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linksys media center extender
Linksys Media Center Extender
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List Price: $360.18
Our Price: Too low to display
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Average Customer Rating:   
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Binding: Electronics
Brand: Linksys
EAN: 0745883581771
Feature: Bring your digital music, movies, and photos to your TV or home theater
Includes Mp3 Player: 0
Is Autographed: 0
Is Memorabilia: 0
Label: Linksys
Manufacturer: Linksys
Model: DMA2100
Modem Description: n/a
Publisher: Linksys
Studio: Linksys
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Features
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Bring your digital music, movies, and photos to your TV or home theater
Allows you to share your photos, music and movies on your computer with friends and family
Uses existing high-speed Wireless-N home network
Easily navigate menus with a single learning remote
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Performance
Comment: I had looked at purchasing a media extender when the prices were >$300 and decided to wait. Glad I waited for the prices to drop. I bought a basic D-Link wireless N router (DIR615) and paired it with the media extender. It works well. I don't have a high def source so I cannot comment on its performance on other than recorded TV thru Microsoft's Windows Media Center. I use it much like a DVR. In several weeks of use the connection to the computer only burped once. The PC is in an adjacent room about 20ft away with a couple of walls and a cabinent between them. I am thinking of buying a second media extender to work with a lynksys wireless g but I am concerned about the speed of the wireless connection.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Solid device hampered only by the limitations of Media Center
Comment: For quite a while, I've been looking to find a better way to play my DVD isos on my TV without burning copies. The DMA 2100 does the job, but not without some trickery to fool Media Center into seeing my movie library. The device itself was easy to set set up, and admirably connects with enough speed to stream video. The HDMI upsized quality of my 480p DVDs is excellent - much better than my Panasonic upsizing DVD player. At it's current sale price, its a great fit to my home theater. I should note it also survived a 6-foot drop without any problem except a chipped cover.
Customer Rating:
Summary: great product for the price
Comment: I bought the extender when Linksys was offering a rebate; paid $94. That is significantly less than competitors. Installation was a breeze. I connected it to the TV and my cat5 network, turned it on, and my Vista media center started talking to it as soon as I entered the extender serial number. Viewing recorded TV on the extender is just as clear as on my primary media center TV; it does take maybe a second longer for the extender to react to commands, because it is passing those commands across my network, but I am very pleased with the product and its performance. I only use it to watch programs that were recorded on a Vista media center
Customer Rating:
Summary: Got a great deal on this extender!
Comment: I have been waiting until the price went down to purchase one of these units. I watched the deal on Amazon and it was $119.99. This was the best price I had seen, but the deal kept getting better! Amazon had an additional $20 off Linksys products, plus Bill Me Later was offering $15 off of a purchase of $100 or more. Plus it qualified for Free Shipping! I got it shipped to my house for $84.99!!! I love this box. It brought TV upstairs to us with DVR capibilities. It has worked great for us. I am still working on hacks to play from my DVD Library, but none of the minor issues I have had with it have been a problem. If you have a Vista Media Center and want to watch your content on other TV's in the house, then this product is for you!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great product overall with a few annoyances
Comment: I've rated this a 4 overall because I'm mostly pleased with the product. I'm glad that I made the purchase (especially from Amazon) and have no plans to return or otherwise discontinue use. However, there are a few things that annoy me about the setup and operation that I will outline below. Short of these little items, I would have rated it a 5.
Setup:
Thie setup took me a while to get everything working initially. A little internet searching and reading some forums solved my biggest issue. It turns out that this items is not compatible with WEP wireless encryption (although the manual says it will), at least not with my Apple airport extreme. It does support the newer WPA encryption, however I have other devices on my network that are not WPA compatible. So my solution was to disable wireless encryption and enable mac address filtering for a little security. This involves listing all allowable mac addresses in the router, but it allows all my devices to work together. I also do not broadcast the ssid, so I'm not too concerned with others camping on to my network. With this setup on my router the rest of the setup was by the book provided with no issues.
Operation:
The thing to remember with all media center extenders is that they are an extension of the PC running Vista and the media center setup. That means that your performance is only as good as the PC running Vista and the overall speed of you network. I'm using this via a single wireless N router and it suits my needs. If you are watching a lot of HD content, then I would recommend a wired network connection or a dual channel wireless N router. My airport extreme is wireless N, but not dual band. I've read that the dual band will support HD streaming, but that's not a big deal for me. The PC itself is a gateway AMD Athlon 64 dual core 2.6ghz, 2gb ram, and the onboard nvidia video chipset. We often use the media center extender and the PC itself simultaneously with no issues.
You will notice that the responsiveness of the extender is somewhat slower than using media center on the actual PC. It's not so slow that I would complain, but you will notice a difference. Again, perhaps a better network connection would help or a faster PC.
Video quality is decent, but I only use an s-video connection to a sony tube tv. Future plans to upgrade to HD will allow me to utilize the hdmi output. I noticed only a slight increase with using the s-video connection vs. the standard composite connector.
The device looks good next to the other components on the shelf, but the blue light on the front can be a little bright when the room is dark late at night. The unit does get fairly warm, so I wouldn't place anything on top of it and it's a good idea to keep some space around it for cooling.
The device has stopped responding a few times watching live tv. This could be an issue with the Vista PC and not necessarily the fault of this device. Given this device is just creating a separate user session on the PC, I can't see how the freeze would be the fault of the extender. It's not been an issue with recorded contect, so it could even be an issue with the tuner in the PC. It's happened a few times, but not enough to make it a big deal.
We have also had the network connection drop a few times. Again, since it's a wireless connection the fault could be on either device.
For the money, this was a good purchase. I couldn't see the value of the unit with the built in DVD. I'm moving to a blue ray player anyway and have no need for another standard DVD player.
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