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The growing antagonism between Google/You Tube and the creators who "involuntarily supply" their video content has shown that the PC is becoming the place to go to watch videos. So wouldn't it be nice if you could stash all of your huge video and music files someplace other than your own computer's hard drive? And if such a place could be easily connected to your living room TV and stereo system, so you could view the videos and listen to music without having to integrate a PC into your living room stack of gear? And wouldn't it be nice if could you use a wireless connection to move these files from your PCs too, since you can't or won't wire your living room with Ethernet?
These aren't empty questions, but the idea behind the $275 MediaGate MG-350HD. It is the size of a hardback book with lots of cables and connectors to hook up to your TV and hifi. It sorta works.
http://www.Mediagateusa.com
The box has your choice of component, composite, S-Video or DVI video connectors and coax, optical or twin RCA audio connectors. Among that selection should be some combination that can hook it up to what you have in your living room. Unlike having a Media Center PC, it is quiet and doesn't generate much heat.
You can connect it to your PC via either a regular USB connector, or use either the wired Ethernet or wireless networking ports. It doesn't come with any hard disk - you'll need to buy an older model 3.5 inch IDE drive. (It would have been nicer if they included a SATA interface, especially since those drives are pretty cheap now.) After taking off four cover screws, you can quickly connect the IDE drive inside the box and then close it back up, power up and format the drive. There are instructions that are written in badly translated English for various versions of Windows on how to do this.
The good news is that the box has just enough intelligence to handle all sorts of video files that I stored on it. I asked my 20-something stepson to give me a sample of video downloads to try out. One came with German subtitles, one was a version of Babel without any subtitles (which is tough because a lot of dialogs isn't in English), and one came more or less like the theatrical version. None of these files could immediately play on an ordinary Windows PC without installing further audio or video encoders, such as Divx. They all ran as is just fine on the MediaGate.
The bad news is that the wireless and networking support will take some effort to get working. To use the MediaGate as a network storage device, you need to install a special driver on your Windows PC. It was easier to plug in the USB cable and move the files over to its hard drive, which somewhat defeats the idea behind a network storage box. I have WEP configured on my home network, and I couldn't get the appropriate key to work with the MediaGate, despite its supposed support for this encryption level.
The unit comes with a small remote control that is used mainly for setup tasks, and for scrolling through the various files to play them. And scroll you will do - the interface is similar to Windows Media Center, showing you folders and file names on screen in large fonts that mean just a few listings per screen. If you have hundreds of files, it will take some effort to find them. Another cool feature is that you can store video and audio files on ordinary USB key drives and then plug them into the unit and play them.
Both audio and video quality seemed acceptable. You have your choice of 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios of the video. Overall, the device does a decent job. If you aren't a fan of Windows Media Center, this might be a good alternative. Apple's iTV is comparably priced when you factor into the fact that it includes the hard drive but not the cables. But iTV doesn't do 4:3 and you need to use iTunes to manage how the content gets moved over to the box.
David Strom is a noted speaker, author, and consultant. His blog can be found at http://strominator.com, and he can be reached at david@strom.com
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