Matt Olsen:

A much larger irritation is that it appears to be pretty senstive to the angle of the remote relative to the unit.

I have a Hauppage 500 board that came with a remote that has similar issues, I wonder if linksys is using the same one...I'll have to go look for a pic.  my 4yo MCE remote (big silver one) is still going and it seems to have a much better beam spread...

matt or muxoman, any chance you can test wireless on that device? I have been waiting to see wireless performance before I fork up $300 for dma2200. I have wireless-n (dlink dir-655) and hoping wireless performance is close to wired. If either of you have wireless-n network, can you please post if you see delay or freeze during tv or movie playback. by the way thanks for early review.

Thanks to all who are sharing their experiences.  I just have a couple of additional questions:

1.  What is the boot-up time for the DMA2100?  This is huge for WAF as mine hates how long the XBOX 360 takes (10-15 seconds).  I've been trying to get rid of the TIVO for years but she just won't do it unless her "experience" is better with VMC.

2.  Can it be run continuously?  If it takes too long to boot, I want to know if it is okay to just leave it on.

Thanks!

Hopefully this hasn't been asked yet, but how do you play DVD's on the 2200? Do you have to exit the MCE interface?

Matt Olsen:

   ..... I thought I'd chime in since my DMA-2100 arrived yesterday from Dell.

Overall, it's about what I expected and we're already getting some great use of it.  I was concerned by the reports of the sluggishness.  While it's noticeable, I'd say it's within reason.  I'm using a wired connection.

 

I would like to have you expand upon the issue of "sluggishness". Can you give us a feel of how much more of a delay (in seconds) the DMA-2100 requires to respond to various remote commands when compared with the Xbox 360?

Thank you very much for these Mini-Reviews. All information provided is of great interest.

3rob3:

Hopefully this hasn't been asked yet, but how do you play DVD's on the 2200? Do you have to exit the MCE interface?

The DMA2200 has not shipped AFAIK, but yes you will have to exit out of the MCX in order to play it.  That said, I think the remote might have a DVD button on it to launch from within the experience (but not using a MCE menu item).

Idaho:

Matt Olsen:

   ..... I thought I'd chime in since my DMA-2100 arrived yesterday from Dell.

Overall, it's about what I expected and we're already getting some great use of it.  I was concerned by the reports of the sluggishness.  While it's noticeable, I'd say it's within reason.  I'm using a wired connection.

 

I would like to have you expand upon the issue of "sluggishness". Can you give us a feel of how much more of a delay (in seconds) the DMA-2100 requires to respond to various remote commands when compared with the Xbox 360?

Thank you very much for these Mini-Reviews. All information provided is of great interest.

Now that I have used the Extender for a few days I would say it is minimal. All commands respond almost immediately or within a second. Not as fast as the Xbox but I don't think you'd take it back because it is slower. Additionally, it may feel a little slower because the Xbox is smoother in moving through the menus than the Linksys. It just seems that the Linksys is trying harder to do the same function, so the responsiveness feels slower.

Definitely not a deal breaker. The video looks amazing on HD content. 

Muxoman:

Now that I have used the Extender for a few days I would say it is minimal. All commands respond almost immediately or within a second. Not as fast as the Xbox but I don't think you'd take it back because it is slower. Additionally, it may feel a little slower because the Xbox is smoother in moving through the menus than the Linksys. It just seems that the Linksys is trying harder to do the same function, so the responsiveness feels slower.

Definitely not a deal breaker. The video looks amazing on HD content. 

The Sigma chip in the Linksys Extender is not as powerful as the multi-core Xbox 360 (shocking, right?).  Anyway, the processing power of the PC now plays a little bit bigger role in helping with the transitions and fancy stuff like that.  Test by disabling the transitions and that should speed it up a bit.  If not, it might be a IR issue.

wakerlet1:

Thanks to all who are sharing their experiences.  I just have a couple of additional questions:

1.  What is the boot-up time for the DMA2100?  This is huge for WAF as mine hates how long the XBOX 360 takes (10-15 seconds).  I've been trying to get rid of the TIVO for years but she just won't do it unless her "experience" is better with VMC.

2.  Can it be run continuously?  If it takes too long to boot, I want to know if it is okay to just leave it on.

Thanks!

So if you think the Xbox takes a long time to boot you shouldn't buy this thing. From a cold boot it takes 55 seconds to initialize, contact the MCE, and load the software.

I am not sure if it can be run continously. I mean if your are tuned to a channel and turn off the TV it should keep running. There is also a screen saver that can be set to start after a time of inactivity, the max setting is 2 hours. But it will shut off after a certain period of activity as well, and then requires a complete boot. I can't find anywhere to affect that setting though.

 

Chris - Moderator:

Muxoman:

Now that I have used the Extender for a few days I would say it is minimal. All commands respond almost immediately or within a second. Not as fast as the Xbox but I don't think you'd take it back because it is slower. Additionally, it may feel a little slower because the Xbox is smoother in moving through the menus than the Linksys. It just seems that the Linksys is trying harder to do the same function, so the responsiveness feels slower.

Definitely not a deal breaker. The video looks amazing on HD content. 

The Sigma chip in the Linksys Extender is not as powerful as the multi-core Xbox 360 (shocking, right?).  Anyway, the processing power of the PC now plays a little bit bigger role in helping with the transitions and fancy stuff like that.  Test by disabling the transitions and that should speed it up a bit.  If not, it might be a IR issue.

Chris you are right. Turning off the transitions definitely helps the sluggish feeling.

In regards to the Sigma chip, are there anywhere that details the playback specs? Reason being, I encode all of my HD movies into WMV-HD. I typically use 14 megabits for 720p content and 20 megabits for 1080p content. Where I have never seen any issues playing back on my MCE or Xbox 360, I notice that the Linksys has issues on some if the 1080p content. I assume that this issue is because the bit rate is too high for the chipset and is not supported. Just wondered if there were any specs on actual bit rates as well as codecs supported.

Because I have this extender in my bedroom, I don't mind this issue, as I watch mostly live and recorded TV there. But in my thearter room where we watch movies, I'll stick to my MCE or Xbox 360. 

The chip itself is supposed to support up to WMV9 MP@HL (20 Mbit/s, 1080p30).  However, I do remember some issues on the web with other Sigma EM8622L at high bitrate content.  That said, the final word would need to come from Linksys and I don't know what they quote for the max.

Got my DMA2100 today from Dell...     I cannot get Divx or Xvid files to work.  I get the blue screen codec error.  These video files were made with Divx 6X and higher and they work fine through the XBOX dashboard.  

What extentions are you using?   And does your files have AC3 Audio?

 

 

 

Mike L:

Got my DMA2100 today from Dell...     I cannot get Divx or Xvid files to work.  I get the blue screen codec error.  These video files were made with Divx 6X and higher and they work fine through the XBOX dashboard.  

What extentions are you using?   And does your files have AC3 Audio?

I haven't had issues yet. All of the files are .avi, mostly of TV shows from newsgroups. And yes I did verify that some have AC3 audio. But I don't think any of them are Divx6.

If it takes that long to boot (55 sec), then I will definetly try to keep this thing running 24/7.

I hope there is a setting to allow this. (Then I got to tell my Harmony remote to leave this device running!)

Can the screen saver be turned off?

 

I'm surprised that this unit, coming from a company whose business model is networks, does not have gigabit LAN. Based on my bad experiences streaming HD content over a 100M LAN, I wired in gigabit to every room and upgraded adapters. A vast improvement in every respect. I'm not going to jump the gun on this model yet but I'm definetly listening to users opinions and feedback. Just a bit miffed about the lack of gigabit support.