It might seem kind of odd to have a review of an electronic device on my blog but I assure you it is not. I love computers and I also fancy electronic gadgets. Well, the Linksys DMA2100 is a computer related electronic gadget and those are the best kind. I've also been waiting for one of these for almost a decade. Yes, I realize they haven't been around that long but it was around 10 years ago that I first asked myself why they didn't slap a network connection and some electronics in my receiver or come up with some kind of digital convergence box that would allow me to access all of the media on my computer and play it or display it on my home theater system. Well, that day has come because that's pretty much what this little black box from Linksys does.
These kind of products have been around for several years now and I have watched them with great anticipation. I've kept holding off on my purchase though because I was waiting for a better price point and, more importantly, I have been waiting to see an affordable product that has the features I want and favorable reviews to go with it. The DMA2100, though not perfect, seems to have been the first device in its class to achieve a reasonable level of user satisfaction. After reading through most of the reviews I felt that the few shortcomings noted were relatively minor so I went ahead and purchased it from Newegg.
Setup was relatively simple and straightforward for someone with a high level of computer expertise and a moderate level of home theater knowledge. I had only two problems during setup. For some reason the box would only accept wireless keys that were 5 or 9 characters in length and which were also numeric. This was easily resolved by changing my wireless network key. The second problem was my own confusion regarding the code that had to be entered on the attached computer which was generated from the DMA2100. The instructions were not very clear regarding the order of setup. At least not to me. Anyway, after wasting 90 minutes or so on those little problems I had the thing up and running.
I can now watch all the movies on my computer, look at all the pictures my wife has taken, and listen to any of our music. It's just so freaking cool to have access to my entire digital library from the comfort of my living room without having to go through the hassle and expense of putting a noisy media computer in my home theater cabinet. Instead, I have a small black box the size of a 10 CD case sitting on my center channel speaker. I opted for the wireless network connection and so far it has worked fine. I haven't tried any high quality HD (high definition) content yet but the built-in performance tester indicates that I should be fine to do so. You will need an 802.11n wireless router in order to view HD content. I'd recommend one anyway unless you are going to wire in an Ethernet connection. An 802.11g wireless router with a good connection would probably be okay for standard video content but I wouldn't care to push it. I went with the Linksys WRT600N router to stay in the family and also because it was affordable, had all the features I wanted, and had excellent reviews. The dual-band feature is really nice if you have legacy wireless laptops or other devices too.
There are just a couple of detractors from an otherwise perfect device. From time to time it does crash while trying to access or play some media. However, I think this is actually the software running on my host computer and not the media extender itself. The DMA2100 has to connect via a wired or wireless network to a host computer that is running the Windows Media Center OS or a computer with Vista Home Premium or Ultimate edition, both of which have Windows Media Center functionality. The one thing that I am really unhappy with is that the DMA2100 doesn't recognize some types of video files as a playable format. For example, I might have an AVI file that is encoded using the popular DIVX encoder. Well, DIVX is a flavor of MPEG-4 but the DMA2100 doesn't recognize it. It will play videos that have been encoded using XVID though which is also a flavor of MPEG-4. It is relatively simple to work around the issue by downloading a third-party application that allows you to change the fourcc code in the file itself from DIVX to XVID. This fools it into thinking it was encoded with XVID even though it wasn't. Although this workaround is relatively simple, it is a real pain. C'mon Linksys, this was a poor oversight but also something that you could easily fix with a firmware upgrade and numerous people, myself included, have complained to you about it. If you're reading this, please fix it.
Oh, and Microsoft, if your reading this: What on earth made you combine my pictures and video libraries on the same row so that I have to navigate like a knight on a chessboard to get to my movies? Please put it on a separate line or let me configure it that way. Also, it would be sweet if you could get all of the bugs worked out on the live TV stuff. I'd love to watch movie trailers and news clips but right now it's just too painful. I have around a 99% chance of crashing if I try to watch three video segments from your downloadable content offerings.
Overall, I have been extremely pleased with my little media extender. I'd say that the technology is still maturing and has a ways to go before the average couch potato can plug and play with ease but it's getting close. Now all I need are some friends to come over and enjoy it with me…
No comments:
Post a Comment