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In my house, we are big media consumers. If you think about music, movies, television, web video and podcasts, between the three living beings in our house, we consume enough for our block I am sure. There are many different ways for media to snake it’s way into your home, but my question is are those ways starting to file down to one?

Think about this, as little as a year ago we had cable, internet, bought movies, iTunes music, Netflix, Redbox and probably a few others I can’t think of at this moment. We had 5 cable boxes, one for each TV in our house. The result was a bunch of singular stations that could only watch what was live (except one DVR) could not share content anywhere in the house and was pretty much catch what’s on or pop in a DVD.

Today things are quite different. We are down to three cable boxes in our house (and considering going down to one, but I’ll explain that later) and everywhere that we regularly watch TV, we can watch TV on demand, all the shows we like to follow. How might we do this you ask?

Xbox 360 and Windows Media Center

I think this might be the best kept secret in the world right now. Sure all my buddies know about it, but I work at Microsoft, so they should. The tipping point was today when I saw that my sister had purchased an Xbox 360, she is no gamer. So what makes this little box so special? The quick rundown of features the Xbox 360 provides that don’t include gaming is:

• Windows Media Center Extender: This gives you access to live TV, Video, Music, Photos and FM radio streamed from a Windows Media Center PC. Basically any Vista computer not running Windows Home Basic. It takes about a $50 investment in a TV tuner if you don’t already have one.
• Netflix Streaming: If you subscribe to Netflix, you now have over 10,000 on demand videos you can watch right on your TV from the Xbox 360.
• Zune Integration: This isn’t where it should be yet, but you can plug a Zune in USB and listen to music off of it. While we are on Zune, if you manage your Zune on your Media Center PC, all of the music you have purchased or downloaded via Zune Pass is available through Media Center.
• Xbox Live Movie Rentals: You can rent movies on demand direct from Microsoft, we are talking same day as they come out on DVD.

That’s pretty slick right? So how does that work in a real world scenario? We have 4 Xbox 360s in our home. I talked about there being 5 Cable boxes before, now there is only 4 360s because I can also watch TV in my office on the Media Center computer’s 24” Monitor.

I have three tuners in my Media Center computer which means that it can manage 3 Live TV feeds. That could be watching one while two record, watching 3, watching two while 1 record, you get the idea. Any combination and it streams the show real time to the Xbox over the home network.

Of course all of the Xbox 360s are also fantastic upscaling DVD players as well, so watching our movie collection plays out of the same box instead of having to add a DVD player everywhere. It’s a fantastic solution. When the cable companies give up on the encryption crap like the music companies are starting to do with DRM, then you will be able to bring your cable into your house with a Media Center computer, perhaps a tuner for each place you will put an Xbox 360 and then an Xbox 360 in each room. Talk about an awesome setup. Might want to run all that wired tho! I have had a few issues with performance if your WiFi connection isn’t that strong.

So now when shows come up we like, I go to the Media Center computer, set up a recording or series recording. When we are ready to watch, we just pick it from the lovely TV friendly interface and we are enjoying our favorite shows with the Cable Box on the curb.

I don’t know about you, but I love me some Netflix. We shred through five or six movies and TV shows on DVD per week. Dawngrrl and I have been addicted to Showtime’s Dexter and when we ran out of episodes on the disc we had, we were in a panic to watch more. Lucky for us the first season of Dexter as available as “Watch Now” on Netflix. Problem with that was the only place to watch it was in my office as it’s Windows only and my laptop is a Mac.

In my office I have a plethora of computers. One of those machines is a 64-bit Windows Vista Ultimate computer that has a TV Tuner and Media Center is configured and running. Along with that I have completely configured the Netflix Watch Now client and as long as I want to sit in the office and watch TV and movies, I am good to go.

But what about our bedroom? Being good little Microsoft geeks like we are, we have several Xbox 360s around the house. The bedroom 360 is set up as a Media Center Extender we already use it to watch shared media and listen to music.

Now that I have found my true love in vmcNetFlix, I can also watch movies and TV shows from Netflix instantly on the bedroom TV.

The UI is very nice, you can browse the entire library, manage your queue and of course watch video instantly from the Netflix Watch Now catalog.

As we speak I am in bed with Dawn, on my Mac, Remote Desktop connected to my 32-bit Windows Vista box writing this blog on Windows Live Writer. On the Xbox 360 is “Father Knows Best", the latest episode of Dexter we are currently watching.

If you have Vista Media Center (that’s where the vmc comes in) and a valid Netflix Account with Watch Now enabled, and a Windows Media Center Extender, you are golden to watch great quality video, realtime, away from the PC.

I have had quite a mish mash of different home wide media solutions over the course of time and each one seems to get a little better. This time I think it’s about as seamless as it can get and I have to say I am very impressed. Two of my co-workers had been singing Media Center’s praises for quite some time, but I was still remembering how it was in XP and had never given it a honest try connected to our Xbox 360.

It wasn’t until I decided to try out this media center PC I had bought as an actual Media Center for the purpose of watching TV, that I started getting interested in what it can do. Now that it’s all set up, it’s quite impressive. I’ll give you the lay of the land, and then describe some of the features that have already got me loving it.

The Computer
The Computer it runs on is a non-stock HP Media Center PC m8227n. It has been upgraded to Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit edition as well as an additional 2GB of Ram for a total of 4GB. I have also added a nVidia GeForce 8800 GT with 512MB of Video Ram and connected a tiny 15" LCD to the right of the hulking 24" LCD. Why would I do that you ask? I actually use this computer too. So it’s nice to have media center running on the smaller display as an office TV and not remove the ability to actually use the PC. It works like a charm.

The Features
So there is an Xbox 360 upstairs, connected to our home network via WiFi G. It’s a recognized Media Center Extender for this PC and I had already used it in this capacity recently to play music during a poker party we had. Now I am able to also watch video stored on the Media Center PC as well as shows I have recorded.

Speaking of recorded shows….I have remote record enabled, so if I am at work, I can log into MSN TV, sign in, and remotely set up recordings and the PC will dutifully carry them out in the background. I can come home and watch them in my office or upstairs in the living room through the Xbox 360. Now that is convergence.

The guide that ships in media center shreds the Comcast guide you get with the cable box. Sure I am missing on-demand and some of the premium channels from upstairs, but as a convenient system that doesn’t occupy more space like another TV would, it’s fantastic.

I am still digging to learn what all it can do, so far I am impressed. I will get the guys at work to show me how to really make it shine and follow up with more details.