Anyone using Media Center Extender?

I just upgraded the guts of my rig last week and threw on Vista Home Premium as well intending to use it for some light video editing and VMWare for studying. Now that I've had a chance to look more at the capabilities of the built-in media center, now I'm really jonesing for a tv tuner/capture card so I can start using it

Since my computer is not close to any TV, I'm looking into the extenders for Media Center for the living room. It seems like there aren't very many to choose from - the only ones I could find were a couple of offerings from Linksys, one from DLink and one that comes with the XBox 360.

Are any of you using an extender and care to share your experiences? If I got one I'd probably try to run it over 802.11n in the interim until I have the time to run Ethernet and would use it to manipulate and record live TV, possibly some home videos and pictures, and possibly to store and watch some of our DVD movies.

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Comments

Nobylspoon

blargoe wrote:

I just upgraded the guts of my rig last week and threw on Vista Home Premium as well intending to use it for some light video editing and VMWare for studying. Now that I've had a chance to look more at the capabilities of the built-in media center, now I'm really jonesing for a tv tuner/capture card so I can start using it

Since my computer is not close to any TV, I'm looking into the extenders for Media Center for the living room. It seems like there aren't very many to choose from - the only ones I could find were a couple of offerings from Linksys, one from DLink and one that comes with the XBox 360.

Are any of you using an extender and care to share your experiences? If I got one I'd probably try to run it over 802.11n in the interim until I have the time to run Ethernet and would use it to manipulate and record live TV, possibly some home videos and pictures, and possibly to store and watch some of our DVD movies.

I built my own a while back for about $250 and I got alot of use out of it but now that Xbox 360 has added more video codecs I use that as my primary Media Center Extender, it does everything my old system would do along with playing 360 games. The new Netflix patch is a nice touch too.

I use the wireless adapter made for the 360 to connect to my network. I think the only thing that it wont do that you listed is using it as a DVR.

jibbajabba

I used my old xbox 360 for a while, but just too much hassle for me

I just want to punch a button on the remote and watch :P

hypnotoad

I ordered a linksys DMA-2100 for $60 from dell home. I'll let you know what i think.

astorrs

hypnotoad wrote:

I ordered a linksys DMA-2100 for $60 from dell home. I'll let you know what i think.

Wow, that's a great price!

blargoe

Cool... for $60 it might be worth trying anyway.

I saw where you can't use the extender to watch your ripped dvd's without some arcane workaround to be performed on the media center pc. That kinda sucks.

vCole

I use my Xbox 360 for a media extender, works well.

HeroPsycho

I have two of the Linksys extenders. They work fine, but if you're using 54g, make at least your extender or the MCE machine wired. Wireless for both doesn't work well. Brother had the same experience with using an N wireless infrastructure.

Claymoore

The XBox 360 Media Extender didn't like sharing wireless with my laptop either. The gf didn't like the ethernet cable that I drug through the apartment, so I upgraded the router, rewired, and now all of the gaming consoles used wired connections.

Nobylspoon

I share everything wireless to the 360 with the microsoft wireless adapter. Its still overpriced though ($99 new $75 used) but I bought it as a last resort when my xbox's NIC fried from a surge through the ethernet cable and withouth Xbox Live I see no reason for having an Xbox lol.

Claymoore wrote:

The XBox 360 Media Extender didn't like sharing wireless with my laptop either. The gf didn't like the ethernet cable that I drug through the apartment, so I upgraded the router, rewired, and now all of the gaming consoles used wired connections.