The 10' interface problem was solved 10 years ago. Metro just brings new problems to the table and doesn't give you any new capabilities.
I use XBMC for all non-Recorded TV, library-based video, and it is excellent. I don't need Media Browser because XBMC does what it does for free, and I'm not keeping a lot of huge, commercial-laden MPEG2 files around long-term anyway so don't care about having a good library system inside Media Center. I don't need potentially buggy, spyware-laden codec packs because everything is built into XBMC; in fact, I've never downloaded much less installed a codec pack. As for playing physical Blurays, I gave up on that long ago on the PC and bought a standalone player That Just Works WRT things like 1080p24 and the lossless audio codecs. That was a great decision. I only wish I had made it before buying PowerDVD, WinDVD, and Arcsoft TMT. On the plus side, I learned my lesson and will never buy another such program.
I simply use my HTPC for videos, music, and DVDs/blurays. I have no intention of just dumping everything onto my hard drive and sacrificing metadata and the ability to watch movies my friends bring over or that I rent.
OK... I don't know why you're telling me that, but... OK. I don't know why you think you'd be sacrificing metadata or the ability to play physical media or how that relates to what I said. XBMC is great about metadata and has an outstanding library capability. My understanding is that the current XBMC has improved Bluray support and should play commercial movies as long as you're running something like AnyDVD. If you're not running AnyDVD, I don't know why you want to play these things on a computer, because you gain all the problems of a PC without eliminating the many minutes of non-skippable promos, threats, etc that have turned so many people off. As I said earlier, my standalone Bluray player works well, but I hate using it because of these things and the slow loading and the menus.
My intention is to populate the first column with applications that would be useful for a HTPC, such as the three apps I mentioned and also weather, news, and anything else that I find useful (maybe some games, or Netflix Metro)
OK, so you're hoping a set of Metro apps will appear that are specifically designed for the 10' interface so you can put them on the start screen in a little island area in the sea of apps that don't work in the 10' interface and have no business being presented alongside them.
Metro might make a tiny amount of sense for HTPC purposes if Metro tiles were nested like folders are. As it stands right now, sure, you could have a bunch of unrelated apps "unified" in a weak sense by the Metro start screen, but they would appear in a sea of apps that have no business being presented alongside programs designed for a 10' interface.
I'm afraid I don't understand this statement. I would be basically using Metro Home as a replacement to having WMC on. Each application would be acting like a WMC/XBMC category (Movies, TV Shows, Pictures), and none of these things are organized in folders. Heck, WMC's subcategory system is crap, as I had to use MCS to strip out everything That I don't use or can't use (such as radio and TV Shows, since I don't have a tuner).
AFAIK, Metro tiles cannot be placed in containers, folders, whatever you want to call them; instead, the Metro start screen is an infinitely scrolling roll. In particular, you can't create a container corresponding to your ersatz Media Center or XBMC replacement, that would contain just your hypothetical multimedia apps.
Aside from this, it sounds like you do understand it. You just want to do something that has no advantages I can see and comes with new problems and limitations, some of which I described in the part you clipped, which I'm restoring below:
This is important, because you'll be bouncing in and out of apps to the Start screen to switch. Maybe you can just try to stay in your little island of disconnected media apps. I guess if you're adept with Autohotkey and remote control hacking you could configure keys to launch the various major "apps", functionality that's already part of the unified 10' programs like Media Center and XBMC. I guess if you want to be Metro all the way, you have to figure out how to make, say, the Music app stop playing when you switch to the TV app and tune in a channel. Remember, all these apps are disconnected. They're unified only in the most superficial of ways by the Metro Start Screen. OTOH, I'd like my TV app to be displayable in a window that doesn't take up the whole screen, that I can size and place wherever I want, which is completely at odds with Metro.
Some people seem to think that if these media center components appear, they will fit naturally into the Metro start screen, and all work together seamlessly and automatically. That's simply not true, and frankly it makes no sense to want this. Perhaps one of your aforementioned friends will come over, navigate out of the hypothetical Metro TV app to the start screen and end up in Mail or something instead of the hypothetical Metro DVD app. That's the sort of thing that will happen when you present a lot of superfluous choices on an equal footing with legitimate choices. It is a basic tenet of interface design to exclude superfluous choices, and what you want to do will result in a whole Metro Start Screen full of them.
Additionally, Metro is very modular, and Microsoft is pushing it as the default interface. In case you havent checked, neither XBMC not WMC have perfect plugins.
I'm not aware of any perfect software, nor am I aware that Metro will allow people to write perfect software. I don't get the comment.
XBMC doesn't properly work with Blurays, and WMC doesn't have a single Weather app that is not boggy, ugly, or doesn't have my town (and the latter is impossible to uninstall)
I don't care about Bluray on the PC as already mentioned, but my understanding is that the latest version of XBMC has some support as long as you're using something like AnyDVD. The XBMC weather app works fine for me. I only use Media Center for Recorded TV, specifically CableCARD. There are much more capable, less buggy programs available for everything else.
With metro, I can have front and center access to my picture library, Music, movies and TV Shows (assuming MB does come and allows for separate applications), disk playback, internet, and any media streaming applications I find. And it wil be easy to access and no risk of accidentally dropping to the desktop, Which is good because this will be a central computer that everyone can use to watch movies and stuff.
And like I said: I'd love to do this, but it needs certain applications that currently don't exist.
OK, I guess you could take everything off the Metro Start Screen except for the multimedia apps to eliminate people getting themselves lost. But you still have to account for the lack of coordination between these presumably separately developed apps, which I touched on earlier. Metro is just a generic program launcher. It is a 1' touch interface grafted onto a desktop OS by Microsoft's desperation over losing the mobile market. It is not a 10' interface. That it works to some limited extent at 10' is incidental; it's a side-effect of needing to use huge interface elements to accommodate fat fingers at 1' and remote controls sending keystrokes to the program with focus. One could cobble something together literally in a day that would be just as functional and bring the same capabilities WRT to being the switchboard for your multimedia apps. As with Windows 8, then all you'd have to do is write the apps, because none of them currently exist. LOL. And good luck on that; the HTPC was never mainstream, and it and the 10' interface are only becoming less and less relevant, as can be seen by Microsoft making Media Center a paid upgrade and eliminating features such as starting the computer in Media Center.