Gateway ADC-320 Connected DVD Player with Wireless 802.11g Card
Gateway ADC-320 Connected DVD Player with Wireless 802.11g Card
Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description
Gateway's connected DVD player merges plug-and-play networking capabilities with the latest in home-theater technology so you can stream your music, photo, and video files from a Windows-based PC in the study right to your living-room entertainment system. The progressive-scan-capable player is fully compatible with DVD-Video, CD, VCD/SVCD, Kodak Picture CD, and recordable discs full of JPEG, MP3, or WMA (Windows Media Audio) files, so you can still enjoy its authoritative features even if you're not inclined to use the networking feature just yet.
Whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the Gateway player stands ready to deliver the full potential of your DVDs. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts.
Gateway's connected DVD player merges plug-and-play networking capabilities with the latest in home-theater technology so you can stream your music, photo, and video files from a Windows-based PC in the study right to your living-room entertainment system. The progressive-scan-capable player is fully compatible with DVD-Video, CD, VCD/SVCD, Kodak Picture CD, and recordable discs full of JPEG, MP3, or WMA (Windows Media Audio) files, so you can still enjoy its authoritative features even if you're not inclined to use the networking feature just yet.
Whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the Gateway player stands ready to deliver the full potential of your DVDs. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts.
| The player's rear panel sports a single PC Card slot (also referred to as PCMCIA) for wired or wireless access to a Windows-based home network. Basic networking requirements consist of a computer with a 700 MHz or faster Pentium processor running Microsoft Windows 98 SE or higher with a network connection, 20 MB free hard-drive space, 128 MB RAM, and Gateway's specially made 802.11g DVD card, which can be used in either a wired or a wireless configuration. The 802.11g DVD card, which comes with the DVD player, uses the 54 Mbps wireless networking standard, making it nearly five times faster than the widely used wireless-B products found in homes, businesses, and public wireless hotspots around the country. Far more convenient but a little more complicated to configure is a wireless setup, which lets you place your hardware in separate rooms without need for lengthy cable runs. This option requires the additional purchase of a wireless networking device (a router if you'll have multiple network users or an access point for a single connection) to relay data between your PC and the DVD player's card. | Access your Windows-based home network wirelessly via the ADC-320's PC Card slot and included 802.11g DVD card.
Product Description With your Gateway Connected DVD Player, you can play DVDs, CDs, and digital media files on your home network.
Amazon.com Product Description Gateway's connected DVD player merges plug-and-play networking capabilities with the latest in home-theater technology so you can stream your music, photo, and video files from a Windows-based PC in the study right to your living-room entertainment system. The progressive-scan-capable player is fully compatible with DVD-Video, CD, VCD/SVCD, Kodak Picture CD, and recordable discs full of JPEG, MP3, or WMA (Windows Media Audio) files, so you can still enjoy its authoritative features even if you're not inclined to use the networking feature just yet.Whether your living room is currently home to an HDTV or you're merely thinking of "someday," the Gateway player stands ready to deliver the full potential of your DVDs. Progressive scanning, referred to as 480p for the number of horizontal lines that compose the video image, creates a picture using twice the scan lines of a conventional DVD picture, giving you higher resolution and sharper images while eliminating nearly all motion artifacts.
Gateway's connected DVD player merges plug-and-play networking capabilities with the latest in home-theater technology so you can stream your music, photo, and video files from a Windows-based PC in the study right to your living-room entertainment system. The progressive-scan-capable player is fully compatible with DVD-Video, CD, VCD/SVCD, Kodak Picture CD, and recordable discs full of JPEG, MP3, or WMA (Windows Media Audio) files, so you can still enjoy its authoritative features even if you're not inclined to use the networking feature just yet.
Once you've established your network, you can put a connected DVD player in every room with a TV or stereo to connect wirelessly to your PC library. In your PC, you can then create a library of music, photo, and digital video to enjoy anywhere you have a connected DVD player and a television and/or audio system. Front-panel menu buttons grant full operation, even without the supplied remote control. The player lets you import M3U (MusicMatch) or the PLS (WinAmp) playlists and create custom digital slideshows of PC-based JPEG images. The player also supports playback of recorded video from MPEG4 video and Microsoft Media Center computers. If you're inclined to go in for a little karaoke entertainment, this player's got you covered: the stylish front panel also offers two .25-inch microphone inputs governed by single volume and echo-effect control.
Customer Reviews:
I got this item for Xmas -- unfortunately my wife was not told she needed to get the network adapter card as a seperate item. Now that I want to get the card so I can use it for more than the world's most expensive and least functional DVD player, I find I can not. I just got off of a chat with the Gateway sales rep and he told me to try eBay. Imagine that! What kind of support is that? Good grief, they sold the item, they should support it for a few years, at LEAST. I have 4 other Gateway computers in the house, including the laptop I'm typing this on. My neighbor has bought SIX of them, due to my suggestion that they are a good company. Now that she has had bad luck with the TV, I think she is also rethinking Gateway. I would give this product a ZERO star rating but this software does not permit it. All in all, I will avoid Gateway in the future. I can get hardware cheaper and since the Gateway brand no longer means qualty or support, why pay the premium. Avoid this product at all costs. It's a dead end. And, as another reviewer says, it both freezes while playing movies, and has a frequent seek problem -- if you click on "extras" or something it is likely to go into seek mode for many minutes before it stops and you have to shut it down to start over. Altogether a really bad product and, apparently now, company.
There are a number of drawbacks to all this, but in the end it's pretty cheap, and even if the "connected" part of it stops working at some point, it's a pretty good plain old DVD player, so if you're thinking of getting a player in the same price range, you may want to spend a few dollars more for the "connected" feature - even if something goes wrong with it, you still have a perfectly good DVD player and haven't lost much money. But good luck trying to get ANY service or support from Gateway - they just don't want to know about it.
With recent firmware upgrades you can even have a picture slideshow (also streamed and one can specify the delay rate and this can occur while playing streaming MP3s). This unit is basically the same as the ADC-220 from gateway, except it has a newer 802.11g vs. 802.11b network card) -- this helps with the problems people experienced in the past since the bandwidth of 802.11g is about 5x as much as 802.11b (11mb vs 54mb) and 802.11g router/access points are very inexpensive nowadays. This unit is very similar to the GoVideo D2730 since they both use Digital5 as the PC client software. Current firmware is similar to the new standard for home networking UPnP, but I wasn't able to get MusicMatch's UPnP to work as of yet. The device supports PAL and NTSC TV formats, so taking advantage of one the of best un-documented and un-supported feature I can play DVDs from the UK (and other regions) that I couldn't on other DVD machines (SETR9). Of course this also plays videos downloaded from the internet or homemovies that are archived on your PC. UK's BBC is starting to provide arhived video that should be supported since this player supports MPEG 1/2/4 and others (Microsoft Media Center, AVI). I haven't used the microphone inputs, but this is a solid DVD performer with 5.1 surround with optical out, component video, etc. The only negatives are you can't fast forward PC based movies (you can forward to a time, but not like a standard DVD search where the screen speeds through while you watch, of course DVDs with this player search like any other on the market), the remote isn't as sleek as it should be (it's colorful and not very ergonomic -- looks like it was made for the Asian market). The ADC-320 is about a 1/3 less than the GoVideo one (plus Gateway's comes with the 802.11g card, I believe GoVideo's is a wired version -- they have a new D2740 which has 802.11g). The Philips Streamium looks pretty nice too and that's fully UPnP supportable, but Gateway is still half the price of that one, if not more. This is a solid deal and I am just as happy with it as I was when I bought it about 6 months ago.
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