While the new Boxee remote looks pretty awesome, I use the iPhone-iTouch app which is equally awesome. Navigation now is a snap.

Combine that with the Boxee Windows Media Center Plug-in. Into Boxee. Do your Boxee thing. Close Boxee.  Automatically back in Windows Media Center.

From the Boxee.tv website, one can add feeds that will appear (beneath a stack of Boxee staff recommendations) in the Feeds column. There is a Featured column for featured content. There is a Queue column. Couple this with the Boxee bookmarklet. If you find a video you don’t have time to watch.  Click the bookmarklet.  It adds the video to your queue to watch later when you open Boxee. There is no better way I have found for watching internet TV or videos. Too bad CBS doesn’t make The Mentalist available online. Too bad the video quality of CBS streams is soooo poor. But if you’ve got a fast enough CPU and a decent chipset or graphics card, streaming TV looks pretty good in most cases.

The two biggest flaws in Windows Media Center are failure to scrape metadata for movies and poor Internet TV.  The Boxee plug-in replaces the flawed internet TV interface beautifully.  Congratulations to the Boxee team on a job well done.  When they get their scraper issues and Feeds column straightened out, they will offer the perfect band-aid.

Boxee TV
iPhone-iTouch Boxee Remote app
Boxee Windows Media Center Plug-in
The Boxee bookmarklet
Boxee Box Remote (to be sold separately from the Boxee Box also)

How so?  I get network TV (HD over clear QAM and analog SD) with a Hauppauge 950Q hybrid tuner.  I watch or record shows using this through Windows 7.  The WMC wizard detected the tuner and walked me through setting it up.  Works great.

I get cable channels through various sources including Hulu and TV.com as well as the cable networks themselves.  I do this through Clicker.com which is to my TV viewing what Google Reader is to my internet surfing.  When Boxee gets its browser in order, it may replace Clicker, because I love the Boxee TV interface.  Sadly, whether or not the show will ever appear once it is chosen in Boxee is hit and miss.  I bat about .500.  I do use Boxee and its remarkable, astounding, boy-do-I-love-it bookmarklet to add internet videos to my video queue for later viewing.  (You know, like when I’m not at work.)  Somehow it seems less cumbersome than adding, viewing, and subtracting something from my favorites.  I did add the HeatWave weather, Hulu desktop, RadioTime, and Media Browser plug-ins to my WMC.

Windows Media Center’s internet television is terrible.  The flashy cover flow interface is much more likely to lead you into a sea of clips when what you are looking for is a full episode.  (The lackluster search function has a full episode filter.)  There is no means of subscribing to full episodes of a show like you have in Hulu, Clicker and Boxee.  There is no native weather menu.  The movie library seems to scrape metadata with a low success rate.  Internet radio is provided through Live365.com which has music but not broadcast radio stations.  To me the only reason to have something besides the Pandora, last.fm, Slacker-type music is to have actual broadcast radio.

XBMC is the most awesome means of viewing local media and does a nice job with the weather.  Its lack of interface with TV, IPTV, Internet Protocol Radio, and internet videos has caused me to retire it from my HTPC.

Boxee is the champion of the queueing up the internet (mostly YouTube) videos I want to watch.  If it straightens out the issue with getting a cable television episode started in its browser consistently, it will play a much more significant role in my daily media perusal.  (Potentially replacing Clicker.)  This is in spite of, not because of, its narcissistic assumption that I want to be told what Avner (or even a real friend) is watching or what Boxee has chosen to feature.  If I want Boxee’s opinion, I’d rather ask for it than have it jammed in my face.

In summary, if WMC can address its shortcomings, it is in a position to become king of the HTPC hill.  Neither MediaPortal or GB-PVR is comparable.  (Ask your Mom to set up the EPG in either of those and tell me how it goes!)  For now, I’ll use a handful of plug-ins with WMC to access local media for videos, movies, recorded TV, music,and photographs as well as live TV, radio, and Netflix movies.  I’ll use Clicker to access streaming TV and Boxee to catch up on my internet videos.  But I don’t know what I’m going to do when World Cup Soccer starts and I can’t see it in HD.  Anyone want to meet me at the pub?  It’s about time I got out of the house, anyway.