More on Media Center - or rather having a PC in the living room ..

Well - Media Center PC is up and running and everything works as a dream. There are, however, other user experience related observations that I'd like to share. The PC is of course online and is therefore also used for general surfin' - and this is interesting; I've always been aware that usability also to some degree is a matter of accessibility - but it has been a theoretical knowledge. Now I know.

Sitting in the sofa some 3 to 4 meters (9 to 12 feet) from the screen (even though it is 26") makes almost everything hard to read. I had to tweak both Windows to use larger fonts and set the browser to overrule fonts specified on websites - something I never had to do. And everything looks crummy. More surprising, though is the fact that you very quickly become accustomed to the crummy look and it doesn't even distract you (except if the design is so ill thought out that it becomes impossible to use it).

Even though I've always checked designs for how they handle this it was always on a normal computer screen and I had no problems viewing the design in it's intended lay out - therefore it was more of an academic test than anything else. This experience has really thought me something about accessibility - that it is necessary, and that you get used to a lot as long as it doesn't obstruct your goals.

Media Center Follow up

All righty - I guess it's about time that I do a small update on my home entertainment system. I ended up outsourcing the task of defining hardware and software to an intern at my job. All I did was specify my requirements (should fit in bookcase and look cool - be able to record tv, play DVD's and CD's).

I now have it up and running (we assembled the pc together and it wasn't that hard). Connecting the various parts were no problem as the different wires can only go one place - only the sound system uses the same kind of small jack plug for all the connections but they've done a good job color-coding the so you can't mix them up.

Microsofts Windows Media Center is a dream usability-wise. It can be operated using a special remote control and you navigate through menus which are intuitive and easy to use. Setting it up was also a breeze (it's been quite some time since I had to install a pc from scratch). The only issues were some hassles with drivers for the motherboard but that was solved fairly easily, as was seting up the wireless network.

All in all not to scary an experience.

All we need now is that my wife actually will venture into the brave new world of media on a computer - can't be long: today I even got the radio to work ... ;-)