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Linksys DVD player w/ WiFi and ethernet
An anonymous reader writes "Linksys has announced a progressive scan DVD player with 802.11g and ethernet. Users can stream MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, MP3, WMA, and other formats from their PC to the TV. Sure I can do this cobbling together other tools, but this is a self contained box even newbies can use. Think how many people could install and config a router and an AP, versus the number of people that can plug in one of the self-contained wireless routers? "
I can't wait to find out which kinds of porn my neighbors prefer...
here ya go. my boss has been eyeing one
and epson just came out with a whoopass hdtv. something like 72", built in photo printer, etc. $4k
vodka, straight up, thank you!
when it runs ogg.
...but WHY? I dont get it.
No HDCD playing, and no SACD playing. Blarg!
Do I get in trouble for watching pornography if the neighbor kid hijacks my wireless?
New meme: War Viewing
You heard it here first kids.
-Dave
Anyone want to place bets on how long before ____Insert OSS project here____ finds their work on it?
Take your pick- busybox, mplayer...the linux kernel(with modified drivers based on GPL of course)...
Please help metamoderate.
Pilot: There's that movie playing on the HUD again.
Co Pilot: It's the *&%#$ Matrix: Revolutions, again.
Pilot: Let's do a barrel roll and see if we can lose that geeks DVD player, buckle up.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This device is version 1.0! They haven't patched it to prevent the runaway wireless goatse from rearing its ugly mouth at you!
Now I can stream Ratchet and Clank from my PS2 through my Happauage BTTV card, grab it with Mplayer, out of my PC 'cross the network to my wireless access point and on to my TV!! Its the missing link I've been waiting for!
Think how many people could install and config a router and an AP, versus the number of people that can plug in one of the self-contained wireless routers? "
:-)
That sentence makes my head hurt. What does this have to do with the Press Release? Nobody configures these things anyhow. Is LinkSys still publishing a warning in their WAP docs not to change the default security settings? It's like if Schlage put a warning on their door locks not to lock the door, or you might not be able to get in your house. I bet it cuts down on the support calls.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No, just you.
I'm well aware that I'm in the minority, but I believe that convergence in the form which the megacorps are currently attempting to foist upon us is a dead horse which they are attempting to flog.
This on the other hand is my idea of the future. A single, well thought-out component of a larger, modular system. Having a PC with a nice screen instead of a telly is one thing. Having all the media files that are on your PC availible across a wireless network through this handy little gizmo is quite another. Where can I get one? When can I get one? This could cut down on just so of the many (frankly worrying) chunks of wire spaghetti that currently run between PC and TC/HiFi.
Sign the FSF's Anti-DMCA petit
Linksys does not offer Linux drivers for it's 802.11g products (nor does Broadcom, maker of Linksys chips) so unless you wish to shell out 20 bucks to Linuxant or wait until someone finally writes a driver for the FSF, you're SOL.
(I'm fighting this issue right now, so, yes Virginia, I'm a frustrated user!)
Yeaaaaah, that's their market. I'm willing to bet that every penny lost by the RIAA/MPAA due to *piracy* has been made up tenfold by companies that make ripping movies and music even easier and more convenient. Just like Sony Music screaming about dropping cd sales while Sony Electronics cashes in on portable MP3 Players.
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
Actually, I have been punished with too many mod points lately, I never get to post anymore :-(
...you should know that Linksys has no respect for the GPL, and only agreed to release its source code for $10 after threats of litigation.
This is not a company that you should support.
Sincerely,
Seth Finklestein
Open Source Company Watchdog
I'm not Seth Finkelstein. I still speak the truth.
There's a growing segment of the Joe Electronics Consumer population that's currently leapfrogging right over it. Most plasma TVs these days have an RGB input (standard VGA plug).
My 42" Samsung knockoff can do 1024x768, no problems. Even text looks great from the couch. The PC is tucked incospicuously out of the way. Although I have a regular progressive scan Sony DVD Player hooked directly to the TV, the PC of course has a DVD player, in addition to an 802.11g connection, an ATI AIW TV tuner card, and a giant hard drive.
Granted, the price point is a little higher, but the feature set is a LOT higher.
My xbox does this now.
Will this thing do "region-free" with a few menu commands? That's a must for me. "Turn off macrovison" is nice, but less crucual.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Now I can stream pr0n to my neighbor's TV
That's all you'll need to see your what your neighbors are watching.
What would be much more useful would be a DVD player that hooks up to your TV, but can DIVX encode video (from DVD or any other video source) and stream over 802.11g to another TV, or to your computer for archiving and storage. That way, your TV gets a perfect picture from your DVD player, and your computer can receive and save streams of lower-quality video for any purpose.
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
.. their wireless routers and cards can't maintain a connection with eachother for more than 30 days at a time.
Driving through rich, uptight neighborhoods hijacking video streams of jesus and such and replacing them with hardcore a2m action while you borrow bandwidth. SSID: Linksys!
As far as I can tell, this would save me exactly one S-Video cable, from my livingroom PC to the TV - And I'd just need to replace that with an ethernet cable.
Assuming they sell this at a price comparable to a typical standalone DVD player, it does nothing more than choose one box over another, with the added "bonus" of using quite a bit of your LAN's bandwidth while reducing overall flexibility of content (Can it play flash? My PC can, and dumps it out to the TV. Can it play "Fred's obscure and proprietary video encoding format"? If it exists, my PC can, and dumps it out to the TV.).
I suppose one could argue that this means you wouldn't need a livingroom PC at all - But I strongly suspect that such an argument automatically excludes 99% of the potential market for such a product.
Have I missed any cool features of this which might make it more useful? As I understand it, it does nothing I can't already do.
Looks like it doesn't support divx. Worthless for me without that.
Thats a load of crap. God I wish these hardware companies would stop supporting WMA.
The article and a quick google could not reveal any pricing information.
Anyone have any idea what kind of pricing we're talking about here?
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
These kind of devices should have a standard architecture that supports plugins for new, emerging, and custom media formats (Oh wait! That would defeat the built-in obsolescence). Even if the plugin architecture were platform-specific and not platform-agnostic (somehow, Ogg-Theora (or whatever the Ogg video format is) decoding in Java is likely to be, less than spectacular, perfornace-wise). it would be a start. The next step is a standard API for plugins, and, perhaps, manufacturer-supported remote compilation for each platform.
Otherwise, we won't get the kind of upgradability we'd like without the platform being completely open.
You could've hired me.
Don't be a fool - you've got to see these are illegal orders!
By my reading, this thing won't stream your DVDs out. It will only take incoming media and output it to your TV/Stereo.
Bleh. Too bad.
sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.
you could get the new unit from momitsu (the v880n) which does all that, and has DVI output for your HD set (so you can actually appreciate the progressive scan), and supports ogg.
While I was eyeing the recent flood of media players that hook up to the TV, I was also disappointed that just about every solution I find on the local shelves all require Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Thinking that they just put that there because it required a Windows share to hook up to was overly optimisitc, it needs to run software on the PC as well.
That rules out OS X and Linux users. I would also hazard a guess that this one will do the same, since their other similar media product has these restrictions.
I tried every decent and legal way I could think of to resolve the issue w/the business before I rented the chicken suit
This sounds like it was created to stream movies designed for a comptuer screen onto a TV set. Can you imagine trying to play a 640x480 movie on a 60 inch plasma TV? Talk about looking like shit.
They also didn't say how the media gets from the comptuer to the DVD player? Is there software I have to install? Is there a *NIX version? A Mac version? Do I have to pay for seperate licenses for each installation?
I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.
Now, if that makes sense to anyone, could you please explain it to me? I think I've confused myself.
Or can I stream anything? I've got several fansubbed anime titles I'd like to watch stored on my PowerMac, and it would be nicer to see them on the TV than even on my laptop.
Is *any* OS supported via some sort of file share (http/ftp/samba), or will Linksys require some special streaming client?
I didn't see the details from the press release, but if it's just looking for a SMB fileshare you specify though a web interface (which would make the most sense in my mind), that would be the best and most open solution.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
They say it plays DVDs and VCDs. They say it will play Divx from your PC. But will it play a Divx CD (and if not, why the hell not?)? Will it play SVCD (from the media)? The press release is damn poor, leaving such obvious points unaddressed, does not reflect well on the product.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I'm going to beam goatse to the house next door where that guy won't stop playing rap all night long at volume levels normally reserved for movie theatre sound commercials.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
Now don't get me wrong, I love tinkering with the inner workings and do not know of a single electronic device I own (and some I don't) with the "Removing will void your warrenty" stickers still in tact, but there are times where simplicity is really appreciated. Yes, I can connect my pc to my vcr inputs, plug in some ether in my living room and watch any movie from my file server, and it will work, but systems like these and TiVo just work, and allow me to relax in my leisure time.
Just because you can use sed routed through five pipes and a database engine to strip a tv-guide website and schedule a record, other than bragging rights on IRC (what geek hangs out at a water cooler in the open) why would you? I will still use the windoze guideplus that came with my ATI card to get my listings unashamed. I think a lot of geeks need to remember that the easy ways are still ok, as long as they are not relied on as the only ways.
Been there done that w/ the xbox. OH and I can even do mame too to boot.. But seriously.. Sounds good.. Will we be able to upgrade the software as newer codecs come out?
There's no Freedom like UFP-dom
Are you interested, yet?
So, I can pop a DVD into the drive on my laptop, and stream the encrypted data directly out via the network to the player, which will then decrypt it and send it to the TV.
I wonder if the firmware on this thing can be flashed to play other formats...
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
Over at El Gato they have a similar product that does work with OSX. El Gato Eye Home. There are numerous similar products for music only as well. Some even support streaming radio stations. My favorite sounding is the Roku Labs one although I hasten to add I don't own one. But the iTunes integration for both PCs and Macs sounds very intriguing.
It plays about 90% of the divx files I have.
It should cost you a little more than $100.
A. Rightmann
First post, yeah.
I'll keep my Myth box thank you. But this sounds like a nice product heading in the right direction. Of course aside from the geek factor of the Myth box I've got myself a multimedia Swiss Army knife, with PVR, commercial detection/skip, database, movies browsable by cover/name, CD ripping, weather forcasts, RSS feeds and of course a funtioning Linux box I can use from the couch.
But this still sounds interesting.
Quack, quack.
another product to infringe on multiple GPL'ed projects.
this is a troll
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
From what I can see this is very similar to the On Media DVD player reviewed a few weeks ago- the only diffrence I see the that this one has 802.11g instead of 802.11b.
If it's anything like their access points and routers, I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole. I think they have yet to actually complete any firmware for any of their products. I've got a WAP11 in which the only way to fix random reboots is to install a well hidden 1.1A firmware that will never see the light of day.
Many of their routers don't work without one problem or another, and their drivers are complete crap. Especially the WUSB products.
Looks great, except that I would only be interested if it supported lossless FLAC or uncompressed WAV streams.
Now imagine a beowulf cluster of them. You could play all those DVDs at the same time....
This sig no verb.
Too bad this is nothing new.
There's software called Qcast Tuner which uses your Playstation2 as a media player. You stream music or movies or photos from your PC to your PS/2 and it plays them on your TV.
You obviously need a PS2 with LAN adapter (and optionally a wireless adapter), but it gives you the functionality. This new linksys is nice though because it's all together in one purpose-made package.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
What the hell is up with the development team? I don't know of any project that is higher than version 20 or so (like emacs.)
This seems like a product that utterly failed to go through any strategic analysis. Some pertinent questions might be:
1) Why would I want my DVD player somewhere other than by the Television that it plays on?
2) Why would I want to pay more for a streaming device like this when I can buy a DVD player for like $50?
3) Why would I want to play my music (MP3, WMA, etc.) through the speakers on my television, or route said signal through my television?
It seems to me the segment for this kind of home media player is already well served by more targeted products. Specifically I would point to the rise of Digital Media Receivers that stream audio and video from NAS or a PC. They come (generally) with LCDs for management, are network and even wireless ready, and are fully adaptable.
In the case of people who want the NAS and digital receiver together you have things like the Tivo, Digital Media Players, etc.
Just seems to me like someone at Linksys/Cisco decided to merge a buinch of products with little thought (read: frontal lobotomy victim) to how such a device would be used and whether there is even a market for this (read: alternate reality).
-Rick
Gee. I wonder if the bastards actually coded the damn thing, or if they were good boy and did the right thing: steal code from an opensource project... no? =oP
I've been using Qcast on my PS2 todo this for years.
Plus Qcast will let me use a whole bunch of different formats this can't.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I wonder if one of these features is going to be a built in ethernet switch (this is a Cisco project after all).
With the XBox, Gamecube, and PC all having the capability for networked gaming, it would be nice to only need one ethernet drop, and no external switch. Perhaps it could act as a wireless bridge for other devices plugged into it to eliminate the requirement for an ethernet drop.
how about being able to play PAL dvds. Or at least have no region encoding.
The 30 or so of you geeks who wouldn't have bought one to begin with are not who they're looking to sell to.
Is there is some Nordic conspiracy the rest of us here should know about?
It seems a scary inevitability that entertainment and your home computer network are going to merge one way or another. I first noticed it with TiVo (really, a HD that records TV for you). Ever since then, people have created their own version, as well as other PC->entertainment hookups with features that include streaming music from PC's over to entertainment systems.
You can even hook up your PS2 to your DSL line via a router to trash talk online. This new device would be just another step in that seemingly inevitable integration process.
The best part about this is that there are many players in this game. Thankfully, it's not just an MS Media Center PC dominating the category.
I also use it as 'Artwork', as the screensaver displays changing images
The 802.11g is great I typically get over 30mbps through 1 floor and a couple of walls (with WAP enabled, no Broadcast SSID of course!).
I can access the Office VPN (AES Encrypted)from the couch! Although I am still a little paranoid, so I have all of the shares PGP encrypted as well
The only part that sucks is the Microsoft wireless bluetooth keyboard and mouse, which must be constantly reinstalled because they lose sync. Once I get the logitech version, it will be great.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
"but this is a self contained box even newbies can use. "
I know people that can't work a VCR, and they're supposed to be able to setup a _safe_ wireless, networked DVD player?!!
Awesome idea, maybe not quite intended for your average newb though
Error 407 - No creative sig found
...telling me about another cool gadget my girlfriend won't let me buy. :o(
I am NaN
Devices like this are getting more and more common - the basic functionality is all there, but you can't select audio content without turning on your TV for the UI.
It's not clear from the article whether that's the case with this product, but since it's not bragging about the front panel display, I'm not optimistic.
That's hassle I don't want when putting on music. Picking a CD off the shelf and putting it into a tray is less trouble.
Me, I'm saving up for a Squeezebox.
The DP500 is open source based (uCLinux) and works well with Linux hosts (there are several projects supporting it on SourceForge).
PS2: the BroadQ system requires the Network Adapter and installation of software on the PC. Allows streaming of music and DivX. Supposedly licensed to one of the myriad of PS2 third-party suppliers to also try to sell.
XBox: The Xbox Music Mixer (or the new "Media" thing mentioned above, requires software to be installed on the PC, but runs under WinXP only. Doesn't stream movies... yet. But the ability to do so is there, obviously.
TiVo: Home Media Option. Doesn't stream movies... yet, but handles music and slideshows. On the plus side, they say their streaming software works on Macs. Downside: currently limited to about 400 songs in the queue and you can't play the slideshow while listening to music - it's either one or the other. Hell, TiVo has enough problems convincing non-technical people that it's more than just a "glorified VCR", let alone explaining to non-believers the whole "streaming music" thing. (small disclaimer: I'd be lost without my TiVo.)
It's not like the idea is a bad one. I'm all for simplifying the Computer-to-HomeTheater process. How many of us have wanted to take our computer music libraries and play 'em through the stereo? For the most part, the easiest way to do so has been to get an MP3-capable DVD player and load a CD with hundreds of files, letting the player randomly take 'em. With the added bonus of being able to take the same CDs to the MP3-capable car stereo, it's a one-stop shop. Or we use an audio cable already setup to plug the iPod or Nomad Jukebox into the stereo and play that way.
Streaming music over the 'net implies that most homes are wired already, with network outlets near their TVs and/or stereos... or have gone wireless. I don't think the general buying audience is ready for this level of technology yet.
It's taken years for folks to get comfortable with digital cameras, and yet they still don't understand that you need to crop or resize that 2MB photo of little Sally before emailing it to the entire office.
We have all seen the reports of the various PC manufacturers trying to get a bigger piece of the home entertainment pie. Dell and Gateway being the most obvious.. Also Microsoft, with their weak XP Media Center, and more interesting X-Box tie-ins.
Now, we've got the dominant producer of Internet infrastructure jumping in with a networked DVD player. Interesting... I wonder if this was one of the major reasons for buying Linksys, and we me see more from them.
How many of the current line of Linksys products are hackable? Not many.
Oh for the days of a Samsung ARM and peripheral chips. Woe on the days of Marvell.
I've always wanted a DVD player that needs to be restarted every few hours...
Why?
Cause it's got that cool Cisco logo on the front of it.
If I get this right, all I need is a cheapo linux file server with all the media files in it and then the linksys gadget will PLAY them? If this gadget has the divx decoder embedded and is upgreadable im buying one pronto!
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
Thanks for the link, you just made my week! This sounds perfect. Plays MP3/MP4/AAC/OGG/WMA, plus all the cool video formats! Any idea how much this will cost?
Dan
Which what they call their wireless media adapter. it is supposed to wirelessly allow you view pictures and listen to mp3 on your TV. This thing and the hideous software that came with it basically sucked ass. I can't even tell you the number of problems getting it to work, and it never worked proberly. It would skip on the music, hang on the photos and then eventually blow up my (linksys) wireless router. Perhaps they were using the WMA11B as a beta test device for this product. Then only thing I can say is thank God for Best Buys return policy. I have voted with my money.
DK
I was considering buying one of those a few weeks ago, but Kiss technologies is apparently violatinn the GPL. Their player uses a verion (or at least parts) of MPlayer and they have ignored severel requests by the MPlayer team to release the source to their version. (follow the link for an email-by-email account of the whole story) I'm waiting to see how that gets resolved before I buy one. If they come clean and release the source I'll probably buy, but if they try to stonewall or litigate their way out of it, I won't.
0 1 - just my two bits
1 - where can i get one?
2 - does it cost more or less than assembling a cheapo PC to do the same job? (seeing as its from linksys, probably more)
there is no comment... just a question which fit nicely in the subject line... but hey, what do I know.
What I am wondering is if it will actually stream VOB files. As crazy as this may sound, I would like to rip my entire DVD collection to a/some big ass drive(s) and then use something like this Linksys box to access the VOB files and stream DVD quality picture to my bigscreen. Does anybody know if this or anything like this will do what I am talking about? Is there a better solution? I just dont want to have to encode DivX all the time if I am going to be ripping 200+ dvds to my collection....any thoughts?
Qcast for PS2 has been able todo this for years...
Yeah... but not *WELL*. I was an early QCast adopter, and thought it was pretty good. The old 1.x version had some issues (occasional audio sync problems, no ff/rw, etc), but all in all it was decent.
Then BroadQ came out with the 2.x version ala Game Shark Media Player, and things started to go south. First, they lowered the supported video spec from the 1.x standard, thus causing problems with almost all of my 16:9 movies ripped at resolutions larger than 512x384 (constant lock-ups). On top of that, their support has gone to pot (they just ignore email support requests now) and I question whether the company is teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. You don't have to look very far for evidence of that. They've been promising for over 8 months to ship out new CD's to registered users to replace the original CD's that have trouble booting. I haven't seen mine yet. Have you?
So maybe if you've got a collection of low-res, low bitrate movies and you are one of the lucky few who own a CD that still boots, QCast is good for you. I wouldn't go recommending it to others, though. Personally, I shitcanned my copy of QCast, sold off my PS2 (because that's all I used it for), and just build myself a video client out of an old laptop to stream movies from my server to the TV. It may not have a pretty little GUI, but at least I can get through a movie without the damned thing locking up.
Gateway has had a similar device for a while now. It can be found right here.
That way they don't have to keep coming over here and asking me to play it for them. ;)
In an unrelated event, I realized a couple of days ago that my entertainment center has more devices (3) plugged into its ethernet hub than the office downstairs (2)! Now arrives a candidate DVD player with ethernet. Don't some home theater receivers now have ethernet as well?
The entertainment center has a TiVO, an Xbox and a wireless hub plugged into it and the office only has two computers!
The world, it is a-changing.
ah but do we realy *want* them to secure there ap's as cynical as this sounds im all for millions of dupes buying open ap's if it means 100% coverage
Damn the man!
... not nice.
for a bunch of info on plasma TV's, ive found THIS site to be very helpful and right on the money.
What I want is a wireless monitor connection! That way I can set the box in a closet or something
All your movies are belong to us.
LINK
Is it just wording, or have you found something out there that doesn't (or by chance has drivers for OS X)
The only thing I've found that is OS X compatible and has a majority of these features (no DVD player, however) is elgato's newly announced EyeHome.
What I'd really like -- perhaps I'm in the minority here -- would be a unit with either its own HD or at least the capability to add an external drive and serve to the network. It seems a bit silly to saturate my wireless lan by streaming files from the machines it's less suited for to the home theater system for which it was designed.
That said, I think I'll be purchasing an EyeHome, but I'm going to give it a few weeks to allow everyone to announce their entries into this device category.
The usual logic for A/V is that components are higher quality than all in ones, for a wide variety of reasons you have probably all seen hashed out in many places.
But does it change a bit in the digital domain? Can some of the "components" be software now, but all run on a general purpose box? Should the components be more like PC peripherals (connected in slots or USB 2 or Firewire or ethernet) rather than standalone units?
My vision of the future of Audio is very different, though it scares me how easy it makes DRM. Namely that speakers should be digital, with amplifier and speaker together (or as paired components) and everything else just talk to the speakers over the ethernet. The speakers would know how to combine streams. Ditto eventually for video. Get a great monitor (possibly all digital with video stream decompressor on it or in it) and let many applications flower that will send it video.
But in this case, it does make sense to have an all in one box with the comoponents found in a box like this (namely a reader for the current optical disk format of choice) and networking. And then to add components (like Ogg support) in software.
Too bad this vision makes DRM so easy and strong, since finally the analog hole would get closed.
I keep hearing a "big deal" but really think its a great product for the average person if its afforable. By now there are a ton a consumers with huge mp3 and divx collections on their PC's. Up til now you've needed to A)buy an expensive game console and then use addon software or B) build a dedicated HTPC. I've done option B) but really lately I've just been using it for mp3 and movie playback since there is little on TV I even care about catching anymore.
If its under $200, and I don't see why it shouldn't be, I predict this selling really well.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
The milkdrop visualization output to tv when playing mp3s :)
Lovely. Of course, the Kiss DP1508 has everything the Linksys player has and more: for instance, XVid and Ogg Vorbis support.
Seeing as XVid is what 99% of movies are encoded in these days, you've got to hope the Linksys supports it, although I note the website doesn't explicitly confirm this.
The Kiss player also has Internet radio support, 80GB built-in HD for Tivo-style stuff, multi-region DVD support, and a whole bunch of other things I've probably forgotten.
Admittedly you have to plug a wireless Ethernet card in seperately, but at least the option is there. Having a Kiss DP-450 myself, I can say that they are extremely cool pieces of kit.
for you and the other 2 persons that use OGG.It's a shame really...
>Open access (maybe a bit of WEP, but AirSnort will take care of that)
Its 802.11G using WPA. You can't crack it like WEP. Maybe you'll get lucky and your neighbor will use a passphrase like "password" or some other dictionary word.
54mbs in contention, in the air, and at 2.4ghz may (or probably) cause frame skipping and other problems when Johnny fires up the microwave, your other neighbor's b network starts doing massive file transers, Joan from upstairs talks on her cordless phone, etc. The press release mentions that you can use ordinary cat-5 cable instead of the wireless. Something tells me many people are going to go that route if they live in a 2.4ghz heavy trafficked area.
Look at it this way, you're getting around 20-15Mbps (probably closer to 15) of real world usable bandwidth with 802.11g. DVD quality movies use around 6-9 Mbps depending. Unless conditions are very good, you won't get DVD quality stuff without some problems.
I do wonder if the DVD drive will read data CDRs with divx files on them and play them. Can't see why it couldn't do this and if it does I'm totally buying this thing when it comes out.
linksys is also in violation of the GPL, many times over. they use linux as the operating systems in many routers. check the lkml for details of the ongoing saga.
I've seen a few of these things that claim to support a variety of formats, but when it comes right down to it, they rely on the PC to decode most of them and pump them to the player.
Can this thing decode the Divx (and hopefully MPEG4) all by itself, allowing the use of a lightweight machine for the media storage/serving?
This isn't a new product. GoVideo's got something that'll do the same thing. I'm sure that 802.11G is possible on that as well if it isn't already (wired is STILL better for streaming video IMHO). If not, a simple module hack would do the trick - the cards they use are standard D-link wireless cards, not some unknown brand.
Pricing on the GoVideo is probably around 200-250 now, based on LinkSys's past price points, I'd expect they'll show up around the same.
Philips has a line of products named Streamium that has Wi-Fi built in. they already sell a DVD player which can play DVD's from a PC. I have a streamium boombox that can play MP3 from PC and it works well. it's a pretty sweet unit.
As far as I know, only the JoyPort (www.joyfaktory.com) plays all these codecs natively. I think it's an EPIA board running Linux with Xine and mplayer ... but it's pricy as hell.
Put the frickin Original CD in the DVD player and shut the hell up! Or Make a Music CD from the wav or shn file and THEN put the CD in the DVD player and shut the hell up! If the original "lossless" files then you can skip the mp3 format all together and leave those of us without terabytes of storage space to enjoy out music libraries in peace.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
Here are some to get you started:
Hacking the Linksys WRT54G (how to build new Linux images, compile new tools, etc)
Hacking the Linksys WRV54G (similar to above).
Custom Linux CramFS image for the Linksys WAP54G
Someone's also begun hacking the Linksys WET11
There may be others.
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
Another alternative is the Pinnacle Showcenter, which is already avaailable on the Pinnacle website. It got quite a good write up from THG.
Wonder why they dont just toss in a web browser and bluetooth keyboard/mouse support?
I just got a LiteOn LVD-2002 because it plays DivX/MPEG 4. And then something better comes out.
*sigh*
Hmm, that sucks. I'm still using the old version that I bought like a year ago without any problems.
However, I do use my PS2 to play games, plus I recently purchased a ReplayTV, so I'll soon beable to retire my Qcast stuff.
With the Replay I've been using a piece of software called (Replay Client) that lets me offload the mpegs to my PC.
Also, since my living arangements are going to change soon (buying a house) When I setup my playroom it'll allow me to concatnate all my video/audio hardware into once space, so I'll have some better integration.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I need a writing practice