| Linksys WMA11B Wireless Digital Media Adapter |
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| Features: |
Connects your Home Entertainment Center to a Wireless-B (802.11b) network
Supports MP3 and WMA digital music files
Browse your digital pictures on your television (JPG, GIF, TIF, and BMP)
Select songs and pictures from on-screen menus with the easy-to-use remote control
Includes Media Adapter, remote, RCA and S-video cables |
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| Description: |
| The Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter lets you 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 for the whole family to enjoy. And your digital music collection is finally freed from those little computer speakers and can play in full glory through your stereo system.The Wireless-B Media Adapter sits by your home stereo and television and connects to them using standard consumer electronics cables. Then it connects to your home network by Wireless-B (802.11b) wireless networking, or if you prefer, it can be connected via standard 10/100 Ethernet cabling. Using the included remote control and the user-friendly menus on your TV, you can browse through the digital pictures on your computer by folder, filename, or thumbnail. 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 to browse your MP3 or WMA formatted music collection by title, artist, genre, folder, or playlist. Choose the music you want, and let the Wireless-B Media Adapter play it through your stereo system. You can even let music play in the background while you browse your pictures.Let the Linksys Wireless-B Media Adapter bring your digital media out into the living room for the whole family to enjoy. |
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| User Reviews (88 total): |
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Cannot display pictures in landscape format, June 7, 2005
By bobb (West Chester PA)
I got through the install OK but when trying to operate realized that most of my pictures were not displaying. After struggling with Linksys customer service for 1 1/2 hours (they are the worst customer service I have ever encountered), I debugged myself - only the pictures I had taken in portrait aspect (fyi - the default format for all cameras is LANDSCAPE)displayed.
Linksys never did respond to my issue and a week later I had to follow-up with them to get an answer. The answer? That due to a product defect landscape pictures would not display. I cannot believe that they would actually release a product that that. I returned it, and strongly recommend against buying it.
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it was a great item at first...., May 25, 2005
By Judith M. Lebel (Boxford, MA USA)
I installed the WMA11B by myself and it worked great until I downloaded SP2. Then it ceased to work. I spoke with Link-Sys (in Manila) for many many hours and many levels of support only to find out (after getting to the headquarters (Palo Alto, CA) for support) that unless I wipe out my hard drive and reload everything I would not be able to get it working again. I had hired a techie to help me with it @ $75 an hour and the support at Link-Sys assured us a patch to fix the problem would be e-mailed to us within 10 to 15 minutes. This assurance was given on 3 different phone calls after the time limit had passed each time. My hired hand finally left. Five days later Link-Sys admitted there was no patch for the problem and that SP2 had adversely affected the WMA11B. I am stuck with a good media adapter if I buy a new computer or reconfigure my whole computer which I am not willing to do. I have lost all affection for Link-Sys after this.
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Just not reliable AT ALL., May 16, 2005
By Elevatorshaft (Monmouth County, USA)
I am a pretty technical guy and this took a little longer to set up than I had thought it would. I had to call the Linksys support team and they were pretty good helping out. I did finally get it up and running. Problem is, it failed again just a couple of weeks later and I had to go throughthis process all over again...and NOW it has failed again and I am warning all of you to be very careful about this. Cisco needs to really understand this product better and then it more reliable. I do use the wireless G network and as it was told to me, G is backward compatible a B network. I have to say when the music adapter works....IT IS SO COOL..all of my pix and music beaming to the TV and home theatre from my PC. But, as cool as it "was", I am running out of cycles to fix it yet again and am close to returning. One other problme I encountered is the for some reason the linksys media adapter would not pick up my playlists from the Windows media player. I thought it would, and if it is not supposed to, then forget even looking at this thing because you'll have to recreate all your music playlists.
I think I'll give it one more shot...but I am warning to be very careful getting involved with this "not ready for prime time" product! On a side note, the linksys wireless network is great and reall enjoy the flexibilities if offers. Too bad it's not the same for the media adapter.
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Worst Unit I ever Bought, April 9, 2005
By Richard Bergeron (Plattsburgh, NY)
This unit promise a lot and deliver nothing. I will not work with XP sp2 and the service at link Sys is the worst that I have ever seen from a manufacturer. they tell you to wait for a fix and the firmware has not been upgraded since 2003. It look like they intend to tell you this until you trash the unit out of any ressource. There should be law agains this kind of behavior. It certainly means that i will never buy anytning from LinkSys ever again
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Exactly what I needed, April 6, 2005
By TwonkyJMA (Portland, OR USA)
Yes, I agree setup is difficult if you are not computer saavy. But I got it opened, configured, and playing music/slides on my family room TV in less than 2 hours while working on other things.
I haven't done playlists, but overall I like the performance and interface. A great low cost option for people who have a wireless network and want to display photos or play music. Now I can move my CD Carousel to another room in the house!
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The software does not work with Service Pack 2, March 17, 2005
By Eric (Virigina USA)
I've had the unit for about a year now and it has worked great. The software occasionally dropped out and the unit had to be restarted but after that it worked. Until microsoft automatically upgraded my machine to service pack 2. Now the included software no longer scans my hard drive for tracks. The unit will connect to my pc and they talk but no music is listed in the server. neither are pictures.
The software for the unit has not been updated in since 9/29/2003. It does not look like they will ever upgrade the software either.
If you have windows XP and you already have service pack 2 installed this unit will not function. Otherwise it's a great piece of hardware. I do understand that some people have hacked a linux server together but that's to much work to try and get up and running. I bought the netgear mp101 to replace it. I am hoping that one works better...
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Nice unit - but doesn't shine as well as it could, March 7, 2005
By Vynrod (USA)
I've been using this unit as a feed for audio in my bar (two floors down) and for the most part it does what it's supposed to. My first hurdle during setup was the previously mentioned lack of network drive support. Once I'd duplicated my entire music collection on the local HD and set up the unit all was working fine.
So really I shouldn't complain - it delivers music, as promised, via 802.11b wifi. Sometimes I have conneciton issues and whilst I shouldn't blame the unit for expecting a wifi connection to travel through two floors, it would really help if you could pull up signal strength on the fly. Instead, I have to reset the unit, wait for the startup message THEN I get about an 8 second window to fiddle with the antenna. Signal strength, even in the shape of a power LED would help massively during fine tuning and placement of the unit.
My second major complaint is the lack of ANY playlist creation in the unit. I don't expect iTunes built in but would it have been THAT much more costly to have a THUMBS UP/DOWN a la Tivo? All playlist functionality is done through your media player on the PC - and remember where you save them: by default your playlists are exported to your My Documents/user folder whereas the Linksys media player looks for playlists in the My Documents/All users folder.
My final gripe is the text display onscreen. It's colorful and nice and big - but kind of too big. Band/Song names don't scroll so names are truncated abruptly during song play.
I could whinge about the lack of WMV support or the shoddy remote that sometimes confuses the unit (press "skip song" and the volume decreases etc) but I won't... these are, after all, small gripes - the unit looks good, performs well and is well priced.
It could've been great with just a tiny amount of fine tuning before release. Worth the money though.
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Best Deal for this Price Range, February 17, 2005
By S. Lewis (Rochester, NY)
I find it a little interesting, although I am not doubting, that a lot of people found problems with the Linksys media adaptor. The ONLY problem I had with it was during setup. (The instructions in the manual are a bit lengthy, but that is to be expected when you need to set it up for a wireless connection.) Nonetheless, the setup instructions were strait forward, and I was up and running in almost no time at all.
Referring to the above problem I encountered, my SSID tag on my adaptor was different than that of my router that I was using. This was quickly and easily remedied when I chatted with an online support member at Linksys. (The included CD-ROM has a link to Linksys Support.)
That aside, this is a well-rounded product for the price range it falls in. There were a few reviewers who pointed out lack of menu customization. While they may not be the most eye-intriguing menus, they serve their purpose. These are strait forward as well.
During song playback, a few things are shown on the TV screen, (assuming you are not displaying any pictures simultaneously.) It shows the artist, and song, and album. (If the mp3 or WMA was downloaded from a file-sharing server such as KaZaa, then the song may or may not look correct when displayed, as some people don't know how to correctly rip songs.) Also, the screen shows what number song is being played in the current rotation. If you have not set up a playlist beforehand, it will usually display what song is being played out of all the songs you have let the adaptor have access to. If you do have a playlist set up, it will display what song number in that playlist is being played. (Not song number as in position on a playlist, but the actual song being played at that time.) This may seem monotonous, but when you choose shuffled playback, it can serve useful at times.
Having said that, these descriptions (title, artist, album, etc) are a bit large for the screen, which some people pointed out negatively. For me, I am indifferent. I am usually not sitting infront of my TV watching every song being played, looking to see what the name is, or anything like that. I am usually around and about my house. (After all, that is why I bought the adaptor in the first place... to hear the music on my home stereo!) Point being, if you want to sit and watch all that, that's cool. But I hardly see that as being a flaw. You could EASILY watch a custom picture show instead. (I know I hardly mentioned the picture aspect of the adaptor, but I bought it mainly for the audio aspect.)
From what I have seen so far, the adaptor displays the pictures very cleanly and I haven't noticed any sort of lag whatsoever when playing both pictures/audio.
After saying all that, I would recommend this product to anyone.
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Needs refinement, January 10, 2005
By mannym (Asstoria, NY)
I've had this product for about a year now. I have used it extensively and find it works well for the most part. It is a good media adapter for SMALL collections of music and pictures. When your collection grows, this wont grow with it. I have a huge music collection, organized in many folders. It takes the media adapter about 5 minutes to start up. If I remove folders, it starts substantially faster.
Wireless performance is good. Setup is so-so. Image quality is good. Sound quality is pretty good. Remote control sucks bad. Software included is easy to set up, just don't update Windows with the Microsoft .NET framework update or service pack. Updating the framework renders this device useless, as the software stops functioning.
Bottom Line:
1. Good for the casual collection, good sound, good images.
2. Impresses people (still can't figure out why)
3. Remote control is simply awful (Program a universal remote insted)
4. Look into D-Link media adapter (might be better)
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Great products - a couple minor problems, January 5, 2005
By shanafme (Hollidaysburg, PA United States)
Not only does it let me listen to my music collection stored on my PC through my stereo system, it lets me bore friends and relatives by showing a slideshow of my digital picture collection. Setup is easy as long as you have a wireless LAN (the only goofy part was that you had to set the channel that your access point uses, its the only client device I've ever seen that makes you do that). It supports WEP, but not WPA. The user interface is pretty intutive although it does help to have all of your MP3s correctly tagged and your pictures in a somewhat logical order.
The only difficulty I've experienced is that I have to disable the Windows XP firewall on the host computer. I haven't been able to figure out how to configure the firewall to allow traffic from the Linksys (and after a pretty exhaustive search, it doesn't seem possible using the XP firewall).
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Works very well, December 28, 2004
By Just Me (Indianapolis, IN)
I initially ran into the dreaded SharedMediaManager error as well. This is actually a .NET framework error (the APPBASE is messed up) and I could not get the WMA to work with .NET 1.1 I uninstalled the WMA11B and the .NET framework and then reinstalled everything letting the WMA11B install to install the .NET framework. Everything worked very well then.
If all you want is to listening to music and viewing pictures, this works great for the money. The TV UI is very basic and that is my only gripe. I wish it told me how much time has played or is left on a song. I also wish it allowed for more information to be displayed. The sound was very good and the setup (outside the .NET error) was pretty straight forward.
For the money, it is a good music/picture streamer...
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Will Not Work With Network Storage Link, December 18, 2004
By Alan in Texas (Dallas, TX)
Linksys sells a Network Storage Link (NSLU2) to add large shared drives to your network. A practical use for this in a home network would be to store large music librairies, allowing access to any song in seconds from any PC in the house.
However, the Linksys Media Adapter's (WMA11B) software will not recognize any drive except a local drive. Even a mapped network drive is not acceptd by the WMA's Media Folder Manager software. You simply cannot use these 2 products together.
Counting these 2 pieces of hardware, plus the 300GB Maxtor drive, I have $600 invested in a non-solution. Look for a better way. Linksys support folks simply say that the 2 products are not designed to work togther. I do not understand how a company like Linksys can overlook this. Is it asking too much for 2 of their own network devices to work together?
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disappointing - wait for the next or 3rd generation, December 7, 2004
By Paul Brown
I set up this product with a belkin router (g) and a pc running XP w/ sp2. The media adapter was not easy to configure with this hardware (2.5 hours on the phone w/ Linksys). The WMA11b's software seems to have conflicts with service pack 2 which I have still not been able to resolve.
Once it was up and running it was kind of a novelty to finally be able to stream my music and photos to a TV and stereo.
Though the distance from my router to the adapter was only 20 feet, the reception was never good. Perhaps because of this, the sound quality was always poor.
Finally, to search for music you must do it with your TV on which was a little irritating. A unit that can display your music library info on the remote control would be worth the extra $$.
After a week of attempting to live with the less than stellar music quality I gave up and returned this product. I wish I could now return my PC to pre-WMA11b qualities as well..
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There is a reason it is cheap, December 6, 2004
By graemejwsmith (Newport, RI United States)
If your configuration is:
1 PC, a simple router and a TV
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You are running Win 2000 OR are confident you can configure Windows XP Firewall at an Administrator level
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You check the support for the product on the Linksys web site and realize that is as good as it is going to get.
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You don't mind yet another background process running on your PC
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Your files are not on a network drive or a mapped drive
This might be for you......
Otherwise - forget it - period
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Generally OK, a little basic for what I wanted, October 29, 2004
By Brian Murphy (Chandler, AZ)
This product appears to work as advertised. I have compared it to some other products (Turtle Beach and SlimMP3 from Slim Devices) which have several more features. The WMA11B is a lot cheaper than some of the alternatives. I almost bought the D-Link MP101, but decided to go with Linksys due to my experience with other Linksys devices.
I would really like to be able to control the device from the host computer as well as using the remote. It doesn't have this feature. This is one of the reasons for not giving it more stars.
I did get this to work with the Windows Firewall. If you go to the Exceptions part of the Windows Firewall configuration, you can add the .exe files from the program files\linksys wireles...\bin directory. I am not sure which file exactly needs adding, but if you add them all, it works.
Overall, for a basic, first generation wireless media adapter, it works OK.
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SharedMediaManager Error is Killing Me!!!!!!, October 15, 2004
By W. Brad Stephens (CA)
When it worked, this was my favroite device I have ever owned- finnally bridging the PC and The Stereo beautifully... but, then, an error occurred... "ShareMediaManager" error. I am extremely proficient with computers but for the life of me, can't fix the problem.
Linksys support is worthless, both on the phone and live chat... I am EXTREMELY frustrated!!!!!!
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Replacement software for WMA11B, August 14, 2004
By choons
www.turtlehead.co.uk have released replacement software for the wma11b that allows you to stream music from iTunes.
It works a lot better than the standard software linksys provide and turtlehead have released the source so you can make your own player for the wma11b..
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Does a great job!, July 30, 2004
By WanChaiMan (Hong Kong, China)
The unit was a breeze to set up just by following the "Quick Installation" guide.
From opening the box to watching a slideshow of all my digital images and listening to my music in the background took about 15 minutes (it would have been quicker but I like to have all the cables tidy!).
The installation is totally hassle free, and although I don't use Windows Firewall I do have Norton Internet Security which spotted the unit and made the appropriate "allow" changes to itself.
Video quality is excellent and far better than expected. Its up to DVD quality. The audio is just awesome.
I have been thinking of buying an i-pod for ages now...but since I drive to work I dont know when I would use it! This is like a home i-pod, but with the great advantage of being able to see all those forgotten digital photos.
Of course the other way is to burn slideshows onto DVD's, but like the archived still images these would end up on the shelf with the others.. Like this I get to watch them.
Teh software does have some quirks...and seems to assemble a database of media when booting and so takes a little time at startup, but other than that its very very neat :)
What's missing? It would dhave been nice to share media on computers on a network running other Operating Systems (eg Mac OSX).
Linksys / CISCO should be congratulated on developing a wonderful product at such a good price.
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Works as Advertised, July 16, 2004
By JLM (Upper Marlboro, MD)
I had this product up and running in about 15 minutes. I am using the device wirelessly with WEP encryption. I did have to disable my firewall during the setup process. It was annoying to have to approve every action the software was taking during setup. Ran into a problem using it, once I went from using the Ethernet port connection to wireless, because I re-enabled my firewall. Over came this by adding a static IP address to the device and then allowing that address access through the firewall. The device does everything advertised. I even have it pulling music from 3 different PC's on my network. Upgrades I would recommend to Linksys include:
1. Optical output
2. Enhanced scrolling through folders
3. Display of album art
4. Ability to play video
5. Component video output
6. Upgrade to 802.11g
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i really like linksys, but:, July 6, 2004
By JoVill (dulles, va United States)
i did not expect i would be writting this review for this product. my initial experience was very good and the product performed as advertised. Unfortunately some where along the line the software suffered the same fate as other customers. that is the client software crashes and refuses to run under xp pro. the online tech support is useless and the fact pages clearly are not addressing this problem. it makes the product useless and a nice paper weight. for background i have tried re-installing the software and .net many times to see if i could fix the problem (by the way the uninstaller also crashes so this is a manual process) with no success. i really like linksys products as they are doing some neat stuff but it is clear they are having some real technical support issues. make sure you can get a refund if you buy this product!
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