MicroS..t is trying to embrace and extend (and we know what that means) the nascent digitial home theater business. But as one independent contractor wrote:
"...Just in writing this article, my laptop running WinXP crashed twice, and I'm not willing to specify that level of unreliability into a customer's system."
That said, I agree with his conclusions, and find it unlikely that such PC-based home entertainment systems will find much acceptance among the general populace. People want (relatively) simple purpose-specific hardware-based audio and video systems, and understandably so.
