The Linux-powered Acer Media Gateway MG-3001P media extender takes Jørgen Sundgot by surprise; straight out of the starting blocks, it proves to be a marvellous little media juggler.
Review summary of the Acer Media Gateway MG-3001P:
| Gallery » |
Pros:
Cons:
%
POOR |
Mediocre |
Good |
Very good |
Excellent |
|
|
Full review of the Acer Media Gateway MG-3001P:
 |
Sporting a stylish yet modest silver colour scheme, the MG-3001P is a device which would fit nicely into most stereo racks. All of its outputs as well as the Wi-Fi antenna are located on the back, while the clean and uncluttered front caters to a somewhat small VFD display and indicator lights for power and wireless activity. A set of basic navigation buttons are placed below the display, whilst hidden behind a flip-down lid on the right side are additional buttons for media control and a USB 2.0 connector for attaching mass storage compliant devices.
The line-up of connectors for the MG-3001P is quite extensive with Composite, Component, S-Video and SCART on board for video as well as stereo RCA, coaxial SPDIF and optical SPDIF for audio. We're a bit miffed by the omission of DVI and HDMI - but then again, neither is particularly widespread in Europe for the time being. On the network side of things we find Gigabit Ethernet and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, the latter of which offered surprisingly good signal reception even under difficult conditions. WEP encryption is also supported, but for wireless afficionados we recommend sticking with MAC filtering.
Also included with the MG-3001P is an infrared remote control which does its job well; all pertinent functions can quickly be reached, and we're especially fond of its ability to page up/down - invaluable in long music listings - and dedicated buttons for quickly accessing the Music, Picture and Video views.
So easy even grandma can do it
Installing and setting up the MG-3001P is a deceptively simple affair: hook it up, plug it in and install the bundled software under Windows 2000/XP. As the setup relies on the UPnP protocol, multiple PCs in a household can be configured to run media servers which all can run independently over the same network. Alternatively, the option exists to create separate user profiles on a single media server pointing to different directories or with varying playlists.
Although the media server interface is generally adequate, we're a bit irked by a less-than-instant update of so-called synchronized directories; in essence playlists intended to be automatically updated once new media is copied to an appointed folder. Similarly, the rather hefty 11 MB of RAM occupied by the media server process is larger than we'd expect - yet the amount of resources drawn whilst streaming media fortunately did little to impact typical PC use.
A slew of formats can be pushed either via Wi-Fi or wires to the MG-3001P, including MP3, WMA 7/8/9, LPCM and WAV for audio; MPEG 1/2/4, DivX, XviD, WMV 9 and Quicktime for video; and JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF and BMP for pictures. It should also be noted that MPEG2 is supported up to 1080i resolution; MPEG4 up to 720p; and WMV 9 similarly up to 720p. Despite this superbly broad plethora of acronyms, however, we're a tad disappointed by the lack of support for Secure WMA. Still, future support is at the very least not entirely implausible given the MG-3001P's Internet-upgradeable firmware.
The meat of the business
Moving to the magic box itself, users are created by a clear and legible interface designed for an excellent 10-foot experience. Interfaces vary depending on what kind of media a user wishes to grapple with, yet revolve around a common theme which makes navigation intuitive. It should also be noted that the general pace with which the MG-3001P performs is very good indeed - likely courtesy of its Linux based operating system.
Take audio, for instance. Users can rapidly sort audio by artist, album or genre, relying on tag information which can be edited through Acer's media server software - also capable of ripping CDs and assigning album art to songs. Playlists are also managed here, although this process negates any sort of intelligence and instead relies on tedious hand-picking. Another closely related concept is favourites, which is similar in function but is designed to hold a smaller number of items. Our only complaint? Paused audio will expire after 5 minutes.
Picture viewing is similarly snappy, although perhaps a simpler affair by nature as pictures can only be navigated by folder or sorted by date. Working with 5 Megapixel shots, performance was impeccable, including rotating, zooming and panning, and we're also pleased to see the favourites concept present in this branch of the interface. Oh, and lest we forget, slideshows can be set to play with music in the background should one wish to bore ones friends and family to death in a more effective manner.
Then there's Internet content, which for the time being is limited to a barrage of Internet radio from provider Live365. Provided you have any sort of decent connection, this is an excellent offering that is certain to let you escape the constraints of your music collection every so often - although it can be a bit hard to navigate among the zillion channels available.
Viscerally visual
The highlight of the MG-3001P, though, is its video streaming capabilities - which must be said to be utterly impressive. The most capable player we've seen to date, it supports a battery of formats and streams all with aplomb in resolutions up to 1080i, easily resizing formats on the fly between different resolutions and gloriously trumping competitors such as
the Philips Streamium SL400i. In fact, the only performance complaint we could come up with was a barely noticeable lag affecting MPEG2 video resizing from a 1080i size file to Composite or S-Video.
Sorely missed, however, is the ability to jump ahead or backwards in increments - yet worse is the complete inability to rewind video at all. Tut tut. Lastly, on the note of the MG-3001P's compatibility with removable storage devices, its ability to play back content on the fly from such devices comes in very handy for sharing media without having to copy it to their network - which, handily, is also made possible through a dedicated Copy button on the remote control.
Availability
The Acer Media Gateway MG-3001P is now shipping throughout Europe, selling in the €250 EUR range. Its minimum requirements include a PC running Windows 2000 or XP atop a Pentium II 400 MHz CPU with 128 MB of RAM and 10 MB of HDD space.
Price and availability
The Acer Media Gateway MG-3001P will start selling for TBA () in December 1969.
|
|
|
|
|
Archive