I've always been a fan of Media Center, even in its infancy. But with ways to integrate Blu-ray, HD-dvd, Netflix, into a networked DVR on steroids, it makes Media Center a great choice for an all-in-one solution.
Fantastics aside, it's still plagued with problems that it should not have. In order to get most of these features, you need to have t3h nerd skills which brings me to QAM.
Sweet (biblical reference), clear QAM support should be in Media Center!!!! Most cards support QAM now, but you need to use their application to tune it to QAM channels.
Many card manufacturers like Hauppauge,WinTV products, have taken to the task of creating ways to trick media center into tuning QAM. The Beta driver has you setup an OTA as if you're using an antenna. Then you launch a separate application to map those channels to actual QAM channels from your cable service.
Put simply, it's a good thing they call it beta, so no hard feelings. They were driven to this horrid option. Even talking to an employee of Hauppauge, he/she was not able to get it to work. In addition to that, there was a report that after installation, it hosed *something* and QAM wouldn't even work in the WinTV app. Eeeek!
Nevertheless, I'm doing a clean install of Vista, prepping a disk image, and will be reporting back some findings!
Edit: go see a newer post of mine