Very Happy with DMA2100 linksys

bretttucker · **26th September 2008, 11:05 AM**

Hello, A quick story of my new DMA2100

I purchased a DMA2100 yesterday for my Vista Media center(it won't work with XP). Unboxed it when i got home, connected it to the spare TV and turned it on. After a longer than expected delay it shoed some guff on the screen and went throuhg a quick setup, TV output type etc (the dma2100 does hdmi, component, s-vide and composite), Ethernet connection type, I was going to use 100bt wired lan, but didn't have it connected to the room yet, so i went with the wireless 802.11g (54meg). It found my AP and i puched in the WPA key, selected DHCP address allocation. some time went by and it popped up a screen with a 8 digit key on it and asked me to enter this onto my media center. At the same time my wife yelled from the other room that there is something wierd on the TV.

I went to the other room and the Vista MCE had a dialogue box (Media Center Type of dialogue box) on it saying it has found a Linksys extender and sis i want to set it up? Yes please. IT then asked for the 8 digit key and went thorugh a few screens and bingo it was done, it also asked if i wanted to tune the network for best performance? Yes please. After a few minutes it asked me if i wanted to see a graph of the network test? Yes again (fully expecting it to be quite poor) the graph appeared and showed that it was more than sufficient for SD TV and almost but not quite good enough for HD. I was suprised that the 54 meg wireless was acceptable. But the real test would be to watch the TV and see.

I tried all the functions and SD TV was perfect (i did not test HD TV), Internet radio , Perfect, Guide, Perfect. I run Video browser, Not so perfect, in fact not showing and media available, but i found a fix , I had to edit the Videobrowser.conf file (with notepad)(c:\programdata\videobrowser\videobrowser. conf I think) and change the initial directory form \myvideos to the full path, c:\users\myname(in my case "media")\videos. I also changed the native codecs allowed form DVR-MS to .DVR-MS,.avi,.vob I do not know if this will work for all but I will test it out.

Now I tested it again (i do not know if a restart was required but i did one anyway , on both devices). Tried video browser again and , Perfect. I have only tried a XVID movie and it was good. I will try a ripped DVD etc when I can.

To sum up, The install of this was so easy that i am still left wondering where and when the disaster will occur, it has to, nothing is that simple. And for around the $250 mark I wonder why i waited this long to get one. the box has more outputs than I will ever want and it is tiny, about the size of a CD ROM drive (maybe a little bigger). Oh and a remote that will learn the power and volume of my TV remote.

Hope this story helps someone. I am happy to answer any questions.

Regards
BT

kkwwnn · **1st October 2008, 09:02 PM**

hi there

i am keen on the linksys extender. are you aware if you can have 2 extenders ie 1 in the lounge and the other in the bedroom?

thanks

Innie808 · **1st October 2008, 11:27 PM**

Hi kkwwnn,

You can have two extenders so long as you have an equal number of tuners to support them. (Assuming you want to watch live tv on each extender?)

So yes, if you have 2 tuners, = two Extenders. However, if you still want to use the main VMC for TV, plus run the extenders, you would need 3 tuners. 1 for the main TV room.

If you wanted the ability to record a show while watching a show on the same VMC, while also running two Extenders, you would need 4 tuners.

I am not sure of the maximum number of tuners? Is it 4 or 6?

Remember if you own an Xbox360, that is also an extender device!

bretttucker · **2nd October 2008, 08:40 AM**

Is that right? I thought the tuners were selected dynamically depending on the need. I have just done this test, for what it is worth. I used my media center and set it to record a currently listed show on the ABC, then watched Sunrise on 7. (i have 2 tuners and now both were in use). I then went to the extender and could watch recorded tv etc but when i tried to watch live tv I got the tuner conflict prompt and could select a tuner to use, either cancel sunrise or the recording. Does that mean you can many extenders and one tuner or two tuners ? I do not really know but i would rekon so.

BT

Innie808 · **2nd October 2008, 09:04 AM**

Hi Brett,

In my post...

Quote:

(Assuming you want to watch live tv on each extender?)

I probably should have clarified a bit more. If you have no need to use the LIVE TV function, then you could in theory have an extender in every room of the house!

The dependency i was refering too was Live TV. Yes you can take over a tuner but I'm sure the WAF would come storming in the room if you snatched her TV Session or stopped her recording of Greys Anatomy.

I guess what im saying, is best practice would be to make sure you have 1 available tuner per extender for LIVE TV functionality.

bretttucker · **2nd October 2008, 09:47 AM**

Innie808,

Thanks for that, I was getting a bit confused.

supafly · **2nd October 2008, 10:21 AM**

Ive been really wanting to get one so that I can do TV to another room but the PS3 does everything but Live TV, so ive just been converting DVRMS to .vob and streaming that way, growing to be a bit of a pain, hopefully sony release this Play TV add on for the PS3 sooner than later, ive even been considering a 360 again but GAF is low.....she doesnt want another box with the TV..

saxnix · **6th October 2008, 10:11 AM**

I bought 2 of the 2100's a couple of weeks ago and I am very impressed with them. They take a little while (30 secs or so) to boot, but they are silent - a nice change from my 360's.

Disabling animations in settings will help make navigation just as fast as that on a 360.

If you come across any AVI's that won't play (you get the Codec not supported error), use FourCCChanger (http://www.winremote.dk/fourccchanger.php) to change the code to XVID, and this will enable the file to play.

I would highly recommend the 2100 to anyone wanting a cheap, silent or small extender.

Now....if only we could get them for $100 like they are doing them for in the states (Amazon).

I can also recommend OML (Open Media Library) as a great free app for organising your movie collection (regardless of file format). It is in beta stages of development at the moment, but the team working on it are also releasing daily builds (ever couple of days), with fixes and new features. Currently the latest stable build is beta 2, but they plan on releasing beta 3 very soon (including an internal transcoder with chapter and subtitle support for DVD backups on extender). Anyway, if you want to check it out, here is the link http://code.google.com/p/open-media-library/

Innie808 · **6th October 2008, 10:41 AM**

This is what gives Vista Media Center the main advantage over other media center products. The ability to mimic the main interface to any other room with minimal hardware requirements...An Extender.
I know Sage has one, but i cant comment as i have never seen a sage extender working.

What i love is the fact that the extender gives you everything the main Machine has. So OML works Exactly the same on the extender, MyTV works like a charm on the extender...BigScreen Weather2 works perfectly on the extender.

I'm using 802.11g on mine and it hasn't missed a beat. I'm not streamin HD stuff.

I know there are some small quirks, mostly to do with AC3 sound and other unsupported Codecs like MKV and of course no DVD Streaming(fixed with OML).

As a device for the bedroom or kids room whatever, it can't be beaten!.

I do wonder what Linksys overall sales are for the DMA series since it's release? They have pretty well much cornered the market. Of course theres the HP and the Dlink versions, i don't think are widely available.

It would be great to see some more extender hardware from other big Network vendors like Netgear. Some more competition to push down the prices.

mikehayton · **6th October 2008, 11:55 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innie808

You can have two extenders so long as you have an equal number of tuners to support them. (Assuming you want to watch live tv on each extender?)

If you dont want to have all watching live tv at the same time, you can have less tuners. If you have five different recordings that you want to watch you could have each of 5 different extenders playing a different recording.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innie808

I am not sure of the maximum number of tuners? Is it 4 or 6?

5 in the standard product.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innie808

Remember if you own an Xbox360, that is also an extender device!

And a nice one too!

There's actually two different types of extenders, the xbox360 (and the nivea one) which has enough graphics grunt to process the UI at the xbox end (so you get super smooth scrolling on the start menu / transitions, etc) and then there's the rest that are more like terminal serving back to your main machine. The hp media smart tv has it built in. And Samsung has a small box that clips of back of some samsung tvs.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro.../extender.mspx