Whole-house entertainment means never having to handle physical media. With all your music, photos, and videos parked on a hard drive and accessible through your home network, you can enjoy them in any room where a media receiver is attached to a TV or stereo system. To find out just how easy — or difficult — a media receiver can be to set up and use, we tested the Netgear MP101 ($149), which delivers only music; the Pinnacle ShowCenter ($299), which also handles photos and video; and the Apex AD-8000N ($199), which does all that and plays DVDs, too. All three are PC-only. For more about media receivers and a comprehensive buyer’s guide that includes Mac-compatible models, see Media Receivers in “Let Your Network Entertain You.”
Netgear MP101
It might be the size and shape of an unabridged dictionary, but Netgear’s MP101 Wireless Digital Music Player doesn’t aim to be complete. It handles only one digital medium — compressed audio — but it handles it very well. The MP101 streams MP3 or Windows Media Audio (WMA) files from your PC to any room in wireless range — it supports both the original 802.11b Wi-Fi standard and the faster 802.11g. Or you can use its Ethernet port to connect it to a hard-wired network.
The MP101 is compatible with playlists created in popular PC media players. If you subscribe to Real Networks’ Rhapsody to stream music on your computer, you can listen to it on the MP101, too. And to get you started, Netgear throws in a 30-day free trial of Rhapsody. After that it’s $9.95 a month.
Setting up the MP101 is pretty straightforward. If you already have a home network in place, you install two Windows programs on your PC — a software media server to deliver songs to the Netgear receiver and the Rhapsody “client” to stream Internet music. Then you power up the MP101 and enter any necessary security codes for your wireless network. For a wired Ethernet network, you plug in the supplied cable — there’s no configuration to be done. Finally, unless you intend to do all your listening using headphones, you connect the MP101’s stereo line-level outputs to your music system or powered speakers.
Once set up with my Wi-Fi network, the MP101 was a delight to use. Since it shares its playlists with whatever software jukebox you use, you don’t need to mess with Netgear’s media server software to create new lists to manage your music. The handy 6-inch remote has Playlist, Genre, Artist, Track, and Net buttons that make it easy to select music, plus shuffle and repeat buttons. You can adjust volume at the headphone output from the remote. The sound quality from both the headphone jack and the RCA jacks was entirely satisfactory, especially when the source WMA and MP3 files were encoded at a healthy bit rate — 160 kilobits per second (kbps), or higher.
The MP101’s front panel includes a cool, pale-blue LCD screen that’s visible across the room. Full song titles scroll across it in large, clear lettering — which came in handy when I was listening to unfamiliar tunes by Norah Jones or the White Stripes on Rhapsody.
For my tests, I separated the MP101 from its wireless network access point by three stories in an old brick house, and it still switched media without a hitch. There was some lag time changing tracks, because the MP101 had to sync up with the software server on the PC, but for $149 I could live with that.
— M.L.
Pinnacle ShowCenter
In a stylish metallic pizza-box format with blue LEDs, the Pinnacle ShowCenter Digital Media Player brings PC-stored video, audio, and photos to the living room with minimal fuss. It can work with either a wired or wireless network and has all the connectors you’ll need to hook into your A/V gear. But it has a few wrinkles to iron out.
Setup is straightforward. You install media-server software on your Windows PC and connect the ShowCenter to your home network using either the supplied long Ethernet cable or an add-on PC Card for an 802.11b Wi-Fi wireless network. (You can buy the PC Card from Pinnacle for $40 or use one from an approved list on its Web site. Pinnacle expected to be selling an 802.11g Wi-Fi card and to support other cards in that format by May.) If you don’t have a home network, no problem: Pinnacle also slips a crossover Ethernet cable into the box so you can plug the ShowCenter directly into the back of a PC. I connected the composite-video and analog stereo outputs to A/V inputs on the surround receiver in my home theater system.
The software installation automatically imports playlists and media from Windows Media Player 9. When you power up your ShowCenter in front of your TV, you briefly see your computer in a media server list, then up flashes a menu of media playing options. Using the 39-key remote control, you navigate among audio, video, and photo lists. The nav buttons in the middle of the remote let you flip between the most recently added files (New Media), audio files, video files, and still pictures, which you can view as slide shows.
The ShowCenter PC application covers a lot of ground in one screen using file-folder-style tabs. Click on the Import tab, and you can add New Media from digital cameras, CDs, or drives or folders on your computer. You can assign keywords (such as Party or Relaxation) to a song to fit a mood. You can also set restrictions, like putting certain tracks off-limits to your kids (or parents!). Once you’re finished setting things up, you can just close the ShowCenter PC application. A separate and much smaller program, which runs automatically whenever you start up Windows, serves your media files to the ShowCenter hardware.
Back at the TV, ShowCenter performed pretty well, though the remote control was fussy even with fresh batteries installed. It worked most reliably when aimed directly at the ShowCenter — pointing it at anything more than about 20° off-axis often had no effect.
Most of my test video and audio files worked fine. My MP3 and WMA files sounded crisp — and the fidelity was much better on my audio system than from my PC’s speaker system. My MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and DivX files played without a hitch. The system also accepts Xvid files as a native format, but DV files from camcorders and the WMV files used by Windows Movie Maker will be converted to your choice of MPEG-1 or MPEG-2. As for photo viewing, you’re always looking at JPEG images scaled to standard-definition resolution (720 x 480 pixels) on ShowCenter, but if your computer also has GIF, BMP, or PNG files on it, they’ll be converted to JPEGs before they’re sent to the player. TIFFs need not apply, since they aren’t accepted.
Once you get the hang of hitting the Full Screen button for videos, ShowCenter handles swapping between different media types without a hitch. (If you don’t press Full Screen, the videos play in a tiny frame at the bottom of the screen.) The Music, Movies, and Photos buttons near the top of the remote take you straight to those collections, and a fourth named button takes you to the default Home screen. (Unlike the Netgear MP101, ShowCenter recognizes only one computer at a time, so you’ll have to aggregate your collections on one “server” machine if you want to search for all your media in a home with multiple computers.)
If you don’t change any settings, ShowCenter fits videos to the size and shape of your TV screen, which doesn’t always work well — videos in widescreen are arbitrarily truncated. But in the setup menu you can choose to let your videos retain their original size. The video quality looked okay. Pinnacle claims that ShowCenter is compatible with video streamed at up to 10 Mbps, which would be DVD quality.
Pinnacle does a good job of updating the built-in programming in its hardware. ShowCenter finds these so-called firmware updates automatically using your network’s Internet connection and pops up a notice on your TV recommending that you install them. Equally helpful is the New Media LED on the front panel, which glows to remind you of content added on your PC.
ShowCenter handles WAV and WMA files by converting them on the fly to MP3, and it keeps a replica of the Windows My Music folder populated entirely with MP3 files. Problem is, I have several thousand WMA files, and this mirrored music folder ate up more than 6.5 GB of storage space in MP3 duplicates. Ouch!
To preserve hard-disk space, it would be better if ShowCenter read WMA files in their native format. And faster wireless networking (as noted earlier, 802.11g support was expected by May) will make high-bit-rate video playback more reliable and less prone to occasional dropped frames. Interestingly, as we went to press we learned about several new features in Version 1.5 (also expected in May): Internet radio and the ability to control a Pinnacle PCTV tuner and recorder card in your computer from ShowCenter.
The idea is that without leaving the living-room sofa, you should be able to command your bedroom PC to schedule a recording, then stream it over your home network to your TV. Given that kind of evolving functionality, ShowCenter provides a cost-effective way to introduce digital media into your TV-watching mix.
— M.L.
Apex AD-8000N
Empowering you to be master of your digital domain is a clever new DVD player with a built-in media receiver from Apex Digital, the AD-8000N. It incorporates software from a company called Digital 5, and before attaching the player to your home network, you install the server portion of the software on your PC running Windows 98SE or higher.
The D5 software is actually an update of the version I reviewed in Go-Video’s Networked DVD Player last September (click to read review). It also powers the new Gateway ACD-320 Wireless Connected DVD Player. New features include the ability to stream video at up to 8 megabits per second (Mbps), topping the previous low-quality default of 3 Mbps, compatibility with DVR-MS files (TV shows recorded by Windows Media Center Edition PCs), support for more image formats, thumbnails for pictures, alphabet key search for media-collection lists, auto connect for a potentially seamless network setup, and a network upgrade option (eliminating the need to burn a CD for copying new system software into the DVD player’s internal memory).
A full range of video and audio outputs is provided, and Apex includes composite-video and stereo cables and an 802.11b Wi-Fi PC Card. When I installed the software in my PC from the CD it came on, it scanned the hard drive and found my media files. Back in front of my TV, I connected the A/V cables and slid the Wi-Fi card into the back of the player. The display on the front of the AD-8000N lit up, “Hello.”
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| The Apex made it a cinch to stream CDs like this one in MP3 format, but video files could be trickier. |
A setup menu let me choose audio and video outputs and screen shape. The AD-8000N quickly found my computer and let me view lists of my music, photos, and videos. For new music on my PC, I used MusicMatch to rip the CD Unearthed from the band E.S. Posthumus at 160 kilobits per second (kbps), giving the resulting sound quality a slight edge over the 128-kbps default. The emotion-filled instrumental “Nara” has stuck with me ever since it became the theme song of my favorite new HDTV show, Cold Case on CBS. Then I clicked on the media server’s Import tab to scan the subdirectory where I’d stored the track. A few seconds later I walked from my home office to the living room, found the song in a list on my TV screen, and was overwhelmed with Nara’s rising fervor.
When I switched to Moby’s “Porcelain,” which I’d encoded from Windows as a WMA file, the only difference was that I could now jump only to the next or last track, whereas with MP3 files I could scan ahead or back in a song by 10-second jumps. I also brought up a slide show as the music continued to play, then switched to trailers for some recent movies that I’d stored.
Streaming media isn’t always hassle-free. To get delivery of the images, music, and videos I selected from the menu on my TV, I sometimes had to shut down the firewall on my computer, which blocked songs from reaching the Apex or made them sound like they were playing through a tin can. Digital 5 says that it’s working to make its software compatible with various firewall programs.
As a DVD player, the AD-8000N performed well. Besides offering progressive-scan video output, it has dedicated buttons for slow motion in both directions, 12 zoom levels, and full Dolby Digital and DTS decoding. Media formats that the Apex recognizes on your home network (including MP3, WMA, and photos) can also be played from a disc in its DVD drive, and you can do things with disc-based files — like zooming or creating a temporary playlist using the remote — that you can’t do when the same material streams in.
My biggest complaint was the crowded, small-button remote. It’s too easy to press the wrong button if you don’t look at it first. Also, is it too much to expect to be able to pause a DVD, switch to a musical interlude streamed from my network while I brew a pot of tea in the kitchen, and then return to the movie where I left off? Instead, I’m thrown back to the opening FBI message. Still, embedding a media receiver in a DVD player saves space and a second set of A/V inputs.
Despite its rough edges and the unmistakable need for whoever’s installing it to be PC-net savvy, the Apex AD-8000N can deliver tons of multimedia fun to your family where it’s best appreciated: in the rooms with the most comfortable furniture and the best A/V equipment. After all, networks aren’t just for computers anymore.
— M.A