Man's Best Friend

By Moshe Bar

September 22, 2003

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I had my first wi-fi home network back in early 2000, when lack of WEP encryption was not a security risk just because nobody else had wi-fi cards back then. In 2001 I had one of the earliest wireless communities running—certainly the first one in Italy, and maybe the first in Europe. Fast forward two years and wireless is everywhere. Wireless communities are omnipresent nowadays (there is one in my apartment complex). And what's even better: Almost weekly they find new applications for wi-fi technology.

Linksys is arguably the leader in wi-fi technology. Since its recent acquisition by Cisco, it also has the cash to launch products at a weekly pace. Next to an impressive array of home wi-fi routers, switches, firewalls and bridges, Linksys also recently added wi-fi game console extenders and a wi-fi home entertainment system, called Wireless-B Media Adapter.

I tried the latter in my home. Just like about everybody else I have a ton of MP3s on my home server. The MP3 format has lossy compression, meaning that the quality suffers from the compression algorithm. That is why you want to have a good sound system if you listen to MP3s. With the new Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter you can bring the digital music and pictures stored on your computer to your Home Entertainment Center, without running cables through the house. Using a wireless connection, the Media Adapter displays your digital photographs on the TV. Your digital music collection is finally freed from those little computer speakers and can play in full glory through your stereo system.

You can view pictures one at a time, or watch an automatically created slideshow of all the pictures in a given folder. The Media Adapter supports four popular picture formats: JPG, GIF, TIF and BMP. Use the remote control's Zoom button to get a close-up of the details in your pictures.

You can also use the remote control to browse your MP3- or WMA-formatted music collection by title, artist, genre, folder, or playlist.

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