Well, it won't come as a surprise. As indicated I was looking for a nice solution to play back all types of HD (and non HD) content in an easy and efficient way on my LCD TV. In addition, I am not too happy with the FreeView (DVB-T) receiver on the Sharp TV. Especially the EPG and the interface in general is rather poor.
Well, after shopping around a bit, I saw the Sony VAIO XL201 MediaCenter PC's for around 500£ (normal price around 900£) in some shops at Tottenham Court Road. After looking around on the Internet O was rather quickly convinced that this is a nice box for a good price.
Well, here we go, I bought it, and I am more then happy with it. FIrst thing I did was to upgrade it to Vista. The specs of the Machine are certainly good enough to run Vista.
The fact that the box is able to deliver 1080p over HDMI to my TV is really nice, and work great! And yes, not everybody like Windows MediaCenter, but in the end, it is working very nicely. And if ever one of the alternative products are able to really compete with it, I can still change it any time.