wired network cards

As mentioned by others, the interface on the TV is rather clunky and reminiscent of an old video game unit or something; lacks in response, and the remote had to be pointing very, very directly at the unit. I had to reconnect it a second time, and couldn't get it to recognize my home wireless network... which works just fine. Anyway, I just wanted to have my album collection available for play on my home stereo. Be warned! You cannot select an album for play in its entirety... you must go through and play each song manually, in order, if you want to do this. I called tech support and they confirmed that you cannot select play at the album level. You also cannot select mp3's for play, jukebox style, and put them in que... in by book, that sucks. Who wants such a dumb unit that you have to babysit constantly to hear your music?
The only alternative I suppose, would be to create a playlist on your computer for EACH album... but who wants to go to that much trouble?

After spending months burning all our CDs to MP3s, I was excited to get get the SMC multimedia streamer so that we could listen to our entire music collection on the stereo. However, when I went to install the SMC Media Server software that is needed to operate the device, it would not run, and SMC technical support provided zero help!

After hours of effort, here is what I discovered... My McAfee virus software was conflicting with Media Server. But simply disabling the virus software did not remove the conflict. In fact, I had to completely uninstall the McAfee software from my system to get the SMC device to work.

So BEWARE - if you have McAfee antivirus software, this product will NOT WORK on your wireless network!

I was looking for a networked media receiver that supported 802.11G which I've been using for my home network. When I discovered this SMC Multimedia Receiver I was very excited to make it the solution to converging the entertainment center with the breadth of content (photos, music, and videos) available on our PCs.

The SMCWMR-AG was reasonably easy to configure (although 802.11* can be tricky for any technophobe). Once I installed the content server software on my PC, and pointed it at my mp3, jpg, and mpg content everything was ready to go. The first disappointment came when I wanted to start a slideshow from the hundreds of pictures of our infant. The pictures are separated into folders based on events and dates, but I couldn't get a slideshow to work across folders (without rearranging the files or copying to a new directory). Also, the slideshow function froze intermittently (not sure what the issue was here).

MP3's seemed to play fine (along with viewing pictures simultaneously), with the same limitation of playing across folders. I didn't get a chance to setup new playlist to see if this solved these problems. I was also disappointed in the limited types of Internet radio streams supported, but I'm sure that could be improved through software in the future.

The clincher for me returning the device to the store was playing video. Home movies encoded in anything but the lowest bitrates played fine for a few seconds then did an unwatchable jerky dance. The wireless network reported an excellent link and 54Mbit and occasionally 36Mbit connection speeds.

Finally, the user interface seems a bit crude and slow to respond. Again, this may be upgradable in the future so there is the potential for significant improvement. It just didn't meet my expectations at this time.

So, I'm considering trying competitive devices such as the Prismiq or Play@TV products. If they don't do the trick it is time to build that media-center PC in an entertainment center-friendly case and be done with it. That still leaves the challenge of sharing content throughout the house unsolved. :-(