Windows Media center was an amazing money saver! I cancelled all my cable boxes, bought a server to run 8.1, bought some used xbox360's for every TV in the house, and everything was paid for in 9 months compared to the cable company rental fees. So I not only got 3 xbox360s and a server for "free" but was saving money for the next 3 years until I cancelled cable completely.

Plus I had unlimited TV show storage and could transcode anything I wanted to keep permanently to mp4.