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When it comes to Media Center Extenders, there are really two options currently on the market: XBox Extender and HP Extender (virtually identical to the Linksys Extender). In this article I will compare various aspects of the two systems and hopefully give you enough information to make an informed decision for your living room.

The Media Center Extender application is basically a superset of Windows Remote Desktop, with the following enhancements:

Bound solely to the Media Center application, which makes it easier for novices to use
An additional layer to transport audio and video content efficiently
Offloads video decoding onto local client hardware
I personally believe that the XBox is the perfect client for Windows XP Media Center Edition, and have been pushing for this option for years. I was ecstatic when I found out that the Extender for XBox was in development.

I’m now lucky enough to own both the HP x5400 and more recently Extender for XBox, and have spent some time comparing the two.

Form Factor

The HP x5400 is a very thin device that fits perfectly into your home theater equipment rack. I had my DVD player, HP Extender, and Yamaha receiver all stacked on top of each other and the combination all fit together nicely. The HP unit is all-black whereas the Linksys Extender is silver, so that may factor into your decision when choosing a unit that matches your existing equipment nicely. The XBox form factor is fairly well-known by most people: it is about two-thirds of the width of a standard a/v component and a little more than twice the height of the HP extender. The unit is black. With the controller cables coming out of the front of the XBox and its nonstandard width, the XBox definitely looks messy now in its new home atop my Yamaha A/V receiver.

Winner: HP Extender

Noise

The HP Extender is silent – no fans, no buzzing electronics, nothing. The XBox in comparison emits a whining sound that is quiet relative to a standard PC, but nonetheless distracting when you are watching TV or a movie on the Extender. Understandable, since the XBox is basically a configuration-locked PC complete with hard drive. I didn’t expect going into this that the noise from the XBox would be a problem, but I found myself trying to work out in my mind a way to enclose it behind some glass doors to lower the noise level in the family room. It’s noisy enough to mention it as an issue.

Winner: HP Extender

Boot-up Experience

Right off the bat it’s important to note that the XBox Extender cannot be turned on or off via the remote control, the power is controlled via a button on the front of the device. You might expect it to be the big button with green lighting surrounding it, but you’d be wrong. I suppose that people who have owned an XBox for any period of time don’t give this any thought, but family members who are new to the device and using it primarily to view television may be ejecting the DVD tray more often than they’d like (that’s what the big green button does). The XBox Extender remote control has a power button on it, which will disconnect your MCE session but not actually toggle power on the device. The HP Extender has a power button on the front of the device, as well as on the remote. It works exactly as you would expect a consumer electronics device to react when you press the power button.

Boot-up time for the two devices varies noticeably, with the HP Extender up and running (ie. MCE main page up and responsive) within 16 seconds and the XBox Extender up and running in 26 seconds. The XBox displays its own splash screen on power-up, which serves the dual purpose of being visually and audibly annoying while at the same time contributing to the boot delay.



Also notable is the fact that the XBox uses a slightly different connection page, one that is much cleaner and sexier than that of the HP. There is certainly no functional difference between the two but I hope that MS and its OEM partners take notice and clean up the HP’s boot screen. That first experience makes the difference between your initial reaction of “wow this thing is polished” versus “wow, this looks like the developer forgot to turn off the debug page”.

Winner: HP Extender

Application Performance and Functionality

Up to this point in the article, my preference has been pretty obviously leaning towards the HP Extender device. However, things start to weigh more in the favour of the XBox once we examine actual application performance and functionality.

Not that it is within the scope of this comparison, but it is important to note that functionality between MCE itself and any type of extender does vary. Video format playback is limited on the extender, as is compatibility with some third-party plug-in applications.

Feature-for-feature the two flavours of Extender perform the exact same operations (with the exception of DVD playback which I’ll discuss later). However, the XBox seems to have a noticeably snappier response to pretty much every action. Specifically, I experience faster response to skip and replay actions which I use all the time to skip commercials. The performance difference is numerically too small for me to bother timing, so I thought I’d perform a quick “wife test” on this one. So I says to the wife, “Wife, do you notice any difference between the XBox and the old extender?”, and she responds “Yes husband, this is way better. And I don’t have to hit the stupid delete button 3 times to get it to work!”. Anecdotally, I am willing to attest to improved interface performance on the XBox versus the HP.

Winner: XBox

Movie Playback

This is a simple section to write – the HP Extender does not play back DVDs at all. It doesn’t play them remotely from the Media Center, and it doesn’t play them locally from the extender device. The next paragraph is where I eat some crow regarding the need for this feature.

For months, I have been responding to people who want DVD playback on the extender with a hearty “just use a stand-alone DVD player, it’s not that big a deal”. Now that I’m spoiled with the XBox, which does MCE as well as local DVD playback, I’m going to reverse my position. I’m fighting an uphill battle in my household when it comes to consumer electronics – multiple remotes, different settings on the receiver, different input on the TV. It confuses people and makes life for the non-geeks (ie everyone in my family but me) difficult. When my parents come over to babysit, they are literally afraid to touch anything. That changes somewhat now that everything is consolidated into the XBox – turn on power, pick up this one remote, and hit play. If you want to watch TV, hit the TV button on that one remote. If you want to watch a DVD, insert the DVD and hit the play button on that same remote. You don’t have to change the input on the receiver, you don’t have to mess with any other settings, just pick up that remote there and hit play.

Technically, there is no specific need to have the DVD player integrated into the Extender. Socially however, I now realize that it is a necessity. Maybe I’ll actually get a babysitter to use the TV now!

I’ll step off of my soap-box for a bit now and actually talk about the movie playback experience. The XBox makes a good DVD player, although the DVD player is not integrated at all into the MCE user interface. I’m not convinced that it needs to be in the MCE interface, since DVDs really provide much of their own interface via the custom menu on the DVD itself. It would be nice if the on-screen controls matched the look and feel of MCE (ie blue and white with alpha-blending) but that’s really not a huge issue. Instead of integrating into the MCE interface, the Extender kit for XBox enables the built-in DVD player that lives within the XBox; the same DVD player you get with the XBox DVD kit. It outputs Dolby Digital and DTS audio via an optical digital output (comes with the advanced AV kit) which makes integration into the home theater seamless. You can easily access all of the standard functions of a normal DVD player via the XBox button on the remote. Aside from the aforementioned noise issue, I’m very comfortable keeping the XBox in my living room as the primary DVD player.

Note that I did not have a chance to test any advanced playback features such as progressive scan or HDTV output – donations of an HDTV sets happily accepted, but until then I’ll have to skip that portion of the review.

Winner: XBox

Video Quality

I’ll start by saying that video output quality is excellent on both the XBox and HP extender devices, much better than what I’ve ever gotten out of my Gateway 901x directly via S-Video (it uses the ATI Radeon 9800 card). The output from the HP extender is quite simply amazing – I might even go so far as to say that the video output from the HP is better than what I’d get out of my television’s built-in CATV tuner. The XBox video output quality is slightly inferior to that of the HP, but would probably not be noticed by most casual observers. Specifically I find that shadows are slightly more grainy on the XBox versus the shadows I’ve seen output via the HP. I am testing on a brand-new XBox, some users have noted that video quality on older-generation XBoxes is not that great compared to the more modern-day standard.

Winner: HP (only by a slight margin)

Remote Control

The HP remote control is the exact same remote that they ship with their Media Center PCs, and it is interchangeable with any other MCE remote, which is handy if you have an older remote that you want to re-purpose for the extender. It is non-programmable but performs very well within its own scope. The presence of the MCE DVD buttons may confuse some users, since as I mentioned earlier the HP Extender doesn’t actually do DVD playback.

The XBox Extender remote is specifically targeted at the XBox, meaning you cannot re-purpose older MCE remotes that you may have around the house. The XBox console itself does not have an IR receiver, so that Extender kit includes an dongle which you plug into one of the controller ports on the front of the device (the exact same dongle that comes with the XBox DVD kit). The XBox remote is slightly smaller than the standard Microsoft or HP MCE remotes with less space between buttons - this caused some minor complaints in my household.

In both cases, I’d like to see a universal remote included with the extender but that doesn’t look like it’s going to be an option any time soon.

Winner: Draw

Network Connectivity

The most obvious difference in network connectivity is that the HP unit includes 802.11 a/b/g wireless network options whereas the XBox can do wired ethernet only.

The XBox performed very well on the wired network, as noted above it performed better than the HP on the same wired network drop.

With my XBox now firmly planted in the living room, I decided to take the HP unit upstairs to the bedroom so that we could enjoy a clear picture on our older 27” RCA. With no wired network upstairs, I decided to try out the 802.11g network for this application and fully expected it not to work. I tested wireless connectivity with my beta unit several months ago, and the results were not good when it was 5 feet away from the MN-700 wireless router. Much to my surprise, the HP has performed flawlessly for an entire weekend using my non-certified 802.11g router while traversing a fair distance (basement to second floor). This may be due to the new external antenna that didn’t exist on my beta unit, better production hardware, or maybe just dumb luck.

You can purchase additional hardware for the XBox if you want to make it work wirelessly, but that will of course cost you some additional money. See Barb Bowman’s article for more references on wireless connectivity for the XBox and HP units.

Winner: HP

Price

I fully expect that the pricing decision will vary on whether or not you already have an XBox. If you do, then it’s obviously the way to go if you want to extend your Media Center experience to another TV in the house. For the purposes of comparison, I’ll use pricing from amazon.com quoted in US dollars. (I’ve also included Linksys pricing as well, since it’s the same basic hardware but $40 cheaper).

XBox Extender Pricing Breakdown (as tested)

XBox console – $125.99
Advanced A/V kit – $15.95
XBox Extender – $61.70
Total – $203.64

Stand-alone Extender Pricing Breakdown

HP Extender – $285.99
Linksys Extender – $246.99

Clearly, the XBox is a cheaper option and gives you the additional advantage of being able to play DVDs and games. Add in a wireless adapter for the XBox however, and depending on which adapter you choose the HP and Linksys units might become the cheaper option.

Winner: XBox

Summary

There is no clear recommendation here, you’ll need to balance your options and decide what’s right for you. My suggestion:

If you can live with a little extra noise in your living room and don’t need wireless connectivity, the XBox extender is the best value overall
If you want silence in your stereo rack and think you might want wireless connectivity, go for the HP or Linksys extender
Personally, the XBox has taken the key position in my home theater now and I’m happier for the change. It does everything I need, does it faster than the HP, and is easier for family and guests to figure out.

LINK !