Bridging the Gap: Wireless Networking Gear
"Outside of the workplace environment, consumers really don't want to be around their PC when they're listening to music. They want to either listen in their living room where their stereo is or they want to make it portable," Ryan Jones says, and it is tough to argue with him. "So obviously, the goal is to put that content out to the living room, where consumers are more comfortable".
Jones is a senior analyst with the Media & Entertainment Strategies division of the Yankee Group, a Boston-based technology research firm. He adds, "One of the technologies that were seeing emerge this year is home network media nodes. Those devices, and things like them, will be the next most-important consumer electronics since HDTV. Specifically, because it's filled that huge gap in the Internet media products so far, by making Internet content accessible in the media room or the living room."
One example of this sort of bridge connecting a computer to traditional home theater components is manufactured by cd3o, a San Diego-based corporation whose flagship product is a network MP3 player. Available in three different models, with street prices ranging from $149 to $249 they're affordable, handsome-looking devices that resemble a sleek, smallish laptop with an antenna in the back of it.
cd3o calls the various versions of their Network MP3 Player the c100, c200, and c300. The c100 lacks a wireless Ethernet connection. It also lacks a digital output, which is only available on the c300 (both coaxial and optical S/PDIF digital outputs, a very smart move on their part). Do you need a digital output on your home media bridge? That depends on whether a digital input is available on your home theater receiver. The c300 also has a longer-range wireless antenna.
The cd3o Network MP3 Player will pull music files off your PC whether it is connected to your home network via an Ethernet cable or a wireless connection. While a 100-megabit per second Ethernet is by far the faster of the two choices, not all homes have Cat-5 cables strung in their walls and wireless Ethernet is definitely the buzz technology this year. Many purchasers of cd30's products will be taking advantage of wireless capabilities.
An 802.11b Primer
The wireless networking system the cd30 products use is called 802.11b (say "eight-oh-two dot eleven-bee"), the current dominant wireless computer-networking format. This mouthful of numbers, a dot and a letter was created by another lump o' letters, the IEEE (the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, say "eye-triple-e") in 1997. 802.11 was their original specification for wireless LANs, but it ran at an anemic data rate of 2Mbps (megabits per second). Fortunately, the IEEE quickly created the 802.11b standard, which works at a top speed of 11Mbps. Your actual mileage, for a whole host of reasons will often be about half that. Since most current broadband Internet connections rarely get beyond 3Mbps, that is more than enough speed for browsing the Web.
In just a few short years, 802.11b has became the most common wireless networking format. If you ever see a bunch of kids surfing the 'Net with their laptops at your local Starbucks, or a bunch of businesspeople with laptops at an American Airlines' Admirals Club, you are seeing 802.11b in action. It got there first, and rightly grabbed the lion's share of attention as the wireless Internet and Ethernet standard.
While 802.11b speeds are fine for many broadband applications, it is a bit pokey for video-and even for music, where it can usually (but not always) do the job. Pat Hurley, the co-author of Smart Homes For Dummies and Home Theater For Dummies (both published by John Wiley & Sons) says, "I tried streaming audio files between two different PCs in my house. Just as an experiment, I had an audio file present on one of the PCs on my 802.11b network, and tried to play it on a remote PC using Windows Media Player. And even with just an audio file, an 192kb per second MP3 file, it worked, but there were times when it would fade out for a second and buffer, and then continue."
Which is why 802.11a and 802.11g have come into existence. Both have their pluses and minuses. 802.11g is both compatible with the ubiquitous but slower 802.11b and offers the same blistering top speed of 54Mbps that 802.11a offers. In addition, 802.11g is starting to see the same economy of scale that helped lower the cost of 802.11b products.
"But I don't think that 802.11a is dead", Pat Hurley is quick to add. "I think we'll see more of these things like SMC has just announced, which is the dual-mode 802.11a and 802.11g in one box" (the SMCWMR-AG EZ-Stream Universal Wireless Multimedia Receiver, which sells for about $300). "And 802.11a has a lot of advantages, in terms of being on a less-crowded chunk of frequency spectrum, because with 2.4GHz, you've got the microwaves interfering with it, you've got this very real problem of cordless phones interfering with it. If you live in a crowded area, you've got the potential of everybody else's 802.11b network interfering with yours and there are issues there."
The Starbucks factor comes back into play at some point, however, and combining 802.11a with 802.11b or 802.11g on your home network is essential if you would like to use your wireless laptop or PDA outside of your house.
The Big Players Enter the Scene
Because these media bridges are built around 802.11 technology, it's not surprising that several large players in the networking area have designed media bridges of their own.
The Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter (street price of about $200) is another popular home media bridge, which transmits photos and music from a PC to a TV and a home theater receiver. The box, like most of the home media bridges, sits by the home entertainment system attached with standard consumer electronics cables. It communicates with the home network via 802.11b or an Ethernet cable which, at 100Mbps is the best bet for these types of applications if you have the hardwired infrastructure in your home to support it.
Using the remote control included with the Linksys product to manipulate menus on your TV, you can browse through the digital pictures on your computer by folder, filename or thumbnail. You can view pictures one at a time, or watch an automatically generated slideshow of all the pictures in a given folder. The media adapter supports four popular picture formats: JPG, GIF, TIF and BMP. You use the remote control's Zoom button to get a close-up of the details in your pictures.
You can also use the remote to browse your MP3 or WMA music collection by title, artist, genre, folder or play list. Choose the music you want and let the Wireless-B Media Adapter play it through your stereo system. You can even let music play in the background while you browse your pictures.
Apple has yet to join the media bridge builders, but it certainly would not be hard for Apple to build such a product. "I've never talked to Apple about this," Hurley says, "but just being a guy who has a Mac, and uses the AirPort and uses a lot of other Apple stuff and reads all the Apple sites, I would be surprised not to see Apple do something along these lines eventually." At the moment, the closet thing to such a product is the AirPort Extreme that Hurley just mentioned, which streets for about $250, and while it's not a bridge to your home theater, it's a fine 802.11g wireless home networking hub.
As more home media bridges begin to leave the drawing boards and enter homes, Ryan Jones says, "What's most amazing is the sheer volume of solutions that are coming out in the marketplace and from players you would not normally expect". Besides Linksys and SMC, numerous other home networking companies, including Netgear and Microsoft, are either launching or considering launching one of these products over the next six months or so. Jones says that within five years, you will find similar features in "80 to 90 percent of audio receivers".
Beyond the Bridge
While the wireless media bridges are certainly attractive, there are other methods of getting music and pictures from a PC into the home theater gear in the den or living room. Both ReplayTV and TiVo's latest generation will allow for viewing of JPEG's on a TV screen. And MP3s could soon enter the equation as well. Bob Poniatowski, product market manager for TiVo says, "We're looking at things like MP3 audio jukeboxes, where you could either store music on your TiVo hard drive and have that accessible in your living room, or perhaps stream from a remote server. If you have a computer in your den, maybe you'd access that for your MP3 files and play them through your A/V system in your living room." ReplayTV has very similar plans on the drawing boards.
A couple of years ago, dedicated MP3 servers were the rage at tradeshows such as the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. While products such as the cd30 and Linksys bridges or the ability to use a PVR to play MP3s may render MP3 servers superfluous, do not count them out just yet. Pat Hurley says, "I really think it's all about the interface, and what interface works out best for the end user." Storing music and photographs (and eventually video, as well) on your main PC is fine for most home users, provided their computers are robust enough to handle this sort of multitasking.
"Obviously, if you have a three-gig Pentium 4 XP machine, it should be able to handle this in the background and not cause you any difficulties in using your PC for other things." Your four year old 250MHz eMachine may need to be replaced or, at a minimum, have its RAM maxed out, if it's going to be used simultaneously for work, and for file transferring to the home media bridge in the den.
This is why some people might want a separate MP3 server, such as Turtle Beach's AudioTron, with a street price between $300 and $350. The AudioTron can store thousands of MP3s on its hard drive, and receive them via Ethernet or home phone lines.
Transmitting Audio and Video
Of course, not all wireless products in the home theater involve 802.11 or even MP3s. There's often a need to transmit remote control signals, audio and video from one room of the house to another room, even there isn't an RG6 video cable connecting the two rooms.
Unlike products that interact with computers, these types of wireless devices have been around for a very long time, dating back at least to the late 1980s, when home theater was not yet a household word. They're not as flashy or sexy as a wireless PC interface, but when you need to run video from one room to another and can't or don't want to string wires (because you live in an apartment, for example), they sure come in handy.
For years, X10 has made transmitters that will send the audio and video signal from a VCR or DVD player to a distant television. Their current version, at $69.99, is dubbed the DVD Anywhere 2000. Terk Technologies Inc. makes a similar product called the Leapfrog, which streets for about $100 and will transmit video as well as the infrared signals of remote controls, through a home's phone lines.
There is a tradeoff here as well. Video transmitted from room to room via the DVD Anywhere 2000 or the Leapfrog may be fine for casual viewing, but the quality may be insufficient for videophiles. If possible, try to view one of these units in action before purchasing them.
Whatever the Problem, There's Probably A Solution
The products produced by Linksys, SMC, X10, Terk and other manufacturers all help to solve specific problems that can arise when trying to get audio, video and computer data from one part of the house to another. If your media room has a connectivity problem, chances are somebody has a solution. And if not, they are working on it, and you will see it soon.
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