Amoi Net DVD Player
January 2004
By Grant Clauser
The problem with MP3s and other digital audio files is that they tend to pile up on your PC's hard drive and never get out to the rest of the house. An iPod or similar audio jukebox may be great for taking your music on the road with you, but what about listening to all those tunes when you're lounging on the sofa or puttering around the house. If you're looking to pipe your MP3 collection from your PC to your living room or bedroom, then you need a media server. And if you're looking for a good media server, the Amoi Net DVD 9200 player cuts a mighty fine figure.
In previous issues, we've covered several methods of moving your music files around the house, including dedicated server products that possess their own hard drives (such as the TDK Jukebox in the October issue). The point of these products is to put all your media—the stuff you want to watch or listen to—in a central location. The Amoi Net DVD takes a decentralized route to media sharing. It reaches out to any music (MP3 and WMA files), pictures (JPEG files) and movies (MPEG-4 files) stored on any PC in your house and pipes them through your TV or stereo. It does this by creating a 802.11b WiFi link between your PC and the player, then streaming all your stored stuff through the air.
After I loaded the software, it identified and configured my PC's network devices (in this case a Belkin Wi-Fi adapter) then searched and cataloged all my digital media. The Amoi software worked smoothly, easily finding my wireless device. It started searching my computer for any compatible media I might want networked—a process which took quite a while due to the thousands of digital pictures on my PC.
The next step, once I hooked up the DVD player was to insert the included WiFi PCMCIA card (identical to the sort you'd use in a notebook computer) in the slot in the back of the box. If you'd rather go wired than wireless, you can use an Ethernet card instead of the WiFi card. After clicking through a few simple set-up screens I was soon connected and ready to network.
Pressing the Net button on the remote brings up three options on screen: My Music, My Pictures, and My Movies. From there I simply navigated to My Music and searched by artist for what I wanted to hear. You can also search by album or track name or just open a playlist once you've created one using the PC software. In the pictures and movie options, you simply search through the various folders organized on your computer. Viewing or playing a file is as simple as clicking the remote over the track, image or movie clip you want. You can even view JPEG pictures recorded onto CD-Rs and Kodak Picture CDs.
The device is easy to use. Changing audio tracks and navigating through 100 albums via the on-screen guide is less painless than staring at a rack of CDs. And my MP3 music, routed through a B&K receiver, sounds first rate. The few random MPEG-4 movies I had available, looked about as good as an average cable channel when played through the Amoi.
Having easy access to all my digital pictures is also great since it allows my whole family to see the pictures without the hassle of crowding around my messy computer desk. But it would be a real benefit if I could upload my digital pictures or music files from the DVD player (perhaps though a memory card reader) to the PC, but that functionality just isn't avaiable yet.
In addition to all of the above, the Net DVD is also a progressive scan player, so it will work with HDTVs, though the video quality isn't as solid as my standard Toshiba player. Overall, the picture is average for a mid-priced player.
The Amoi is also DVD-Audio compatible, with the required 5.1 analog outputs supplied to connect to a surround sound receiver. This means that you can play the newer high-resolution music on the same machine you use to access the highly compressed tunes stored on your PC. There's some irony there, but not to dwell on. The DVD audio discs I played all sounded sharp as usual.
The Net DVD is among the first of its kind (Gateway also offers a very similar product), but you can expect to see a lot more competition in the future. It's a great idea, and one sure to captivate content crazed buyers as wireless technology becomes more widespread.
Amoi 9200 Net DVD Player
$299
WiFi data streaming
DVD-Audio
Progressive-scan video
www.amoi.com
The problem with MP3s and other digital audio files is that they tend to pile up on your PC's hard drive and never get out to the rest of the house. An iPod or similar audio jukebox may be great for taking your music on the road with you, but what about listening to all those tunes when you're lounging on the sofa or puttering around the house. If you're looking to pipe your MP3 collection from your PC to your living room or bedroom, then you need a media server. And if you're looking for a good media server, the Amoi Net DVD 9200 player cuts a mighty fine figure.
In previous issues, we've covered several methods of moving your music files around the house, including dedicated server products that possess their own hard drives (such as the TDK Jukebox in the October issue). The point of these products is to put all your media—the stuff you want to watch or listen to—in a central location. The Amoi Net DVD takes a decentralized route to media sharing. It reaches out to any music (MP3 and WMA files), pictures (JPEG files) and movies (MPEG-4 files) stored on any PC in your house and pipes them through your TV or stereo. It does this by creating a 802.11b WiFi link between your PC and the player, then streaming all your stored stuff through the air.
After I loaded the software, it identified and configured my PC's network devices (in this case a Belkin Wi-Fi adapter) then searched and cataloged all my digital media. The Amoi software worked smoothly, easily finding my wireless device. It started searching my computer for any compatible media I might want networked—a process which took quite a while due to the thousands of digital pictures on my PC.
The next step, once I hooked up the DVD player was to insert the included WiFi PCMCIA card (identical to the sort you'd use in a notebook computer) in the slot in the back of the box. If you'd rather go wired than wireless, you can use an Ethernet card instead of the WiFi card. After clicking through a few simple set-up screens I was soon connected and ready to network.
Pressing the Net button on the remote brings up three options on screen: My Music, My Pictures, and My Movies. From there I simply navigated to My Music and searched by artist for what I wanted to hear. You can also search by album or track name or just open a playlist once you've created one using the PC software. In the pictures and movie options, you simply search through the various folders organized on your computer. Viewing or playing a file is as simple as clicking the remote over the track, image or movie clip you want. You can even view JPEG pictures recorded onto CD-Rs and Kodak Picture CDs.
The device is easy to use. Changing audio tracks and navigating through 100 albums via the on-screen guide is less painless than staring at a rack of CDs. And my MP3 music, routed through a B&K receiver, sounds first rate. The few random MPEG-4 movies I had available, looked about as good as an average cable channel when played through the Amoi.
Having easy access to all my digital pictures is also great since it allows my whole family to see the pictures without the hassle of crowding around my messy computer desk. But it would be a real benefit if I could upload my digital pictures or music files from the DVD player (perhaps though a memory card reader) to the PC, but that functionality just isn't avaiable yet.
In addition to all of the above, the Net DVD is also a progressive scan player, so it will work with HDTVs, though the video quality isn't as solid as my standard Toshiba player. Overall, the picture is average for a mid-priced player.
The Amoi is also DVD-Audio compatible, with the required 5.1 analog outputs supplied to connect to a surround sound receiver. This means that you can play the newer high-resolution music on the same machine you use to access the highly compressed tunes stored on your PC. There's some irony there, but not to dwell on. The DVD audio discs I played all sounded sharp as usual.
The Net DVD is among the first of its kind (Gateway also offers a very similar product), but you can expect to see a lot more competition in the future. It's a great idea, and one sure to captivate content crazed buyers as wireless technology becomes more widespread.
Amoi 9200 Net DVD Player
$299
WiFi data streaming
DVD-Audio
Progressive-scan video
www.amoi.com
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