I realize this is slightly off topic, but I am desperate for help. We watch lots of tv at our house. We like to consume all kinds of media, and lots of it. We have lots of tvs, lots of pcs, and the kids watch tv too. Here’s what I want:

• live tv (from my directv feed) sent to multiple tvs around the house
• able to change the channel on multiple tvs and have at least two shows be able to be watched live at once (multiple tuner support)
• able to watch recorded shows on any tv (and pc) in the house independent of where in the house they were recorded
• able to watch divx files from a windows file share on the network (we rip all our kids’ DVDs to DIVX so that the discs aren’t destroyed by constant use
• 30 second skip button
• accessing live tv, recorded tv, and ripped dvds all via the remote

For extra credit:

• Accessing the live tv, recorded tv, and ripped dvds all in the same UI
• DirecTV HD support would be nice in terms of live and recorded shows.
• one merged program guide across multiple tuners to record multiple shows at once

I currently accomplish this with Windows Media Center and XBOX 360s as Media Center Extenders. I love those products, but I’ve had so many reliability issues (the 360 keeps losing track of the MCE box requireing reboots of one, the other or both, and my main MCE hardware keeps dying on me) over the last three years that it’s time to evaluate the competition. As far as I can tell there is no combination of hardware and software that will do everything the Microsoft solution will do.

To the best of my knowledge:

• Tivo won’t play DIVX files
• Two tivos won’t let you play shows from the other box(es) in the house (not 100% sure on this one)
• Tivo doesn’t have 30 second skip
• Slingbox is optimized around remote viewing, not passing around video within the home

Thoughts?