Chris knows what he is talking about... usually, but this is all propoganda, a corporate opinion pretending they know what's best for the consumer. Chris says it comes down to Metadata storage, DRM reasons, and encoding resource as the reasons Media Center records to DVR-MS. My opinion - DRM maybe is a good reason (from Microsoft's perspective) but none of those other reasons. It's a lock in decision, and it's used, among other reasons, to break Media Center Extenders, as covered in the last post.
It does nothing for the consumer except piss them off. I wish they would make the format optional.
Chris Lanier's Blog : Why Media Center Records to DVR-MS: "Every time I see a post about what Microsoft should do to make Media Center better it never fails that one of the first replies to “record to something other than DVR-MS.” No matter how many times people request this, it will not happen. DVR-MS is a necessary format for Media Center for various reasons; the main ones from a user perspective are metadata, content protection, and hardware resources."
