Wednesday, October 27, 2004

You have a fancy home-entertainment system that can record and play TV programs, DVDs, show digital photos, and tap into your collection of digital music. If, however, you want to enjoy all this anywhere other than the room where the system is set up, you're out of luck. Now, Microsoft has unveiled a solution -- though it has some major limitations.

The offering is a black box called the Media Center Extender, which will work with any PC running the newest version of Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition (Oct. 18). You attach the Extender, available initially from Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ) and Linksys for about $300, to a TV set anywhere in your home and connect it to the Media Center PC over your home network

It seems just about perfect, but there's a problem, and it's the wireless network. Video requires moving a mighty stream of data, and the slightest glitches cause screen freezes. Microsoft's solution is a high-speed form of Wi-Fi wireless called 802.11a, which is immune to interference from cordless phones and microwave ovens. Fortunately, adding this capacity to a home network is simple. An access point or router that adds 802.11a to the more familiar "b" and "g" forms of Wi-Fi costs less than $150 and takes no more than 30 minutes to install. I suggest you follow Microsoft's advice and confine your Web surfing and other PC-related traffic to your existing Wi-Fi channel, reserving 802.11a for the Media Center Extender.

To complicate matters, for best results you want a wired connection between the Media Center and the access point. I've given up at home and installed Ethernet cables between rooms. There are also content limitations. Extenders can't show high-definition TV. And some premium cable shows, notably on HBO, won't play because of copy-protection measures. Microsoft expects to have a downloadable software fix for this in November.

Despite its flaws, the Media Center Extender is a breakthrough product. At least for those who can meet its tough bandwidth requirements, it really does deliver on the much-promised convergence of entertainment and computing. And as home networks get better and easier, Media Center and the Extender will become an attractive option for more and more consumers.