Linksys WMA11B Wireless Digital Media Adapter

Rating:
Summary: Best Deal for this Price Range
Review: I find it a little interesting, although I am not doubting, that a lot of people found problems with the Linksys media adaptor. The ONLY problem I had with it was during setup. (The instructions in the manual are a bit lengthy, but that is to be expected when you need to set it up for a wireless connection.) Nonetheless, the setup instructions were strait forward, and I was up and running in almost no time at all.

Referring to the above problem I encountered, my SSID tag on my adaptor was different than that of my router that I was using. This was quickly and easily remedied when I chatted with an online support member at Linksys. (The included CD-ROM has a link to Linksys Support.)

That aside, this is a well-rounded product for the price range it falls in. There were a few reviewers who pointed out lack of menu customization. While they may not be the most eye-intriguing menus, they serve their purpose. These are strait forward as well.

During song playback, a few things are shown on the TV screen, (assuming you are not displaying any pictures simultaneously.) It shows the artist, and song, and album. (If the mp3 or WMA was downloaded from a file-sharing server such as KaZaa, then the song may or may not look correct when displayed, as some people don't know how to correctly rip songs.) Also, the screen shows what number song is being played in the current rotation. If you have not set up a playlist beforehand, it will usually display what song is being played out of all the songs you have let the adaptor have access to. If you do have a playlist set up, it will display what song number in that playlist is being played. (Not song number as in position on a playlist, but the actual song being played at that time.) This may seem monotonous, but when you choose shuffled playback, it can serve useful at times.

Having said that, these descriptions (title, artist, album, etc) are a bit large for the screen, which some people pointed out negatively. For me, I am indifferent. I am usually not sitting infront of my TV watching every song being played, looking to see what the name is, or anything like that. I am usually around and about my house. (After all, that is why I bought the adaptor in the first place... to hear the music on my home stereo!) Point being, if you want to sit and watch all that, that's cool. But I hardly see that as being a flaw. You could EASILY watch a custom picture show instead. (I know I hardly mentioned the picture aspect of the adaptor, but I bought it mainly for the audio aspect.)
From what I have seen so far, the adaptor displays the pictures very cleanly and I haven't noticed any sort of lag whatsoever when playing both pictures/audio.

After saying all that, I would recommend this product to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Needs refinement
Review: I've had this product for about a year now. I have used it extensively and find it works well for the most part. It is a good media adapter for SMALL collections of music and pictures. When your collection grows, this wont grow with it. I have a huge music collection, organized in many folders. It takes the media adapter about 5 minutes to start up. If I remove folders, it starts substantially faster.
Wireless performance is good. Setup is so-so. Image quality is good. Sound quality is pretty good. Remote control sucks bad. Software included is easy to set up, just don't update Windows with the Microsoft .NET framework update or service pack. Updating the framework renders this device useless, as the software stops functioning.

Bottom Line:
1. Good for the casual collection, good sound, good images.
2. Impresses people (still can't figure out why)
3. Remote control is simply awful (Program a universal remote insted)
4. Look into D-Link media adapter (might be better)

Rating:
Summary: Great products - a couple minor problems
Review: Not only does it let me listen to my music collection stored on my PC through my stereo system, it lets me bore friends and relatives by showing a slideshow of my digital picture collection. Setup is easy as long as you have a wireless LAN (the only goofy part was that you had to set the channel that your access point uses, its the only client device I've ever seen that makes you do that). It supports WEP, but not WPA. The user interface is pretty intutive although it does help to have all of your MP3s correctly tagged and your pictures in a somewhat logical order.

The only difficulty I've experienced is that I have to disable the Windows XP firewall on the host computer. I haven't been able to figure out how to configure the firewall to allow traffic from the Linksys (and after a pretty exhaustive search, it doesn't seem possible using the XP firewall).

Rating:
Summary: Works very well
Review: I initially ran into the dreaded SharedMediaManager error as well. This is actually a .NET framework error (the APPBASE is messed up) and I could not get the WMA to work with .NET 1.1 I uninstalled the WMA11B and the .NET framework and then reinstalled everything letting the WMA11B install to install the .NET framework. Everything worked very well then.

If all you want is to listening to music and viewing pictures, this works great for the money. The TV UI is very basic and that is my only gripe. I wish it told me how much time has played or is left on a song. I also wish it allowed for more information to be displayed. The sound was very good and the setup (outside the .NET error) was pretty straight forward.

For the money, it is a good music/picture streamer...

Rating:
Summary: Will Not Work With Network Storage Link
Review: Linksys sells a Network Storage Link (NSLU2) to add large shared drives to your network. A practical use for this in a home network would be to store large music librairies, allowing access to any song in seconds from any PC in the house.

However, the Linksys Media Adapter's (WMA11B) software will not recognize any drive except a local drive. Even a mapped network drive is not acceptd by the WMA's Media Folder Manager software. You simply cannot use these 2 products together.

Counting these 2 pieces of hardware, plus the 300GB Maxtor drive, I have $600 invested in a non-solution. Look for a better way. Linksys support folks simply say that the 2 products are not designed to work togther. I do not understand how a company like Linksys can overlook this. Is it asking too much for 2 of their own network devices to work together?

Rating:
Summary: disappointing - wait for the next or 3rd generation
Review: I set up this product with a belkin router (g) and a pc running XP w/ sp2. The media adapter was not easy to configure with this hardware (2.5 hours on the phone w/ Linksys). The WMA11b's software seems to have conflicts with service pack 2 which I have still not been able to resolve.

Once it was up and running it was kind of a novelty to finally be able to stream my music and photos to a TV and stereo.

Though the distance from my router to the adapter was only 20 feet, the reception was never good. Perhaps because of this, the sound quality was always poor.

Finally, to search for music you must do it with your TV on which was a little irritating. A unit that can display your music library info on the remote control would be worth the extra $$.

After a week of attempting to live with the less than stellar music quality I gave up and returned this product. I wish I could now return my PC to pre-WMA11b qualities as well..

Rating:
Summary: There is a reason it is cheap
Review: If your configuration is:

1 PC, a simple router and a TV
AND
You are running Win 2000 OR are confident you can configure Windows XP Firewall at an Administrator level
AND
You check the support for the product on the Linksys web site and realize that is as good as it is going to get.
AND
You don't mind yet another background process running on your PC
AND
Your files are not on a network drive or a mapped drive

This might be for you......

Otherwise - forget it - period

Rating:
Summary: Generally OK, a little basic for what I wanted
Review: This product appears to work as advertised. I have compared it to some other products (Turtle Beach and SlimMP3 from Slim Devices) which have several more features. The WMA11B is a lot cheaper than some of the alternatives. I almost bought the D-Link MP101, but decided to go with Linksys due to my experience with other Linksys devices.

I would really like to be able to control the device from the host computer as well as using the remote. It doesn't have this feature. This is one of the reasons for not giving it more stars.

I did get this to work with the Windows Firewall. If you go to the Exceptions part of the Windows Firewall configuration, you can add the .exe files from the program files\linksys wireles...\bin directory. I am not sure which file exactly needs adding, but if you add them all, it works.

Overall, for a basic, first generation wireless media adapter, it works OK.

Rating:
Summary: SharedMediaManager Error is Killing Me!!!!!!
Review: When it worked, this was my favroite device I have ever owned- finnally bridging the PC and The Stereo beautifully... but, then, an error occurred... "ShareMediaManager" error. I am extremely proficient with computers but for the life of me, can't fix the problem.

Linksys support is worthless, both on the phone and live chat... I am EXTREMELY frustrated!!!!!!


Rating:
Summary: Replacement software for WMA11B
Review:
www.turtlehead.co.uk have released replacement software for the wma11b that allows you to stream music from iTunes.

It works a lot better than the standard software linksys provide and turtlehead have released the source so you can make your own player for the wma11b..