[Klathman]

It's going to be interesting to see how some of these announcements tie together in the nearish future and their impact on what is currently out there. For instance is home server a first step towards moving media center boxes out of the lounge and having Xbox360s taking their place. Otherwise why have a replication of hardware and storage? (Backups I know but as many have pointed out this is more an issue of people being bothered to do it than current systems not supporting it.)

If this is what MS are gunning for then I have a few concerns for down this part of the world. Xbox360 might be getting snazzy IPTV but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen down here considering I have seen that it requires a 12Mb connection as a minimum.

Also what is the intention towards MPC plugins? I have to admit that I haven't seen the Xbox360 extender but I'm sure not all plugins will support the extender.

Finally if we lose access to the GUI then how about custom guide downloads or other tools. Currently I'm using Bladerunner and XMLTVNZ but will this sort of setup be an option if we go down this possible MS Home Server path.

It could be great for North America and Europe but unless they really start to sort out support for smaller countries I can't see too many benefits over what we already have.