Digital Home Thoughts: TiVo? What TiVo? Media Centers Presented for your Consideration

"We focused on three widely available, and generally popular, media centers for our comparison and review. We're certainly aware there are many alternatives out there, as free software or stand-alone hardware boxes, but these are the three media centers that receive ongoing development, and can be installed on the widest number of TV-connected computers."

The whole media center market is becoming very crowded. My main complaint about them though, is that in Canada, our online options are still quite limited, unless you want to go the route of finding stuff that fell out of the back of a bit bucket. As such, I am stuck with media center choices that can record TV signals. The media centers that record are much smaller in selection, and the hardware options provided by my cable or satellite provider is less than stellar. I am actually partial to Windows Media Center, largely because it is easy to set up, use and manage. It was designed with the idiot in mind, and I like not having to pour over details anymore. However, I can see that once I can shrug off the cable/satellite tether, options like XBMC become considerably more attractive. What is everyone using these days and why did you pick it?