Gateway Wireless Connected DVD Player Reviewed

Anonymous Howard writes "Designtechnica has a review of a Gateway ADC-320, a home theater device that will play not only DVDs, but media clips off the network. Supported types include DivX, Xvid, Mpeg1 & 2, MP3 and WMA. The thought of a networked media device is not new, but I'm curious as to how many people actually own one? How well do they work? What are the best ones? Is UP&P support worth the extra money? Is this the future of all DVD players for the home theater?"

Comments

Wish it weren't just the future...

[chrisis]

The one thing that is holding me back from buying a consumer PVR/DVD recorder is that none of them are network enabled. Sucks to be limited to the internal HDD or disc-swapping -- I want to save recorded stuff to my network storage too!

And all the talk of being able to edit recorded material on the device itself -- bah humbug I say. I want a device that allows me to use Adobe Premiere to edit stuff, not the OSD!

SMC EZ-Stream Wireless Multimedia Receiver $93

[clinko]

Cut/Pasted: near bottom
SMC EZ-Stream Wireless Multimedia Receiver $93

Same thing, Cheaper.

Server software

[sploo22]

Gateway's server software, called the "Gateway D5 Streaming Media Server," will only work on Windows operating systems (98SE and later) so Mac or Linux users need not apply.

Gentlemen, start your packet sniffers...

X-Box Media Ceter

[Em Ellel]

I am sure I'm one of the MANY who would say - just gex a modded xbox with XBMC software - it can do all of the same stuff, plus play xbox games, and being that XBMC is software (Open Source, too), it will be ever extending with new formats. All of this for same price or cheaper. ... and yeah, it can run linux too...

Re:X-Box Media Ceter

[cslarson]

I know how you feel. Whenever this topic gets brought up someone always mentions the xbox and it seems to get dismissed. You can get these on ebay for somewhere around $85 new. Mod it for free and fun, and it will be able to do this dvd player can and more. XBMC has become one of the most amazing open source projects as far as I'm concerned. Another project called X-Link has now been integrated into xbmc meaning it can function similarly to xbox-live, only for free. I use xbmc as my dashboard, so i turn on my xbox and it's all there, music, games, weather, movies, x-link, emulators... all with a really fantastic looking interface. I don't know why i feel the need to evangelize this, but I guess I still can't really believe it myself and I've had it for years.

Re:80's Styling

[bundaegi]

Talking of the 80s, looks like you can even play your old NES cartridges on it... I think.

Why oh why

[Hido]

It seems like every player that has come out so far has one problem or another. I mean I read the review and thought "This is it" till it hit the part *Windows only*.

Why do they have to go ahead and re-invent the wheel when they could have just taken a hint and used SMB/CIFS? I mean if the open source world could do it I am sure a these guys could have too.(does samba ring a bell?).

Also what is with the Region 1 only? Would it not have been better if they just made it region-free which would have let a hell of a lot more people go for the product? I am in Japan and I can tell you right now that the product is pretty much ruled out because of limitations like that.

Just my 2 cents on a sleepy Thursday morning :)