I would have agreed about Vista being crap, until I tried it, what I've noticed is that when a game crashed in XP it was usually system restart time, Vista somehow manages to hold on in there and just allow the game to spaz out.
As far as visuals go, there is no real reason for a PC on a TV to not look as good as a console, I play on a 1080p 37 inch screen and the PC looks better than the consoles which generally run at a much lower resolution.