X10.com - How To Stream Your Music and Movies To Your Television & Stereo!
Written: Sep 30 '02 (Updated Oct 18 '02)
| Customer Service: |
 |
|
| On-Time Delivery: |
 |
|
| Selection: |
|
|
|
| Full Review |
X10 (www.x10.com) is best known for those super annoying underneath the browser pop-up windows that have sexy women in bikinis and advertise tiny little wireless cameras. I suppose they needed a larger peeping tom customer base.
X10 offers many other products and is actually best known as an affordable home automation solution. I personally want to experiment with some of their motion detector and remote control stuff but haven't gotten around to it yet.
What I have picked up is their excellent Entertainment Anywhere package. X10 packages their various products in numerous ways which I find quite questionable so I will explain to you what really is needed and is useful.
Included in the Entertainment Anywhere (http://www.x10.com/products/x10_vk57a.htm) package:
Entertainment Receiver (http://www.x10.com/products/receivers.htm)
Video/Audio Transmitter (http://www.x10.com/products/transmitters.htm)
Anywhere 2000 Remote Control
RF Wireless Remote Receiver
BOOM 2000 Software (FREE Download)
Plus Get a FREE $20 Gift Certificate (Valid 30 Days) to enjoy on your next X10.com visit.
Okay lets break down all these items. Out of everything in this kit, virtually the only two things I ever use are the Entertainment (basically a video/audio) Receiver and Transmitter. The kit comes with instructions on how to setup everything all nice and dandy but after experimenting I have found out what I like about the kit and how I like to use it.
I have hooked up the video/audio transmitter through my speaker connections on my Creative Labs Soundblaster Live! I then hooked up my transmitter to my MSI GForce3 video card. After all that is said and done, I hooked up the receiver to my actual home theatre receiver (which you could substitute under various circumstances, i.e. your video in on your television/VCR and audio in on your stereo/TV/VCR). Voila technically everything is all set.
Okay, I try it out and my MP3's never sounded better! I currently have about 80 gigs of MP3's (I ripped my CD collection to turn my computer into a virtual jukebox long ago) and it's just great creating playlists and the like to send over a wireless connection to my receiver. Oh yeah baby! I'm also so glad I can finally listen to my favorite web radio stations like http:///www.knac.com through real speakers!
The video is another issue. Yuck! The picture turns out poorly and not even centered correctly. How am I supposed to watch a streaming movie or DIVX video? I was in quite a jam until I found www.tvtool.info . The stupid GForce TV out utilities quite frankly suck and are totally unusable. You cannot change any settings that you need to so without an item like tvtool don't even bother trying. Tvtool I downloaded and tried out (at the recommendation of a friend) and it works beautifully. The shareware version only works for fifteen minutes or so, but once I knew it worked I was more than happy to pay $10 U.S. dollars for a registered copy. I have no troubles with perfect movie watching from streaming sites like www.movieflicks.com or even watching streaming videos from places like launch.yahoo.com. It's utterly amazing! I have a stand alone DVD player but I would think that those of you who are stuck watching DVDs using a DVD ROM drive would die to see them on your TV instead.
So now I have all the proper functionality I wanted originally from the kit I purchased. Incidentally I also saw other similar products like these transmitters/receivers at a local Radio Shack so you may wish to go that route. They look identical, I just have never tried them. X10 is an open source technology that everyone can use to make wireless items with so I'm pretty sure they are almost identical to the x10 ones.
The other items in the kit I have rarely used. The Remote Control is probably going to be used by me in the future. I don't mind using the half dozen remotes I have for everything right now, but I guess I could use a universal remote. I programmed them easily with the codes they provided for each of my manufacturer's items and even found one not listed easily through the remote's search feature. Unfortunately a button I use quite frequently on my television's remote is not on this remote. I'm sure I can program it somewhere I just didn't have the patience at the time. Plus, the batteries ran out super fast. I don't know why it drained the batteries in such a record time. I suppose because I was using it six times as often, but that was a pain, especially since now I have to re-enter in all of those darned codes to start all over again. One of the biggest uses for the remote though is for my MP3 collection on my computer. In the Entertainment Anywhere Kit, an RF Wireless Remote Receiver is included. It connects through your computer's serial port. Install the free downloadable software 'BOOM 2000' from x10's website and now you can skip, pause, play, and do whatever you want with your remote. I now don't have to get off my comfortable butt when I don't want to hear a particular song I'm playing in my playlist...just skip, and it's done. I find that aside from that functionality, that's the only usefulness the remote has, but you can setup various macros for it to accomplish other stuff. The remote will also control lights and other x10 technologies if you have them or are thinking about trying that stuff out in the future.
That's it! It was actually pretty simple to get my MP3 collection broadcasting on my stereo and video on my television set. I didn't want to run wires through the walls at this time so this x10 kit has been a lifesaver. The quality has really impressed me. I figured that the video would really suck compared to hooking up my computer directly with cables to my TV but no. It is quite good.
If you like streaming video from websites, or find that you would really like to see any kind of video on your 'real' TV, check out this product. Of course, if you have the option you may wish to just use an S-Video connector from your video card to your TV (but you'll still want to use the tvtool program!), and RCA cables to hook up your computer to your stereo. I didn't have that option right now. Plus what is neat, is that I placed another receiver in another room, and my MP3's play on that as well. Pretty cool that I can send the same signal to multiple places easily.
The one thing I haven't mentioned yet is the gift certificate they include with the package. Kind of useless actually. In the future I'd like to try out setting up other home automation products, just not right now. It's too bad the certificate expired in thirty days.
If you are thinking of purchasing right from x10's website, click on the link below:
http://www.x10.com/friends/refer.cgi?shaithis@rocketmail.com
Yeah, it shows I referred you, but it's not really for me. I don't even know if I want anymore of their products. I am perfectly happy with my current kit. It does however, give you $15 off your first order which I think everyone would like. Please be aware that they tend to send alot of junk email though. While you can unsubscribe, it negates some gift certificates. I would setup a Hotmail or Yahoo temporary email account for the gift certificate and x10 ordering process.
Websites Of Interest:
TV Tool Program
A program absolutely needed to output video from your computer to your television regardless of how you've done it.
http://www.tvtool.info
http://www.x10.com
Retailers of the above mentioned wireless products. There are also many other brands out there, shop around.
Recommended:
Yes
|
|
|
|
About the Author
Location: Winnipeg, MB
Reviews written: 164
Trusted by: 41 members
About Me: Canadian, still alive, barely.
|
View Information
