Media Center PCs are a great idea. They let you enjoy the videos, music and photos on your hard drive in the comfort of your living room. Since not everyone wants a noisy, unattractive PC in the centre of the home, that's where Media Center Extenders (MCE) come into play. These devices act as a bridge between your PC and your television. Your PC can live out of sight while the extender, which is far less intrusive, brings all your multimedia files to your TV.
One of the first Wi-Fi 802.11n-series extenders to hit the Australian market is the AU$399 Linksys Media Center Extender DMA2200, which promises to deliver where ordinary media streaming devices have failed.
Design
Aesthetically, the DMA2200 has much in common with an ordinary DVD player. While this is no cause for fanfare, it means the device won't look too out of place in your living room. The only clue as to the DMA2200's cleverness is the three aerials protruding from the rear.
At the front, the DMA2200 has a tray-loading DVD drive with a thin LED indicator strip that displays status messages or animations when the system is in standby mode. The drive allows you to watch DVD movies upscaled as high as 1080p -- the same resolution Blu-ray or HD-DVD movies.
Round the back, the DMA2200 is festooned with input-output ports. The most important of these include an HDCP-enabled HDMI port, composite- and component-video and S-video outputs. If your telly doesn't have one of these sockets going spare, then you've probably been ripped off.
Other connections include a digital coaxial port for Dolby surround sound shenanigans, and a USB port. Unfortunately, this is for service purposes only -- you can't use it to access files on a USB thumbdrive.
Features
The DMA2200 has a lot in common with the Xbox 360. Both serve as MCEs, both play DVDs and both cost around AU$400. Unlike the Xbox 360, however, the DMA2200 is silent in operation and can be operated wirelessly. Anyone who's still not enamoured by the price may want to consider the DMA2100, which ships without the DVD playback capability.
The DMA2200's biggest selling point is its ease of use. Setting it up is extremely simple. Just connect it to your router over a wired or wireless network, then to your TV via HDMI, and install the accompanying software on your PC. The only difficulties we encountered arrived when our McAfee Firewall software prevented the extender from communicating with the PC. This was quickly remedied, despite Windows Vista throwing a hissy fit and not communicating what the problem actually was.
Once up and running, the DMA2200 displays a launcher menu on your TV that gives you the choice of playing a DVD or entering the Media Center interface. The former is self-explanatory and the latter looks exactly like the Windows Media Center interface you find in the Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Vista. Everything is logically arranged, so it's easy to find whatever type of media you're looking for. Music, for example, can be arranged by artist, genre or you can browse by album art. Our only complaint here is that the menu is sluggish.
The device supports a variety of formats including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV9, XviD and H.264 video codecs. It has audio support for PCM, MP3, Dolby Digital, WMA and WMA Pro. Picture support includes JPEG, PNG, BMP and GIF. This lot should make most people happy, but there will certainly be one or two of you annoyed with the exclusion of certain formats.
One of the biggest advantages the DMA2200 has over its rivals is its ability to stream live or recorded TV from your PC to your television. Streaming a TV signal to your TV may sound nonsensical, but it does have its uses -- especially if your TV has an analog tuner or access to a different selection of channels, or if you want to playback recorded content. Let's also not forget that most PC-based TV tuners let you pause and rewind live TV, which you can't do with ordinary TVs.
Performance
Over a wired connection, the DMA2200 is capable of streaming high-definition video without dropping frames and keeps the audio and video synchronized during long movies -- a common problem in cheaper, less advanced systems.
Wireless is a more attractive proposition for obvious reasons. The DMA2200 supports Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g--all of which is hit-and-miss when it comes to streaming HD video. Thankfully, it also supports the Draft 802.11n standard, which supports wire-like transmission rates.
The maximum data rate is 248Mbit/s over a range of about 70m, but a more realistic figure is somewhere around the 70Mbit/s mark. You'll need a Draft-N router and a PC with a Draft-N adapter to make use of this feature, and even then your own mileage will vary depending on the thickness of your walls and interference from other devices on the 2.4GHz spectrum.
We'd recommend using a powerline adapter instead of wired or wireless connections. These give you convenience of a wire-free networking system with reliability and throughput equivalent to wired methods. In our experience this was by far the most reliable, convenient and inexpensive method of getting the DMA2200 to talk to our test PC.
The DMA2200 is a fantastic piece of kit. Some may say it makes more sense to buy an Xbox 360, but the DMA2200 works wirelessly and is silent. It may not support every A/V format known to mankind, but for most of us it's perfectly adequate.
