Multimedia Center 9.03 may be more stable than later versions:


MMC 9.06 & MMC 9.06.1 have a major flaw: Creating a new AVI setting and attempting to record with that setting CRASHES the system.

MMC 9.08 fixed the AVI flaw, however: The scheduler in MMC 9.08 and later versions uses the Windows Task Scheduler while earlier versions of MMC used their own task scheduler. GuidePlus+ does not filter characters like *.:\/ etc. from the event titles. This means that MMC 9.08 scheduler cannot always create a Windows Event (a .JOB file in \Windows\Tasks) because those are invalid characters for Windows filenames and so the task scheduler crashes.

All versions after MMC 9.08 have TV-on-Demand permanently enabled. Versions released after 9.08 time shift video content: there is a delay between audio/video output and what is displayed on screen. Versions released after 9.08 also take up more system resources. 


By the way: The only way to disable TV-on-Demand in versions after MMC 9.08 is to edit Windows registry:
Start Menu > Run... > regedit >
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ATI Technologies\MultiMedia\Features\DTV\Channel Manager
Change the value of key LiveMode from 0 to 1

Some versions of MMC do not have LiveMode key. They require changing the value of the ENABLETIMESHIFT key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ATI Technologies\MultiMedia\Features\DTV\Channel Manager\TAL\Input Connectors\Phys
Change the value of key ENABLETIMESHIFT from 0 to 1


If using later versions of Multimedia Center and TV fails to initialize, try installing an earlier version of Multimedia Center, then use the Setup to 'update' Multimedia Center instead of performing a full install.