ViewSonic WMA100 Wireless Media Adapter review. [Bottom-line: it´s not there yet]

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Co-Published with Laptop Magazine : Solutions for Business and Life

From a design standpoint, the ViewSonic WMA100 matches up well in a living room next to a sleek plasma television or thin home-stereo receiver. The downside to the trendy box shape (which looks like a Mac Mini) is that you might have a hard time stacking the unit with other consumer electronics equipment like a DVD player or cablebox.

To get the WMA100 up and running, you first have to install a small server utility on your PC. Unlike some media streaming products, this software is not for managing media; it just lets the ViewSonic WMA100 know where to find your music, photo, and video files. On the WMA100 itself, the TV interface bears a striking resemblance to a Media Center Extender product (ViewSonic even put a big green button on the remote), but the options are far more limiting, and the text and graphics are less polished.

Overall, the WMA100 is a smooth streamer. However, we’d wait until there are more content partnerships in place before buying it.

Pros
• Good audio and video streaming
• Internet radio support
• Simple setup

Cons
• Can’t multitask
• Lack of access to good online content
• Sluggish load times for high-res photos