Digital Trends

Gateway Wireless Connected DVD Player

June 28th, 2004 | by Jeff Fila

Usage and Testing

Every other networked media device we have tested, besides the two by Slim Devices, has suffered from the same annoying problem; remote control latency. Those products made it excruciatingly hard to change songs or albums because there was a several-second lag between when you hit the button on the remote and when the player actually responded. This we find unacceptable and the major flaw with most of these products. The way we see it is that you're effectively replacing a CD player — so the product really should work better/faster/simpler than a CD player to be worth it. We are glad to report that the Gateway ADC-320 did not suffer from this problem whatsoever. Changing from one track to another, even in a different album or folder was instantaneous — just like it should be.

Not only was latency a non-issue, but several other things that bothered us with some of the other players were not present either. The Connected DVD Player had no problem playing any DivX or Xvid movie we tried. We downloaded movie trailers and encoded our own DivX files and it played them perfectly. The TV shows recorded in Microsoft's Media Center played without a problem as did shows recorded with Snapstream's BeyondTV3. Every once in a while we had an issue with a high-quality recording skipping or not responding well to our pause, rewind or fast-forward commands with the remote control. However, these were very high-quality recordings that pushed the limits of the device — which were stated to be less than 3MBps. The DivX and Xvid recordings had no problem with these controls at all. We're still not at the point where super high quality video can be streamed wirelessly, but the quality is still certainly better than a VCR could ever be.

With your digital images, you can create slideshows and save them for repeated viewing. Like the others, the device can play music over your picture slideshows (or slideshows over your music). You can also load or create playlists from the media server application with ease. The Streaming Media Server allows you to edit the tags or attributes of your media files as well.

Navigation with the on-screen display was quick and intuitive. There was no wasted space (as was also an issue with us on competing products) and it just made sense. The navigation seemed to be well thought out and users with most any technical level should have no problem finding what they want. Gateway's documentation doesn't spend much time on the navigation, presumably because it is so easy. Everything can be controlled by the infrared remote, which is also well-laid out.

Playing DVDs and Optical Media

Besides being able to stream your digital content from your computer network, the ADC-320 is also a good old-fashioned DVD player. The progressive scan player looked and performed great with any media we tried. We coupled the Connected DVD Player with Gateway's KAS-303 home theater system (which we will also review soon) and it did a great job with audio CDs, photo CDs, CDs with MP3 files and DVDs. There was a lot to test on this product and we tried it all — including the entire box set of Band Of Brothers and all the Matrix movies. Audiophiles may be disappointed because it won't play SACD or DVD-Audio discs.

One thing that was a bit bothersome was that the unit really is two devices in one; a DVD player and a networked media player. This was quite evident when switching from one to the other, as it took a long time to open the DVD tray after switching from the connected player. It seemed like the player had to be shut down first, then the DVD had to start and then, finally, the tray would eject. This was our only issue with the DVD player.