Product Description
- Select entertainment from on-screen menus with the easy-to-use remote control
- Connects your Home Entertainment Center to a Windows Media Center PC through a Wireless-A, Wireles
- Watch home or downloaded digital movies and browse your digital pictures on your television. Also watch, pause, and record live TV shows
- Listen to your digital music collection and Internet radio through your stereo system
Linksys Dual Band WLS A/G Media Center Extender Bring your Windows Media Center PC's digital movies, live and recorded TV, pictures and music out into the living room! The Linksys Dual-Band Wireless A/G Media Center Extender lets you bring the digital entertainment available through and stored on your Windows Media Center PC to your Home Entertainment Center, without running cables through the house. Using a Wireless-A, Wireless-G, or wired Ethernet connection, the Media Center Extender displays home-made or downloaded digital movies and your digital photographs on the TV for the whole family to enjoy. And your digital music collection is finally freed from those little computer speakers and can play in full glory through your stereo system. You can also watch and pause live TV shows, or record them digitally for later viewing. Finding something to watch is easy with the free on-screen program guide. The Media Center Extender sits by your home stereo and television and connects to them using standard consumer electronics cables. Then it connects to your home network by Wireless-A or Wireless-G networking, or if you prefer, it can be connected via standard 10/100 Ethernet cabling. Using the included remote control and the user-friendly menus on your TV, you can quickly find the digital movies, TV shows, pictures or music on your Windows Media Center PC. You can even chat with friends through Microsoft Windows Messenger while watching movies on the same screen. Let
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Disappointed !!!
If you are buying this thing to stream video from your PC to another location, please read this!!!!!
First, the Media Center Extender does not support many common movie or video formats such as .Avi, DivX, Xvid or .Vob. The only supported formats are MPEG-1, MPEG-2 or WMV (standard definition only, not high def). In addition, it will not work if these videos have AC3 or Dolby Digital Audio, only 2 channel audio works. See details from the Microsoft Website below:
Video file formats supported:
* Windows Media Video 9 main profile
* WMA Standard audio
* Max resolution 720x480
* Max bit-rate 4Mbps
* WMV content may be Windows Media DRM-protected
* MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 standard definition
* MPEG-1 layers I and II audio
So, if you have a big video library on your hard drive, you may not be able to watch them with your Media Center Extender without first transcoding them to a supported format.
Second, you cannot put a DVD in your PC and play it on your Media Center Extender. You would need to rip it to your hard drive (in one of the few supported formats above) before you can play it.
If you want to watch video in another room, I suggest you go out and buy a cheap (about $50-$70) DVD player that will support most of the common video formats.
Okay, now for what the Media Center Extender did well.
Photos- were easy to navigate and had several settings for displaying your pictures.
Music- streamed my play list with good quality sound.
The Live and Recorded TV options worked well but HDTV is not supported.