Linksys DMA2100/2200 Installation Tips and Tricks

[logifuse]

My DMA2100 arrived today!

It's tiny - 6.5"x6.5"x1.5" (in the old money).

Playing with my HVR2200s first, but I'll try & get it online this arvo.

Justin

[merovingian]

Yeah mine was apparently plonked on the doorstep a couple of hours ago as well. So I should also have some feedback this weekend.

[logifuse]

A quick wrap of my install:

Getting initial video output happening was the biggest challenge - I had to unplug/replug the component leads in to my TV several times before the TV synched up to the signal. Once that was done I got it set to HD (576p) & then 720p pretty easily.

I connected up via wired & ran through the initial wizard & took down my numbers to enter on the VMC.

The VMC had seen it & was ready to go, but I ran the CD (there was 200+MB of stuff it installed - what was it?), it downloaded updates & rebooted.

Connected up on the VMC side of things fine.

Went in to MCX - quick launch (I've now set the DMA2100 to go straight to MCX - pretty quick). Played live TV & had the previously mentioned HD pixellation - VMC was plugged in to a gigabit switch, so I changed it to the router that the Linksys was plugged in to & that cured that (there's an add in in the box that mentions a KB article about it - I'll have a proper look later).

Menu navigation is jerky (as mentioned) - it responds to the remote well enough (you need good line of sight though), it just isn't that pretty.

Xvids played fine (once I added the watched folder), but they are slow to start. Does anyone else suspect that part of the 200+MB install package was a transcoding engine & we're not getting native Xvid playback? The CPU fan on the PC was working pretty hard while I was watching (couldn't look at CPU utilization as it's currently on the same TV). PQ of the Xvids was very good.

The main menu was back to the default start menu (& not the one I created by editing the dll) - I haven't had a chance to check the VMC itself, but I suspect the dll was overwritten by the extender updates. If so, I'll put the edited dll back in & see if it translates to the MCX.

Overall, reasonably impressed. A firmware update to cure the jerky menus (& a few other issues others have had) & it would be a 9/10 in my book (remembering that it cost $249). As it stands it's at about 7.5.

I'm going to try HDMI tomorrow as I'm lead to believe it's far superior to the Linksys' component output (wich wasn't great, but was better than any component out from a PC that I've tried).

That's it for now.

Justin

Edit: It's got a USB port - what for?

[sfm]

Originally Posted by logifuse

Xvids played fine (once I added the watched folder), but they are slow to start. Does anyone else suspect that part of the 200+MB install package was a transcoding engine & we're not getting native Xvid playback? The CPU fan on the PC was working pretty hard while I was watching (couldn't look at CPU utilization as it's currently on the same TV). PQ of the Xvids was very good.

I have my DMA-2100 set up and didn't let the install disk anywhere near my VMC. I would have thought that the delay wouldn't be transcoding but more likely caching of the video stream.

[philzgr8]

I'm not sure what's on the disk but I can say mine did sort of work without it but I had all sorts of problems setting up watched folders etc before I installed it. Once installed everything was fine. Note that under SP1 it doesn't need you to run WindowsUpdate. From memory the USB port is for attaching external storage devices.

I'll be interested to know if anyone else gets the ehome interface freezing that I get after using the extender for a while.

[merovingian]

Originally Posted by sfm

I have my DMA-2100 set up and didn't let the install disk anywhere near my VMC. I would have thought that the delay wouldn't be transcoding but more likely caching of the video stream.

Interesting. The attitude I took was WTF does this thing come with an install disk? It should just drop into my network and work, since my X360 has been fine as an extender. So I tried to set it up without the CD. But I got the connection error problems predicted by the manual, so had to yield to the CD after all.

Anyway, a short summary of my first 24 hours with the DMA2100 in service:

- setup was quick and painless, once I used the CD
- my son has flogged it with Cars, Monsters and Roary The Racing Car, without issue.
- I flogged it with 6 hours of music last night, without issue.
- it's silent. Such a relief after the X360.
- as with the X360, I had to copy the CurrentDatabase_360.wmdb file from my profile to the Mcx2 profile to get my music Auto Playlists to work.
- Using the FourCC changer, I got Divx files to play on the DMA2100. The downside is that they've lost their thumbnails, and they no longer play on the VMC HTPC (which I guess is why they've lost the thumbnails).
- WoL is not working for me, and this is the only major issue I have. WoL worked for X360. I am all out of ideas about what I can try to get it working. So I am manually having to turn the HTPC on. The VMC has an idle timeout of 1 hour, and no sign of the funny lock-ups that Philzgr8 reported.
- When testing each Divx file after the FourCC change, I suffered a few freezes. Some that featured a flash of a dialog box telling me that Media Center had stopped working and needed to be restarted. After one freeze, I could only recover the DMA2100 by disconnecting and reconnecting the power cable.

[sfm]

That was my reasoning for not using the installation disk. Having said that I may use it and see if I can see any difference.

I found a problem with a H.264 encoded movie last night, the DMA-2100 played it fine without any issues, however it was very slow in skipping forward, it would take 20 seconds to skip 30 seconds forward. As with Xvid there was no fast forward so it was nearly impossible to start the movie half way through.

[rmaisano]

Question for everyone. Xvid and Divx avi's work fine, but an avi from my canon camera doesn't work. Anyone else seen that problem?

[logifuse]

Originally Posted by rmaisano

Question for everyone. Xvid and Divx avi's work fine, but an avi from my canon camera doesn't work. Anyone else seen that problem?

The AVI from your video camera is in DV format - the extenders have limited codec support, so it probably doesn't have a codec for it.

Justin

[saxnix]

This may sound strange, but can you set the IR to accept a different freq (???) so that if you have VMC and extender in the same room, you can operate them independently?