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I've been using MediaPortal as my primary media center for the past year or more and have like it.  It's pretty simple, has a simple straight forward interface, and is actually still in development.  The last release included some additional features that I use every day.  Also, it's the only platform I'm aware of that's written in .Net, which I think is cool if I ever want to write a plugin.

http://www.team-mediaportal.com/

Wow, thats actually pretty cool, believe it or not I had never heard of it.

I admit I use the linux based solutions (mythTV, MediaTomb) myself for three reasons,

1. Free! 
   
2. Configurable (Lots of add ons from large community available)
3. Feels nice to 'stick it to the man'.  (Yes, I'm employed by the man ;))

But I have to say, MediaPortal seems to fulfill the first two.  The 2nd one even more as I can leverage my .net skills to code for it.

Doesn't have nearly the 'Wham!' on #3, but we could always port it to Mono :)

Hope you blog about it to let us know what works for you about it, how easy it was to get going, etc.  Especially interested in working with HD content.

I used MediaPortal before Vista came out at which point I switched to Media Center. I never really liked it that much but it was possible to make it work with my gamepad which was cool since I couldn't afford a remote at the time. They apparently have a "TV Server" that doesn't necessarily have to be on the same computer as the front end. Something Microsoft needs to implement. They were working on this, the client was codename SoftSled. It was a software Media Extender. But they killed it. No one seems to know why.

FYI, Media Center is a .NET app as well.

There are alot of options for hardware media extenders though... My favorite being the xbox 360, or you can use an old xbox if you want to go cheaper (without HD).  Several tvs now include media extenders in them, especially those from HP.  And there are several hardware appliances available.

Of course none of those let you reuse your existing hardware as a media extender...

 I've not had any luck getting the 360 to work as a media extender.  I always had very clow and glitchy video.  Seemed like the network just couldn't keep up, and so I switched from wireless to wired but it didn't make any difference.  The 360 broke on me twice and had to be shipped back to MS, and never really worked that great.  I've since gotten rid of it, and haven't missed it one bit!

Ya I had many problems at first too.

I remember there was a little tool that analyzed the network connection and told you what video bitrate it was going to be able to handle.  In my case initially i had two wireless connections between 360 and the data, that didnt work at all.  With one wireless I could do SD video.  With mostly gigabit between everything I was able to do HD just fine though.