Emerald isn't here yet, and people are worried about Diamond !

I don't get it. People are worrying about the next release of MCE - Diamond - when Emerald is what matters right now...

why ?

Because no matter what jam is promised tomorrow it's the bread and butter we have today which will generate WAF and help people consider an MCE solution (very much a niche like the MS Tablet PC platform) over a set-top-box and PVR combo.

At the moment I can do out and get a dual-tuner STB/PVR solution and plug it into a Plasma/LCD and 5.1 (or better) speakers and have an "instant-on", 100% reliable, easy to use solution (especially if I happed to live in a country with an EPG) that doesn't hang for random reasons or suffer all the other idiosyncrasies that sadly part of anything as sophisticated as a WinXP based solution (I wonder how much code there is in a typical MCE install that's totally redundant)

If Emerald can't tidy up the user experience for MCE (or at least go a long way to making it stable, slicker and smarter) then Diamond (no matter what bells'n'whistles and/or limitations it 'offers' in its new hardware hogging form) is going to have a much harder sell.

Here in Aus the problem certainly isn't all at the feet of Microsoft - a lack of an EPG coupled with the very cavalier attitude towards actually adhering to schedules is enough to alienate a lot of users - driving them into the arms of BitTorrent to actually get the shows they want to see, when they want to see them....