I have played with Linux MCE before, but like you guys coming from a Windows background I did not get on with it too much.
I am also used to tweaking everthing to just how I like it, which is lacks and is what makes xlobby so great.
I have to admit that xlibby is only running on one box now, and my other 6 boxes all run Media Portal
http://www.team-mediaportal.com/Why?
'cos it does everything I need and does it well, it also look very pretty!
My main focus is, and always has been, the playback of TV episodes gathered form the usual places. I don't want to order my TV by date aired, I just want to drill through it by, show, season, episode.
People should look at the My_TV-Series plugin + the spin safe revlove skin, it is very cool.
You can stick your tv in any structure and namiling convention you like, it that finds it and matches with regular expression and nips off to thetvdb.com and gets all the show info, episode screen shots, etc...
It can also look into a file and you can configure icons to show you, format, 5.1 sound, 720P res, etc....
Owe, and a new thing is the use of Fan Art, so the back ground can morf into a cool series fan art.
I have been using it for 18 months now, hense my lack of posting here, and find it stable.
The TV Server is also coming laong nicely and is getting stable. I have a 4 tunner DVB-T card recording and serving streams to my 6 boxes.
I have come back to Xlobyy as my new house is going to incorporate full home automation so I want 1 interface for whole house control, lights, heating, etc. but also want to do whole house audio on that interface and que up dvd's, etc.........which xlobby could give me with the various plugins. Don't really want to run 2 seperate systems, but it might end up like that.