Linksys DMA2100 Media Extender and DVB-T

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ajobbins

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#20543 29-Mar-2008 18:32

I was in DSE today and had a look at a Linksys DMA2100 Media Extender. According to the box the thing is H.264 capable and had HDMI out.

Does this mean it would be suitable for connection to a Media Centre capable PC for decoding of the DVB-T transmissions here in NZ? Has anyone used one of these devices? If so, what are they like?

freitasm

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#119590 29-Mar-2008 18:48

I am not sure it will work until Media Center actually supports H.264...

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ajobbins

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#119593 29-Mar-2008 19:09

Can they be connected as a media extender for Media Portal?

davidcole

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#119596 29-Mar-2008 19:33

I'm fairly sure they're MCE only...and the linksys ones possibly Vista media center only.

They use a modification on the Remote Desktop protocol for generating the screens

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sbiddle

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#119599 29-Mar-2008 20:49

They are of no use whatsoever. First they are MCE only and MCE has no support for H.264 at present so they can't be used for DVB-T. Secondly (and I'm just repeating what I've been told) they don't support AAC-LATM audio so even assuming VMC was updated to support H.264 DVB-T the device still wouldn't work as it would only give video and no audio.

It's a shame because they are seriously cool units. The only problem is that IMHO Microsoft have lost the plot completely lost the plot and have no vision when it comes to the whole MCE and Extenders, particularly with the introduction of Windows Home Server. Surely when you have a WHS box at home then the Extenders should be able to connect to that to view photos or play music - afterall that's the purpose of having a WHS box. But this doesn't work, you need to have these on a MCE machine for the extender to work. How stupid is that?

ITECH

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#124373 17-Apr-2008 13:12

Don't know the technical details but there is an interesting article on page 60 of the May 2008 edition of Tone magazine in regard to these units, WMCE & their use in a smarthome.

Sounds like (sic.) the sound works. They stream TV from a single server to all the media extenders.

So if you had a DVB-T tuner recording to a hard drive somewhere in the system it would work? From my limited knowledge, Freeview won't allow recording of mpeg-4 anyway, so it would have to be downscaled to mpeg-2? Then upscaled again as required by the viewing screen interface. Is that right?

I'd got all excited about the possibilities of the media extender but don't want (at this stage) to get a Vista Media Center box.

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#124393 17-Apr-2008 14:32

ITECH: Don't know the technical details but there is an interesting article on page 60 of the May 2008 edition of Tone magazine in regard to these units, WMCE & their use in a smarthome.

Sounds like (sic.) the sound works. They stream TV from a single server to all the media extenders.

So if you had a DVB-T tuner recording to a hard drive somewhere in the system it would work? From my limited knowledge, Freeview won't allow recording of mpeg-4 anyway, so it would have to be downscaled to mpeg-2? Then upscaled again as required by the viewing screen interface. Is that right?

I'd got all excited about the possibilities of the media extender but don't want (at this stage) to get a Vista Media Center box.

Vista Media Center (and XP Media Center) have no support for H.264 so it's impossible to use it in New Zealand with our DVB-T transmissions.

One of these boxes will work fine with Freeview's DVB-S service and allow you to stream TV around the house. H.264 support in Vista Media Center is coming (and so is Xmas) so there the option of using extenders could become a reality in the not too distant future.

As for these particular Linksys boxes however they have no support for the AAC audio used in New Zealand so won't work with our DVB-T. It's anybody's guess if Linksys plan on rolling our firmware upgrades for these devices to support AAC-LATM audio once H.264 support appears in Vista.