Linksys Media Center Extender

It works! Looks like Vista Media Center.  [Posted on 2008-03-26]
It plays our recorded TV, pictures, DVDs ripped to XviD (not DVDs in the player), and music from the other room with an interface that looks just like Vista Media Center. Wife acceptance factor = high. We are using wired ethernet (100) and a 1080p tv via HDMI. The supplied remote is good. Speed of menus is acceptable (even faster, if you turn off transitions in the setup). FF, rewind, pause, etc. are all fine for Live/Recorded HD TV -- looks perfect on our 1080p tv.
XviD files are a little slow to start up on the DMA2100.
I had realistic expectations and we are happy!

NOTE: This note is ONLY for people with a Linksys Etherfast DSL/Cable router. If you have that router, your computer will not detect the DMA2100 unless you also go into the router setup and set Filter Multicast to Disable (which is NOT the default). Thanks for wasting my time, Linksys. After the change, it works great.

Not worth the money [Posted on 2008-04-21]
There is no way this is worth $250. I'm returning mine for a refund. You are better off with a digital frame and MP3 player. This product needs an option to view what is on the computer screen and not just what is available through Windows Media Center.

If you don't want support, this is the product for you [Posted on 2008-04-21]
I hope this device gets better with some firmware updates. It has lots of potential. But It falls short so many ways. UnBox videos won't play longer than 15 minutes (way to encourage not pirating tv shows guys...). And there is absolutely NO support from Linksys. If you want a nice way to listen to your podcasts while looking at a picture of the album art on a big flat panel then this is for you. Otherwise I would wait until either they fix lots of problems with this model, or they come out with it's replacement.

You also shouldn't expect much in the way of content from Microsoft's "Internet TV beta". They don't update it often enough to make it worthwhile, and most of the content is encoded at very poor quality.

I hate for this review to be such a bummer. But the product really should have had much more work done on it before sending it out the door. It really is a beta test product that has been marketed as "The next best thing", but doesn't deliver.

If you have the cash sitting around and don't mind being frustrated at the lack of functionality, or you just want to have the latest cool gadget, then you are gonna buy it anyway. But at least you have been warned.

When it works, it works very well [Posted on 2008-05-02]
I have very mixed thoughts on the DMA2100 Media Extender.

When it works, it is HOT! The menu system is the same as the xbox 360, so no learning curve there. The picture is beautiful and the sound is clear. I use a 360 or the DMA2100 to stream movies from my Vista Ultimate Media Center machine. The 360 was first, a couple of years ago. It works okay, but there are dropped frames from time to time during movies. I have never noticed the DMA2100 dropping frames. There are no skips in audio, and no flickers in the video. When it works, I'm extremely happy with it.

Now for the bad news. In order to use the DMA2100, I had to upgrade my 7 or 8 year old Cisco wireless router to something current. I chose the Linksys WRT160N Ultra RangePlus Wireless-N Broadband Router, since it's the one Amazon recommends pairing up with the DMA2100.

I setup the WRT160N several weeks ago. Linksys has a bug (yes, it's a bug) whereby they set the network to 192.168.1.xxx rather than the industry standard 192.168.0.xxx. This causes problems unless you have a really simple network topology. Their setup allows you to change the address range, but if you reconfigure it to use 192.168.0.xxx, the machines on the net can't see each other, browsing doesn't work, etc. So, that said, you have to leave it set at 192.168.1.xxx.

Enter the DMA2100 Media Extender. The setup on the device is simple. It found the wireless net, got an IP, etc. Very easy. The final step of the DMA2100's setup is a security key you enter on the Media Center machine. Normally that's pretty simple too. However, since the wireless router is using a non-standard network IP range, 192.168.1.xxx, the media center machine was unable to find the DMA2100. (Again, in a very simple network, this might not have been an issue.) To get the DMA2100 to connect to the media center machine required a config changes on the Vista machine. Once reconfigured, the DMA2100 was up and working.

I watched a movie the first night and was blown away by the quality of the picture and the clarity of the sound. Very impressive.

Second night we decided to watch another show. Turned on the TV and the DMA2100. Started playing a movie. It played the first 10 seconds or so, and froze. We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally it jumped into setup mode. For some reason it had lost its config in the middle of the movie playback. Fine, with the config changes made on the Vista machine, this time setup should be simple. I ran through it in a couple of minutes.

We restarted the show. Again, it played 10 or 15 seconds of the movie and jumped into setup mode with a completely blank configuration. We gave up and went to the xbox to finish the show.

The next night I ran through setup again and it worked flawlessly. Watched a TV show issue free. Two nights later attempted to watch a show and again the device had no config and had to be installed AGAIN.

All told, I have gone through setup 7 times. Last night I ran through setup twice before giving up and going to the xbox to watch my show. AFter the show, I came back to fiddle with the DMA2100 again and it just worked. I have no idea what's going on, and why sitting untouched for an hour would have it working again.

This weekend I'm going to drag a cat-5 cable down the hall to the DMA2100 and see if it works any better when hardwired to the net. It's possible the device is having a hard time living on the 192.168.1.xxx network the Linksys router demands. If that's the case, hardwiring into a 192.168.0.xxx net will fix the problem, and then it's the WRT160N router which is to blame.

But at this point, even if it's the fault of the WRT160N, I see no reason why the media extender would drop it's config multiple times per day.

Click here for more details and discount information...