channels.  This impacts all the TVs in the house.  Oops.  I'll update this post when I figure out why.

As we think about moving to a new home, I think about the connections in the home and how to run cables and such while the house is being built.  The media center makes life easy but I have to ask if running Cat 6 to the back of every TV is viable?  Does not running coaxial cable to anywhere but the demarcation point make sense?  Does it hurt resale value?  I've not figured out the answer to that question just yet.  What if we don't sell for 10 years? 20?  Anyway, in the end, I returned the cable boxes.  Our bill is $32 per month lighter now and I have HDTV and DVR to more TVs.  The bumps and brusies are clearly worth it and I look forward to Windows 8 and whatever it brings to media center.