www.HUBCanada.com

Room-to-room multimedia - The leading edge of the connected home
By Sean Carruthers, posted 2/10/2004 1:27:35 AM

Audio only
Creative Sound Blaster Wireless Music
www.soundblaster.com
Estimated price: $349

Creative has long been the brand to beat when it comes to audio on the home computer, with a fantastic reputation for both its audio cards and its portable digital audio players. It’s not a surprise, then, that the company jumped into the world of media-sharing within the household. With the Sound Blaster Wireless Music, Creative has stuck with what it knows best: the product handles Windows Media Audio (WMA) files and MP3, but does not even attempt to share photos or video.

The Wireless Music uses 802.11b wireless networking to connect to your home computer. There is no 10/100 Ethernet port, though it can hook up to a PC using a USB connection for initial setup. Because the Wireless Music doesn’t connect to a television, the rear panel features audio connections only (and RCA stereo pair or optical out). The stereo audio cable and USB connector both come included in the box.

Because it is audio only, you can’t use a television display to make music selections. Instead, there is an LCD on the remote control, which connects to the Wireless Music via radio frequency (RF). This innovative touch means you don’t have to point the remote directly at the receiver in fact, you don’t even have to be in the same room to choose your tunes. The downside is a slight lag when using the remote: it can take a second or two after pressing the power button for there to be any indication that it has received the command, for example.

Because the Wireless Music is powered on and off and controlled from the remote, there’s only one button on the front of the unit itself, but it’s a good one: Find Remote. If you’ve misplaced it and press this button, the remote will beep. Unfortunately, the Sound Blaster Wireless Music is a bit pricey when you consider that it only handles music; you’re likely paying extra for the remote. Thankfully, despite the lag the remote works quite well, allowing you to sort through your entire audio collection by artist, song, album, and more in a fairly intuitive manner.

Audio and photos
Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter (WMA11B)
http://www.linksys.com/,
Estimated price: $250

Linksys has made a huge splash in the world of home networking, offering many products for the networking neophyte, both wireless and wired. The Wireless-B Media Adapter uses 802.11b to connect to your home network, allowing you to share music files (WMA and MP3) and photo files (JPEG, GIF, TIFF, and BMP), but not video. It has stereo RCA connectors on the rear for your audio, but no optical connection. Because it shares photos, it comes with a composite video and an S-Video connector for hooking to your television or VCR. Stereo audio and S-Video cables are included in the box. Though it has integrated 802.11b wireless (and features an adjustable antenna to maximize reception), it also has a 10/100 Ethernet connector on the rear for wired connections. All of these rear connectors can be tidied up with the included "cable hood," which snaps on over the connectors.

The on-screen menu system is very straightforward and easy to use, and it's even possible to set up the wireless component with the remote control once you've hooked the Media Adapter up to a display (or you can set it up using your PC and the configuration software). The simple and intuitive menu system makes it an absolute joy to use. Even though it doesn't handle video, it's easily our current favourite media-sharing product.

Audio, photos, and video
Pinnacle Show Center
http://www.pinnaclesys.com/
Estimated price: $388*

Pinnacle has a long history of working with video (see reviews of its home DV editing and capturing products in HUB January), so it's only natural that its foray into home multimedia sharing would include video, in addition to audio, and photo sharing.

With its brushed silver finish and component-style design, the Show Center looks like a DVD player or tuner module, so it won't look out of place next to your home theatre components. The wider design also means a wide variety of audio and video connectors on the rear of the unit: two separate RCA stereo outputs, digital coax and optical connectors, as well as S-Video, composite, and component video outputs. The component output is a nice touch, because it means that the Show Center can be used with many computer monitors and plasma displays in addition to televisions and VCRs. It also has a special output that can hook up to an adapter for use with standard VGA monitors (adapter available separately unless you buy the special bundle that includes it).

By default, the product is designed for wired connectivity (10/100 Ethernet): it comes with a 9 m (30 ft.) Ethernet cable (to connect to your network) and a 4.5 m (15 ft.) crossover cable (to connect directly to a PC). It also has a PC Card slot on the rear for adding 802.11b wireless connectivity. It's important to note, however, that there are very few cards that are compatible with the unit. You'll want to check the Pinnacle Web site before purchasing a card. If you choose an incompatible card, the Show Center may not fire up at all, or may start to work and then fail. Despite the modular nature -- and theoretic ability to upgrade to 802.11g later to improve video quality over a wireless connection -- this is actually fairly annoying if you're not in the mood for troubleshooting. Unfortunately, that's not the only problem. The remote control is less-than-intuitive, forcing you to press the A or B keys when other keys would seem more intuitive, and the play controls don't always work the way you'd think in certain applications. Spending some time familiarizing yourself with the manual will definitely pay off. The lack of immediate user-friendliness, though, is a serious liability in a product designed for the home user. The on-screen menu is better, with fairly easy navigation, but you still have to set up some preferences in the configuration menus ahead of time (such as making "full-screen" the default way of viewing photo slideshows).The bottom line with the Show Center is that it's a potentially great and full-featured product that needs a little work on the user interface to truly take off.

Stream Universal (SMCWMR-AG)
http://www.smc.com/
Estimated price: $349.

The EZ-Stream Universal was the first of the wireless multimedia-sharing devices we got our hands on, and it's also one of the most full-featured, sharing music, photos, and video files using a dual 802.11a/11g wireless networking component. This latter feature is key because the 11a/11g combination allows you to connect to almost any wireless network currently available for the home or office environment. The rear of the unit is fairly basic, with RCA stereo jacks for audio output and a composite video connector (no digital audio, no S-Video). There's also a 10/100 Ethernet port if you'd prefer to connect via cable instead. Once you're hooked up to a display, you can configure your wireless setup using the remote. The menu system, however, is less easy to navigate than desired.

Consequently, it's easier to configure it using a wired Ethernet connection. The device sits upright on a fairly flimsy plastic stand but it also seemed to work fine resting on its side without the stand.

The PC software client is fairly easy to figure out, but has one kink: if your library of media files is hefty, the media server software has a tendency to eat up your CPU cycles while it's building all the information for your media library. And that takes quite some time: we left it running overnight on a 3 GHz Pentium 4 processor, and it was still running at maximum CPU usage the next morning. It's always a problem when any program revs up your CPU to that extent for extended periods, because it means the machine running the software can do little else, and all other applications grind to a halt. With smaller libraries everything seems to work fine, but if you have a lot of content you want to share, you may also run into this problem. (It's also worth noting that SMC tech support is aware of the problem and is working on it.)

The remote control has buttons that allow you to switch directly to Audio, Internet Radio, Pictures, and Video with a single touch. The menu navigation could stand to be a touch more intuitive, but you get used to it fairly quickly.

Again, the EZ-Stream Universal is a potentially great little product, but the client software problem is a pretty major issue if your media library is extensive. Once it's dealt with, the product will be without peer.

(*Converted from US$299.)