Rating:
Date: 2008-06-27
Constantly locks up
I bought this product with the WRT600N dual-band gigabit router with storage link (the gigabit router had its own issues - I will write another review for it). The media center extender locked up consistently or would lose its connection to the network (using 2.4 Ghz band on the WRT600N as the WRT600N didn't seem to be able to handle both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz devices operating simultaneously). This may or may not have been an issue with the WRT600N, but I guess I wouldn't have expected it to lock up such that I needed to power-cycle it. I have since returned the product back to Amazon. It's pretty expensive to not work reliably at least 90% of the time.

Rating:
Date: 2008-06-06
I want to love this product, but I can't.
I am not unrealistic in my expectations. I didn't want this product to do anything except what the device was supposed to do. Unfortunately, I am disappointed at several aspects of the DMA-2100. I got a great deal on it. Instead of list price ($360) I got it for $150. When I opened the box I noticed the quality of the hardware was better than average. Many people say they don't like the remote, but I thought it was stylish and simple.

Soon after opening the box is when all the problems/bugs began: (I was using the latest firmware as of the date the review was written.)

1. I had problems connecting this device over HDMI. I ended up having to use a video component cable. It doesn't allow you to choose resolution with HDMI, only with component.

2. The device connected over wireless n without any problems. The CD that came with the Linksys installed 200 Megs of something, and then restarted my computer without warning, and there is no uninstall available in Control Panel. (Except for a Radio program that is only 3 Megs.)

3. The interface is sluggish at 720P and 1080i. It's smoother (but not smooth) at 480P. I was really disappointed at this because my Xbox360 interface is smooth, and at a similar list price the Xbox360 trumps this device in power and functionality. I ended up turning animations off, and it reminded me of the Version 1 extenders nobody liked.

4. I have an RCA LCD TV, the Linksys remote would learn functions from my TV remote and confirm with a green blink (red means unsuccessful). But my TV would never respond to the Linksys remote. The instructions in the menu are wrong, they start at Step 2 and refer to buttons the remote does not have. I got the correct instructions by looking at an updated manual online.

5. XviD codec will play on the device. DivX codec (even though it's an Mpeg 4 codec) will not work. You can hack the FourCC identifier embedded in the file to read XviD and then it will work. So this must be a software restriction imposed by Linksys. And I don't want to hack my carefully created DivX library.

6. Certain types of WMV files will garble after about 15 to 20 minutes. Specifically, WMV9 VC1 is the problem type. I'm really out of luck since I only backup my DVD's to WMV and DivX (Since the Xbox can play those).

7. XviD and MP4 video files will not rewind or fast forward. And if you press the skip forward and back buttons the video will freeze for about 20 seconds before it responds.

8. If you press pause too often it'll show you the RESTART/DONE/DELETE screen as if the movie has finished. And then there's no way to fast forward to where you were in the file.

9. The device would power up to the setup screen even though I set it to power up to the Media Center. This confused my wife who is not computer savvy.

10. My Music library is not huge, but it wanted to scan for changes every time I entered the music area.

I'll list some good qualities so that I'm not totally negative.
1. Live TV works well.
2. Wireless N works really well.
3. XviD is a nice touch. (I just wish is could rewind and fast forward.)

Overall the only two things that didn't give me problems were the wireless connection and watching Live TV. Since mostly everything else doesn't work I have to return it. I wasn't the only one with these issues. You can visit http://www.thegreenbutton.com/ forums and see that others had the same exact problems. In the future a firmware could be released that addresses all these issues. If that happens I'll see about updating/retracting this review.

Rating:
Date: 2008-05-29
Decent quiet product
It's very small which is nice very quiet compared to an xbox 360 as an extender. I don't believe there are any moving parts in it maybe a small fan but didn't check. Only annoying thing is the extremely blue light on the front as this is in the bedroom. I still need to get some electrical tape and cover that up as I have heard that other people do. You could technically turn it off however the startup/initial connect to your mediacenter time is not all that quick so it's much preferable to just leave the unit on constantly. The other quirk is the fact that it does not like divx files. It will play them however you need to use a 4cc code change to change the code on the file from divx to xvid then it has no issues. There are quite a few apps around to do this so not really a big issue and just takes a couple of seconds to do this. I had a fairly large discount on this when I got the product bringing the price on it for me around 150$ at the time which is definitely more reasonable imo. The 250$ price point is just way too high for this item especially without a dvd since this is really putting it too close in competition with an xbox 360 as you could pick up the arcade/pro bundles for around $270-280ish and get all the gaming functionality etc with them instead (even though you would have to deal with the load drive/fan noise). All in all though a good product just needs a lower pricepoint.

Rating:
Date: 2008-05-02
When it works, it works very well
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.

Rating:
Date: 2008-04-21
If you don't want support, this is the product for you
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.