Yeah, I used to have a similar set-up going on, before I built Tiffany, by which the TV was set up as my second monitor for my desktop PC (then Duality or Dualitoo, depending on how far back we’re talking, as I hadn’t yet built Nena).

Media centre PCs only seem only-fashioned to you because of the way you’re choosing to define them. Tiffany2 probably will spend most of her time doing cloud/network streaming. What I wanted was a box that does everything that I’d want from an Apple TV (or similar), plus everything I wanted from an optical player. But I looked at all of the proprietary options and didn’t like any of them (Apple TV came closest, but iTunes still makes me want to hurl, so didn’t quite make it; Google TV fails to put the “TV” into TV; Roku lacks the programmability that I’d desire; blah blah blah). I like to be able to play video in any format I choose, surf the web, watch DVDs, open up my Steam account and play some Beat Hazard on the big screen, listen to music, show off photos, download torrents and stuff off Usenet, remotely control my box from anywhere in the world, watch and record TV, and – occasionally – run apps from it.

I couldn’t find any way to get all of this into one box without building my own! That it also doubles as a nice central print server for our house is just an added bonus. And from my perspective, the cost difference pays for itself just in the bonus of having “another computer” around: Tiffany, for example, made herself very useful as an ad-hoc fileserver during a Code Week last year.

So in short: yes. I’ve played with a few (my mum and hey boyfriend each have one, now), but none of them seem to have as much “oomph” and sheer versatility as I like. Someday they’ll get there, I’m sure: but that day isn’t today.