I have been playing around with HTPCs for several years. I started out with an ATI All-in-wonder back in 1999. I have been running ShowShifter, myHTPC, Meedio, BeyondTV and Beyond Media. My last configuration was this one:
Meedio
J River Media Center
NetRemote
Girder
BeyondTV
SlimServer
I must admit that I am dead tired of administrating several pieces of software and all the communication between them. Now I want something that just works. BeyondTV is a very good PVR. Meedio is a very good media management tool. However, they both need their share of caring and configuring… And running two different main applications is not as ideal as having one application taking care of the whole frontend.
MeedioTV is not yet released in a version that is simple to set up in my region, so running Meedio only is out of the question.
I have tried installing the plain combination of BeyondTV, BeyondMedia and the Snapstream FireFly Remote. But, BeyondMedia is simply not good enough. Browsing my 400 album music collection by having to scroll slowly from “10 000 Maniacs” to “ZZ Top”? Nope.
So, now I am giving Windows Media Center Edition 2005 (MCE) a try.
I will report back here as my installation progress!
eirikso 
Before end users can run your application, you must install and register it in Windows Media Center. Registering adds information about the application and its entry points into the Windows Media Center UI to the system registry, enabling Windows Media Center to locate, load, and run the application, and to display its entry points in the Windows Media Center shell.
i am in no mood to give a comment