Paul Thurrot's (non) review of Linksys Extenders on his Windows Weekly show.

It's not often I write a blog post to publicly disagree with another bloggers (non) review of a product (I say non-review as it was pretty much a flame and total non recommendation for Linksys extenders, with Paul saying on his Windows Weekly show that the Linksys devices are ''So bad that I cannot recommend anyone buy any one of these things'). I believe Paul is set to do a review of a V2 Extender and based on his feedback on the Linksys I don't think he'll be happy with any extender. I do however want to talk more around this....

Paul is perfectly entitled to his opinion on the Linksys Extender, however I think he completely missed the mark with his remarks and 'preview' of the Linksys extenders and I want to explain why.

Compared head to head with a 360 sure the UI is a little less fluent in animations, Although noticeable if you compare directly to an 360 it certainly is not anywhere near as bad as Paul made out, it is perfectly usable and does not feel awkward or slow in general use. To Paul himself I would ask this, you said you got sent a device, was it the release firmware?, did you actually ask if you had the final firmware which shipped? The reason I ask is I was in the beta program for the Linksys and actually the DLink you also mentioned as well as a couple of other V2 Extenders. My release firmware on the Linksys which is obviously release code, is faster in the UI than the earlier versions. I would check into this... However lets just get away from the UI a minute. You said it doesn't have any of the transitions etc, The release version AND quite a large amount of beta builds prior to the release do have the most of the transitions, only a few transitions are missing which are due to obviously the hardware on the Linksys being more video decoding focused than UI focused, but OK fine, thats still the UI and I said I'd move on so lets so that now....

One thing Paul did fail to mention about the extender is form factor and weight, it is TINY compared to an Xbox 360, this is an extender device, intended for extensibility within the home, the 360 and even other extenders like the DLink are not modeled to do what the Linksys does in these areas which is fits perfectly in locations that extenders may not otherwise fit. I give you the example of my kitchen for instance: http://www.on10.net/blogs/EnglishBloke/The-Media-Center-show-interview--Media-Center-in-the-kitchen/

 You can also catch some video of the DMA2100 in action and decide for yourself if you think the UI is too slow in tip 5 of my 'Top 5 things you didn't know you could do with your vista media center PC' video over on soapbox here : http://video.msn.com/video.aspx?vid=d620b6fe-548c-4c33-8466-5bd3112da335

The Linksys DMA2100 actually weighs just 0.7kgs and is a tiny 170x113x188mm which is quite possibly the smallest device of this kind I've ever seen. 

Not that it's that important as I'd expect it from any next generation extender but it also has HDMI, as well as component and composite which is pretty cool but this is a feature I've come to expect by now so I probably wouldn't have mentioned it either.

Paul did emphasize that it is silent, however he didn't mention how cool it runs which is obviously important if intended to be in a closed environment.

Now here is another area which the Linksys has really great support, Wireless.. Something which the XBox 360 extender for instance does NOT support out of the box. You will need to buy an adapter separately for the 360 if you want to use wireless with the 360 which incurs further expense. In addition it doesn't just support b/g, it supports wireless N which is awesome for HD. Not only that but the antennas work awesome, I got an amazing range during testing from the Linksys showing how HIGH QUALITY the wireless hardware in this unit is.

Now while we're talking about hardware. The V2 extenders differ from the 360 in one very important way, they support manufacturer hardware decoding through Media Center Extender. This feature is not currently available on the Xbox 360. Now the Linksys boasts a hardware video decoder (sigma processor) which is capable of WMV9 MP@HL (20 Mbit/s, 1080p30) hardware decoding, it also plays DivX (including 5), Xvid, (with MP3 or AC3 in both), H.264/AVC with Vorbis/PCM/AC3/AAC/AAC LC, Mpeg 1, Mpeg 2, Mpeg 2 HD, and AVC HD. For those who are interested in the file extensions for these types.... avi, mkv, mp4, mov, mpeg, wmv, dvr-ms, vob and m2ts.

 Now this is HUGE and makes this extender very applicable to many people with and without 360's, but Paul completely failed to mention this, I'm not sure why, maybe he was using it just for recorded TV playback, which is fine if thats his only personal use for it, but his comment that he can't recommend ANYONE seems like a huge huge generalization.

 Now there is still more... One of the huge things for me was power consumption, the Linksys DMA2100 uses 16W of power, yes that's right 16W... Compared to around 150-175 that the 360 uses doing the same thing.

This is again HUGE, I actually leave mine on permanently in the kitchen, this gives it instant on capability by simply turning the connected TV on and I'm running. For me if anything should have been emphasized it is this. But hey power for me is important seeing I'm running 5 extenders all the in my house.

 Finally the last thing worth mentioning is the price. The release price of any product is always higher to start off with, The 360's price when released was around $150 more than the price the currently cheapest SKU, for the same thing. In addition the 360 is obviously supported by software sales. The Linksys DMA2100 for instance started out at $250, you can now find them new on Ebay for $199 after only a couple of months of release. This is for a device capable of Wireless N, H.264. DivX/XVid playback, HDMI out and with insanely low power consumption.... You wouldn't say this is a good deal?

 Anyway that's really all I wanted to say, I felt it needed to not only mention this but to show exactly why the comparison of a 360 to a Linksys Extender is not good comparison, they are aimed at different consumers for different uses. The 360 is a power house of a games machine which CAN act as a Media Center extender and its horse power carries over well, but it's form factor, wireless capabilities and hardware video playback capabilities within the Extender session do not at present.

 The Linksys for me, reviewing it from an impartial point of view having used one for months now in my home is an essential part of my setup at home and is my first choice for the application I use it for. I think performs in HD playback amazingly and that is after all what it is intended to do, the UI is slick and leaps and bounds better than V1 Extenders, and as a small, compact, power efficient wireless N enabled device it cannot be beat.

Steve.