Well I look at it like this.
Ive used Media Center for a long time and in that time I have used every publicly available version of Media Center. Ive seen the product grow and now I unfortunately (IMO) am seeing it decline into oblivion.
However, in that time Ive seen a number of innovations made by third parties which were then later addressed by Microsoft in an official way. For example:
Netflix in Media Center
Internet TV / videos
Clear QAM tuner support
And some that werent like launching the Hulu desktop app from within Media Center and returning to Media Center when exiting the Hulu desktop app.
I guess my point is that I dont really think the functionality was lost with the demise of Internet TV because there are a number of ways to regain that functionality with little effort (because thats what Media Center users were doing before).
In the past I myself used PlayOn:
»
www.playon.tv/playonTo get videos from YouTube, Hulu and so on. Im not much into this anymore though.
For what its worth I had been using Windows Home Server before Media Center integration as well. Again there were ways to store your recorded TV and access it before Microsoft made it a little easier.
I guess what I am trying to say is even in the face of Microsoft abandoning Media Center there are still ways to beat that dead horse. Still all good things must come to an end.