Masochism Centre Edition

I’m currently looking into building myself a media centre. Media centres aren’t a subject I know a great deal about, and whilst carrying out my research I’ve stumbled across LinuxMCE, a media centre environment which is conceptually awesome. If I set this up, I could (in theory) direct our cable service through it, have it manage suitably-interfaced services in our house (heating, lighting, security), carry out VoIP and video conferencing, and (the bit that I find most impressive) set up thin client terminals on all the other TVs in the house, so I can not only access my media from every room, but also have each simultaneous user’s media follow them wherever they go.

We’re talking proper automated house-of-the-future stuff here. I could phone or email my empty house and get it to turn the lighting and heating on and off, or have Star Trek-style conversations with friends or family anywhere in the world over wall-mounted TVs and monitors in every room in the house. I’d half expect Rosie the Robot Maid from The Jetsons to materialise and start sweeping the floor. Watching the video demo, I can’t help but be impressed and inspired.

But I’m not sure I trust it. I’m not a platform warrior. I’m a fairly competent linux user and employ it as part of my job on a daily basis, but my experience with open source software is that whilst you don’t pay a material value for it, you do end up paying for it in time and expertise. There may be plenty of developers prepared to donate their time to open source projects, but there are woefully few technical authors, or QA testers, or user interface designers, and it shows. The software may perform like a greased weasel on amphetamines, but it’s often as intuitive as a nine-sided brick, and when issues go beyond your own ability to self-support, you have to throw yourself on the mercy of “the community”. That’s not to say it’s bad, just that rather than getting what you pay for, you pay for what you get.

Still, I’m considering giving it a go. All I have to lose is my time, sanity and hair, all of which have long since started disappearing anyway.