Which extender to buy?

Troubleshoot and discuss the XBOX 360, XBOX One, Linksys, and other extenders.
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Paul Anderegg

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Which extender to buy?

#1

Post by Paul Anderegg » Thu Jun 23, 2016 6:32 am

What is the cheapest fully functional extender for playing copy protected WTV TV files out of my Win 7 Pro PC? I just need a tool to use until I clear (watch) all the copy protected files off of my old WMC PC. All attempts to move my drives into my new $1500 PC, and all attempts to play (share) the files from the old PC to my new WMC PC have failed.

Will stick this in my closet with my old WMC PC and boot it up from time to time to clear content. I hate DRM.

Paul

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Scallica

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#2

Post by Scallica » Thu Jun 23, 2016 10:41 am

Paul Anderegg wrote:What is the cheapest fully functional extender for playing copy protected WTV TV files out of my Win 7 Pro PC?
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R4 ... 0&_sacat=0
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bob_p

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#3

Post by bob_p » Thu Jun 23, 2016 11:54 am

If you want to buy something from retail - used Xbox 360s are available from GameStop.

Paul Anderegg

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#4

Post by Paul Anderegg » Thu Jun 23, 2016 11:57 am

This looks like what I will end up with....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cisco-DMA2100-L ... Sw3mpXFMv0

Anything I need to worry about, like no servers left for firmware, or are these old rigs still serviceable? :-)

Paul

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Doctor Feelgood

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#5

Post by Doctor Feelgood » Thu Jun 23, 2016 11:59 am

I've been going with the used XBOX 360 E's to expand my extender collection. Paid between $55 and $75 for really good condition units over the past year. Bought one on the forum here, and others came through CowBoom (Best Buy).

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Scallica

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#6

Post by Scallica » Thu Jun 23, 2016 1:27 pm

Paul Anderegg wrote:This looks like what I will end up with....

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cisco-DMA2100-L ... Sw3mpXFMv0

Anything I need to worry about, like no servers left for firmware, or are these old rigs still serviceable? :-)

Paul
The DMAs will not work with Windows 8 or higher. Why pay $99?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Cisco-Linksys-M ... 2359830646
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mdavej

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#7

Post by mdavej » Thu Jun 23, 2016 4:34 pm

If your WMC PC frequently sleeps, be aware that old extenders like Linksys won't wake it. But Xbox and Echo will. That's why I stick with Xbox and Echo. I use Xbox where I need other streaming apps (Netflix, etc.), and Echo where I need quiet running and a small footprint.

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#8

Post by dkrom » Thu Jun 23, 2016 6:55 pm

Good advice on the xboxes, but based on your original post - you'll only need the DMA. It runs on Win7 perfect and since you'll only be booting the system to watch shows, the DMA will be great. I have two (bought for $30 or so on eBay) and recommend them for what you need.

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#9

Post by glugglug » Wed Jul 06, 2016 3:17 pm

I would go with an XBOX over other extenders for multiple reasons:
1. much faster startup
2. lots of other functionality besides the obvious games - Netflix, Amazon, HBO Go, Hulu, etc.
3. better compatibility if you "upgrade"
4. If you have thousands of songs in your music library, WMC music library doesn't scale to it well, especially on extenders. The DLNA music library functionality on the XBOX does.

jonwz

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#10

Post by jonwz » Sun Sep 18, 2016 3:31 pm

dkrom wrote:Good advice on the xboxes, but based on your original post - you'll only need the DMA. It runs on Win7 perfect and since you'll only be booting the system to watch shows, the DMA will be great. I have two (bought for $30 or so on eBay) and recommend them for what you need.
Hi, one feature I often use on 7MC is "fast playback" where the audio is compressed and pitch compensated. I just ebay'd an xbox 360, and it doesn't appear to have that function. Unlike 7MC, the first fast-forward step cuts out the audio.

Does the DMA support fast playback with audio? Tivo recently added this feature and calls it "quickmode".

Please let me know, thanks, Jon

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#11

Post by hoonk » Mon Sep 19, 2016 6:10 pm

jonwz wrote:
dkrom wrote:Does the DMA support fast playback with audio?
DMA's and echos do not have the fast play with audio feature.

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#12

Post by jonwz » Thu Sep 22, 2016 5:23 pm

hoonk wrote:
jonwz wrote:
dkrom wrote:Does the DMA support fast playback with audio?
DMA's and echos do not have the fast play with audio feature.
Thanks for the reply and info. I guess I'm back to my old school solution (that I started using with my legacy replaytvs), Video splitting. There are HDMI splitters that are "broken" and ignore DRM.

Can anyone recommend an HDMI distribution solution? I've never had much luck with "data" over home powerline, but that might be the best way to run HDMI from 7MC to other rooms.

webminster

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#13

Post by webminster » Mon Oct 03, 2016 10:13 pm

Perhaps a little off topic, but.. is there a way to validate a priori whether my Xbox360 as installed is compatible and ready to view the Comcast MP4 rollout changes, if there's any codec updates or what not? I've acquired an xbox and a couple of Echos to start using, but wish I couple pre-check the compatibility...
-Alan

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#14

Post by RyC » Mon Oct 03, 2016 10:43 pm

Well I can tell you first hand Comcast H.264 works fine on the Echo and 360 and I didn't do a single thing to prepare or validate when I moved from Charter territory to Comcast. I plugged everything in, got the CC activated, reran TV setup, and everything worked immediately. I didn't even realize it was H.264 until I noticed the recording file sizes were much smaller than before, and then I manually checked the 411 info (several days later)

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#15

Post by adam1991 » Tue Oct 04, 2016 12:24 am

webminster wrote:Perhaps a little off topic, but.. is there a way to validate a priori whether my Xbox360 as installed is compatible and ready to view the Comcast MP4 rollout changes, if there's any codec updates or what not? I've acquired an xbox and a couple of Echos to start using, but wish I couple pre-check the compatibility...
Well, consider how the XBox works as an extender.

For TV, all of the viewing happens on the 7MC PC. What the extender does is remotely play the actual video stream that the PC provides.

It is not that the actual video file is sent to the extender for decoding.

For media files, all of the heavy lifting transcoding work is done on the host 7MC box and sent over to the extender in a format the extender natively works with.

In short: don't worry, it all just works.

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#16

Post by webminster » Tue Oct 04, 2016 4:02 am

Appreciate the info. Since the Linksys units I'm replacing will stop working due to the fomat changes, just trying to verify the Xbox didn't require any considerations to support the non-MPEG2 formats.
-Alan

adam1991

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#17

Post by adam1991 » Tue Oct 04, 2016 10:32 am

yeah, XBox works differently than non-XBox extenders.

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