Apple's AirPlay might be getting all the attention lately but it's hardly the first solution for wirelessly streaming media to the television. Far from it. In 2003, the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) formed with its first set of interoperable products hitting the market in 2004. Since then, the alliance has certified thousands of products supported by more than 245 member companies, 29 of whom are listed as "promoter members" including such heavyweights as Sony, Nokia, Samsung, Toshiba, Verizon, AT&T Lab, LG, Qualcomm, Cisco, Microsoft, Panasonic, Intel, HP, and Motorola. Pretty much everyone butApple. Recently, HTC joined the DLNA ranks with the introduction of two smartphones -- the Desire Z and Desire HD -- and a tiny media streamer known as the HTC Media Link, HTC's first attempt to gain a foothold in the living room. Over the last week we've been testing the Desire Z (a Eurofied T-Mobile G2) with the Media Link, lazily streaming video, music, and images around the house using a myriad of sources and controllers from Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, and Western Digital. How did it perform? Click through to find out.
To say that HTC's Media Link is small is an understatement. It measures just 71.5 x 45 x 8-mm which is about two-thirds the length and width of a credit card and about as thick as a stack of nine. It's so small that we thought that our friendly government import agents had stolen it from the box that had obviously been jimmied open for inspection while en route to our European test lab. The DLNA 1.5 hardware is easily dwarfed by HTC's modular wall plug (which is already pretty small). As a result, the streamer's placement is easily overwhelmed by the tension of the attached microUSB-to-USB and miniHDMI-to-HDMI cables that come bundled with the device. Not that these are complaints, it's just surprising to see a media streamer this small when we're used to the relative bulk of more traditional streamers from Roku, Western Digital, and Popcorn Hour. The only other remarkable physical feature on the Media Link is an unremarkable button on the front with an LED indicator letting you know if the device is on and serving up WiFi.
One thing that we miss is a 3.5-mm jack to give us more control over the audio output. The Media Link is so portable that you're bound to pack it up and use it in situations where a decent amplifier isn't available -- like, say, in a conference room with a projector or connected to a hotel room TV. Situations ideally accompanied by a set of small but powerful portable travel speakers.
Setup
Out of the box there isn't much to setup and it should take no more than five minutes to have up and running. Unfortunately for us, we plugged the Media Link directly into the HDMI jack of our projector -- a two year old Epson EH-TW420 -- and nothing happened. We rebooted the Media Link a few times, reinserted the HDMI cable and still, nothing. No signal detected. Before shipping it back to HTC though, we attached the Media Link to a Viewsonic monitor and voila, success. The Media Link sprung to life with a familiar HTC Sense startup chime and graphics.
From there we could change the default password and tell the streamer to either attach to our local WiFi network or act as a standalone 802.11n 5GHz WiFi hotspot. We tested it both ways, though for home use it certainly makes sense for it to be joined to your local WiFi network. Otherwise, you'll be forced to constantly switch networks whenever you want to make the jump from internet access to streaming media over to the Media Link. Regardless, we like the flexibility here.
It's worth mentioning that HTC is developing a Media Link app that will help you quickly switch between the Media Link hotspot and your home network. It's headed to the HTC Hub but it wasn't yet available for download at the time of this review.
Streaming
You won't be regularly streaming 1080p Matroska Blu-ray rips from your storage constrained handset so we began our testing with a real-world scenario: using the Connected Media app found on the Desire Z to stream The Engadget Show podcast video already synchronized to our handset. This worked perfectly, whether the Media Link was setup as its own WiFi hotspot or as a member of our home WiFi network (located about 30 feet from our wireless router) without any hiccups in performance, thus erasing our initial frustration with the projector setup. Same with our on-device audio collection and the images and video captured by the Desire Z's camera -- it just worked.
No comments:
Post a Comment