Rating: 
Summary: BEWARE - CONFLICTS WITH McAfee !!
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: BEWARE - CONFLICTS WITH McAfee !!
Review: 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!
Rating:
Summary: not as wonderful as it sounds
Review: 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?
Rating:
Summary: Good product in pre beta testing phase
Review: Great concept. SMC products have provided great customer service & GUIs & stability for me in the past... DO NOT BUY THIS VERSION OF THIS PRODUCT!!! (Feb 6, 2004) The installation software worked fine, but when I launched the SMC Media Server program, only Apache Server worked... Without the SMC GUI, you cannot specify which directories or files will be served to your home theater. Customer Service does not have record of the product in their database. Second-Tier customer support suggested the problem was that I had too many media files :P Try Neoware for a thin client or PrismIQ for a low priced media server or Roku for a robust media server.
Rating:
Summary: Good product in pre beta testing phase
Review: Great concept. SMC products have provided great customer service & GUIs & stability for me in the past... DO NOT BUY THIS VERSION OF THIS PRODUCT!!! (Feb 6, 2004) The installation software worked fine, but when I launched the SMC Media Server program, only Apache Server worked... Without the SMC GUI, you cannot specify which directories or files will be served to your home theater. Customer Service does not have record of the product in their database. Second-Tier customer support suggested the problem was that I had too many media files :P Try Neoware for a thin client or PrismIQ for a low priced media server or Roku for a robust media server.
Rating:
Summary: Good product in pre beta testing phase
Review: Great concept. SMC products have provided great customer service & GUIs & stability for me in the past... DO NOT BUY THIS VERSION OF THIS PRODUCT!!! (Feb 6, 2004) The installation software worked fine, but when I launched the SMC Media Server program, only Apache Server worked... Without the SMC GUI, you cannot specify which directories or files will be served to your home theater. Customer Service does not have record of the product in their database. Second-Tier customer support suggested the problem was that I had too many media files :P Try Neoware for a thin client or PrismIQ for a low priced media server or Roku for a robust media server.
Rating:
Summary: Beware! For Early Adopters with forgiving attitudes only.
Review: Have had the unit for about 2 weeks and find the user interface to be slow, difficult to use and interfering with audio output when the receiver box needs to get another page of content data (directory information, tag content) from the media server (the software that runs on the PC). Set up was not very difficult for the wireless configuration, although I have been somehow unable to get the wired ethernet connection on the receiver to see a media server (PC) that is running on a wireless PC...or even on a wired PC, so far. Wireless to wireless 802.11b is working for me. I was under the impression that I was going to be able to send an audio stream from the media server (PC) to the receiver that was controlled by juke box software on the PC. Instead, what you can do is use a very primitive TV user interface (UI) to browse and use a (bad) search UI to get through your pre-organized and shared media files (audio, photo, video) and playlists which are accessible in the PC file system. Yes, networked drives work on the PC running the media server software. Same for photos and videos. You can, however, make a playlist with an IP address in it for an Internet radio channel and shoot that stream to the receiver from the PC...go figure why you can't shoot a stream at it from Winamp or your favorite juke. I have a radio channel that repeatedly takes over 4 minutes to buffer and start playing, though it jumps on the PC in about a quarter of a minute. Although the media receiver is UPnP (Universal Plug & Play) compatible, the receiver will not "see" the UPnP server that MusicMatch Juke Box (8.1) has available in it. Also, I have been unable to get large playlists (70-80 tracks) to be received when selected. "Transport Errors" which I think must mean not enough memory at the receiver end. Photos in a directory can be "played" at 10 or 15 seconds per slide...not configurable, only 10 or 15 seconds...not 3, not 20...but you can manually change photos with the remote control device, go back and forward. I sent my disappointments and a request for help to figure out why I cannot get the wired configuration to work to SMC support with no response. For this much $$$, I'd say you need to be really forgiving and/or be willing to patiently hope new software will get this to where you will be happy. The receiver box checks for new software automagically when it boots up and finds it is on a net that can get to the Internet. What say you guys at SMC??
Rating: 
Summary: Not ready for primetime
Review: I bought the EZ-Stream anticipating that in the 12 months since it was introduced, it has improved enough to be a useful consumer device. I don't think it's there yet.
While setup was relatively painless, I did have to enter an IP address by hand instead of being able to use my wireless hub's DHCP feature.
My first disappointment was with the sound quality. I played a CD through my component stereo, then had it play using the EZ-Stream through the same stereo, and the sound quality was noticably worse. At first I thought it may be an encoding issue - many of my CD's are encoded at 128kbps. So I tried to reencode the same track at 192kbps and 256kbps. At 192 there was no appreciable difference (still markedly inferior to playing the CD directly), and at 256 the track didn't even show up on the EZ-Stream display - looked like the device didn't recognize the format (even though it says it'll play up to 320kbps). I was never able to ascertain the reason for the inferior sound quality. My MP3's seem to sound identical to the CD's when I play them through the computer.
My second disappointment was with the clunkiness of the on-screen display and playback options. It is slow to respond, the search feature isn't very usable (half the time it didn't find anything even with simple searches by the first letter), and worst of all, I couldn't just pick an album and play all the songs on it in order - the EZ-Stream rearranges them in alphabetical order. I typically remember track numbers as opposed to song names, so this doesn't help me much.
The third disappointment was with the PC software quality. The MediaServer readily allows sharing my "My Music" folder, but it's impossible to see what's actually being shared, and un-share subdirectories. Worst of all, the MediaServer seems to peg the CPU even when the device is not playing music, which is very strange and makes the host computer fairly unusable. I haven't tried moving the software to my server yet, but it's bad enough that I need to kill the server when I'm not using the EZ-Stream so that my wife can use the computer.
On the positive side, I was impressed by how easy it was to browse and view the MPEG videos I have on my PC - no stuttering at all, and what seemed to be relatively good video quality.
In summary, I was disappointed enough with the device that I will have to return it and probably get a Media Center PC instead.
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the effort.
Review: I bought this unit about 4 months ago and was only able to use it for 1 week. I have TrendMicro software for internet security, wireless firewall, etc. At about the time I downloaded Windows XP SP2, my wireless receiver would not work anymore. I attempted to change some router and Security settings, but couldn't get it to work. On the client status of my router the wireless receiver showed up, but I could not get the receiver to find the server software. I spoke with a few different CSRs from SMC, but did not get anyone that could help fix my problem. I am purchasing another unit to replace this but I am going to try something other than SMC.
Rating: 
Summary: Just what I was looking for, but didn't quite make the grade
Review: 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. :-(
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