Yes, but a little light on features. The locks are on folders, not content ratings.

http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Profiles

Yes. It's definitely worth it. As a media centre, I can do all of that plus.

My whole library of media whether it was recorded, ripped or downloaded is automatically scraped, rated and organized by XBMC.

I have three ATV2s with XBMC installed connected to each of my TVs. This gives me the freedom to watch anything that I want from anywhere.

All the media state and meta information such as last played, when the show was stopped, fan art, bookmarks, zoom, playback preferences etc are stored in a central database. I can start to watch a show on one TV and continue some other day on another.

The ATV2 is very power efficient, about 2 watts when watching a movie (it has a 6 Watt power supply just in case I need more...), small, quiet and comes with HDMI, optical audio, WIFI and remote. It's a much cheaper, functional and better looking setup than a PC.

All the software is free.

The MythTV recording rules are much more powerful than what you have.

XBMC has a ton of plugins for RSS, the Weather, streaming, Internet radio, Grooveshark. Too many to list.

XBMC can remember the show that you watched and hide them automatically once you've watched it. A feature that comes in handy when you watch a TV series. You never need to remember which episode you've last watched.

XBMC can play anything that I throw at it without fuss. What did you need to go through to play MKV on Windows Media Center? Or did you resort to one of the FOSS players. VLC or Mplayer?

I can update, reboot and manage all the ATV2's remotely via SSH.

My only cost is the $20/year for the MythTV guide plus a donation to each project.

Good point.

And they keep on paying themselves millions. I don't know what Brian Dunn was paid but I'm sure it was close to his predecessor.

Bradbury "Brad" Anderson (born 1949) is the former CEO and Vice Chairman of consumer electronics retailer Best Buy. He retired on 6/22/11 and was replaced by Brian J. Dunn.[1] In fiscal 2006, he earned a salary of $1,164,283 and a bonus of $2,692,250. His annual compensation for fiscal year 2007 was $5.6 million, including $1,172,995 in salary, plus $2,650,969 in incentive-plan compensation.[2] In 2008, Anderson earned $49.3 million in total compensation, $1,172,995 in salary, $1,994,092 in incentive-plan compensation, stock awards of $413,635 and no option awards, and $46.08 million in value from exercising 1.05 million stock options.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Anderson_(executive)

I know... s/consumer's/consumers. Wish I could edit.

I absolutely would agree if the system was honest and fair. Unfortunately, consumer's would never see the savings, they'd be be pocketed by the greedy corporations.

Good comment. Too bad you posted as AC.

MythTV has great backend and XBMC has a great frontend. The combo is fantastic and I don't think there's anything in the proprietary space that offers anything on par. Truely jewels from FOSS.

Ya, and that's why they leave the room when taking the x-ray.

I would like Slashdot to be aware of the activity and ban the account. Flagging is the quickest way to get that done. Obviously Slashdot can't do much beyond that but it's better than nothing and it will hopefully keep the site cleaner.

Going to police is the thing to do but that's a different subject. We're talking about flagging posts and whether that's a wanted feature or not and from my experience, flagging posts is a welcome feature as long as it's not used to censor opinions or bad language or anything of that sort.