I just took a look a moment ago at the state of MythTV UI and it really misses the mark in a lot of areas - and seems to be a jumble of inconsistency, at least in the images I've seen.

There are some decent looking interfaces for other open source projects, notably XBMC and its spawn (including Boxee). I suppose Myth has the same issue as the PVR software I'm using (which is not open source). The people primarily involved with it are number-crunching engineers and don't really have any style/design sense.

What I can't get over are al the compliments the new UI is getting. WTF? This just assures me that it's only going to get worse. Unfortunately it seems most of the customers also lack any design sense, so I suppose they're catering to their market well.

It does amaze me that with so much good looking software out there to take inspiration from that there's such a phenomenal amount of really crappy looking software. I mean, if you don't have the capacity to innovate something new, at least copy something else that looks good.