To use the DMA2200 you will need to have a PC with Windows Vista Ultimate or Premium and a home network. Surprisingly, Windows Media Centre Edition 2005 is not supported so owners of older Media Centre PCs will need to upgrade. The setup process is very simple with the extender and PC guiding you through the process step by step. At least, that’s how it works in theory.  We found that if you use a wired connection from the PC to the router and a wireless connection to the extender, the devices cannot talk to each other. When both devices were attached to the router via Cat-5 cables and when both were connected wirelessly, the system worked perfectly.

Once you have it up and running, the extender works exactly the same as Windows Media Centre without any loss of functionality.  Streaming playback is available for audio files in MP3, WMA, WMA-Pro, AC3, MPEG Audio and AAS-LC formats. Video created in MPEG-1, MPEG-2, WMV9 and VC-1 formats and images in JPG, PNG, BMP or GIF are also supported. Unfortunately DivX video files cannot be streamed to the extender and lossless audio formats such as FLAC are also excluded.

If you have an HDTV Tuner (or SD) installed in the Media Centre PC, Live TV can also be streamed to the extender.  In overseas markets, a free Electronic Program Guides (EPG) is available but this is not supported in Australia.  However, if you are signed up to a third party EPG service, it can be used on the DMA2200.  TV programs can be paused or recorded for later use (all recordings are stored on the PC).