Media Center Extender for Xbox Review
The Windows SuperSite has a great review of the Media Center Extender for Xbox.
Recently, Microsoft released "media center extenders" for people that wanted to keep their media center PC as an office computer, but watch video/audio in other parts of the house. Those devices seem to struggle from network problems and high prices ($250-300 each). This review covers the xbox version of the extender, which is only about $80 and seems to do everything well.
I recently picked up a hacked xbox that I'm using to stream music/photos/video from a PC in my office downstairs to my TV and it works fantastic. I'll post a review of the unofficial Xbox Media Center software in a few weeks.
Did I misread the review? Paul ends with "The Xbox Extender is a dog, and you should avoid it." That doesn;t sound like it does anything well to me.
Posted by: Bruce | December 22, 2004 at 12:47 PM
In Microsoft's defense, what alternatives are there to media extenders? If the past history is any indication, the first revisions of new MSFT technology are dogs, but by the third revision, they have something solid and workable.
I realize that TivoToGo is supposed to be out "Any Day Now"(tm), but is Tivo's show sharing a workable solution until TTG is out? Also, from the review, the problems seemed to largely stem from the problem of limited 802.11 bandwidth. Is anyone running their networked Tivos in this configuration and if so, do they experience similar problems?
I've been very pleased with the BeyondTV/WinTV PVR150 combo I picked up a couple of weeks ago. However, even with the MPEG2 files, I need to connect my BeyondTV computer to the rest of my network using wires. It's not a BeyondTV problem, but a wireless one.
Posted by: Chris | December 22, 2004 at 01:30 PM
Oops. I was crusing through a bunch of tech articles, saw it and read the glowing first 3/4 and skimmed over the end.
Posted by: Matt Haughey | December 22, 2004 at 05:48 PM