X10 DVD Anywhere
Reviewed by: David Hanson, Dec. 16, 1999

     I remember the first time I ever saw DVD in action. It was at a friend’s house. In all actuality, it wasn’t a DVD, but rather a DVD game. Wing Commander IV. Back in the day, that was about as high-tech as you could get. Of course, WC4 had great movie integration, and it just rocked with the DVD version. Of course, this DVD kit was one of the very first ones. In fact, it had only arrived at the Best Buy where my friend got it a few days before his purchase.
     About 6 months later, DVD will still only moderately popular. I, however, thought it looked pretty cool. Off I went and purchased Creative Labs’ PC-DVD Encore! Kit. It was very simple by today’s standards, involving nothing more than a Dxr2 hardware decoder, a 2x DVD drive (that is, 2x on DVD and 24x on CD). From there I started getting more and more into DVD, and that is around the time that the technology really because affordable and more practical. Well, 18 months later I still have that same DVD drive with the same archaic second-generation decoder. While I own many DVDs and the like, it still seems rather impractical to spend $400 on a good DVD player when my computer has it’s own that, despite it’s age, is very good.
     While the advantages of having TV DVD as compared to PC DVD are obvious (bigger screen, crisper image, more relaxing environment), it just doesn’t seem to amount to $400. X10 agrees. They bring a very unique product to the market. The focal point of their DVD-Anywhere kit is to deliver precisely that: DVD movies, anywhere. Ok, so the name is a bit illusory. It sounds a bit like a hand-held DVD player, but in fact it is a means to use one DVD player in your home (in our case being the aging PC DVD Encore) to watch DVDs on any television in your house.

     The way that they accomplish this is very simple, and still very effective. You have two little black boxes. They are both about five inches deep by four inches wide by two inches tall. On each one is a flat little antenna. Don’t mistake this for a metal rod like your radio has, it is realistically more of a flat-panel satellite dish. On the back of each you will find three standard RCA plugs, the color-coded type that go into your camcorder and probably out of your VCR.
     The installation consists of a few simple steps. You take the transmitter unit (there is actually a difference between the sender and the receiver unit) and plug it into your PC. Now, this required the purchase of a couple parts. The first was a Headphone -> Audio RCA adapter and the second was a double-female RCA coupler. The Headphone -> Audio RCA unit goes into the output of your soundcard, and simply converts your signal to the proper RCA needed by the DVD Anywhere! unit. The coupler was to properly hook up the visual. The output of my Dxr2 unit happened to me a male adapter, and so was the RCA extension cable I was using. These two parts together can be found at Radio Shack and will probably cost you a combined $7.
     The receiving unit is as easily installed, except no adapters were required to hook it into my TV. I plugged it into the Video 2 (that’s an auxiliary on my TV) so I never need to change wires when I want to switch over to DVD mode. The units have four possible frequencies, and a switch on the bottom can select them. They are conveniently labeled as channels A, B, C, and D. You just need to make sure they are on the same frequency.
     Now you just point the dishes in the same general direction and you’re set. I really expected this part to be challenging, but it was very easy. They weren’t nearly as picky as I thought they would be. I grabbed them, pointed them in the general director of each other, and viola!, it worked.
     Now the hard part is done, and it calling it the hard part is deceiving. Included in the kit is the X10 Mouse Remote. This handy unit serves as a universal remote, X10 light controller (can be used to turn on and off lights if you have some additional X10 hardware), computer remote, and most importantly, DVD remote. It can be programmed very easily to work with most TVs and VCRs, however none of the settings worked for my Sony stereo system. If you feel so inclined, you may plug a receiver into a free serial port (does anyone use those anymore?) and use it to control your mouse on your system. Ideally, it can control every part of your system from CDs playing to checking your email. I found, however, that the configuration software was pretty poor and wouldn’t set most things correctly. While this may seem to cripple the DVD ability, if you find a copy of Remote Selector (sorry, I don’t have a URL), and use it to launch your DVD app, you will be off and running perfectly. This remote allows you to control the DVD drive in your system from the TV in another room. A necessity indeed.

     Now for the real test—does it work? After hooking it up, I decided to launch my DVD version of “The Spanish Prisoner”. I chose this particular film because it has some very vividly-colored settings, just to test exactly how good the picture was. I was blow away. It is away higher quality than my TV (of course, it’s DVD) and higher quality than my PC. The picture was sharp as can be and the audio came through wonderfully. Only a slight hiss is present at high volumes. The movie played perfectly and I experienced virtually no problems. The quality is as sharp as on a normal box DVD player, which is really amazing.
     After some use, I did notice a few bugs though. For example, moving your hand directly in front of the dish makes a static burst from the TV, but this effect is only present when you hand is less than six inches from the dish. Something else, if you try and use the microwave during a movie, things are gonna get real bad real quick. However, if you just prepare your microwave popcorn ahead of time, you’re in good shape. The third and final bug was that on the ‘A’ channel, I noticed the unit was significantly more susceptible to interference, and my paddle fan actually caused slight audio distortions on this channel. Switching to a higher (I assume it is higher) Channel like ‘D’ will eliminate these problems.
     The DVD Anywhere is a dream come true. I once thought it would be cool to fish some wire from my PC to my TV to do this type of thing, but X10 has done it much easier for me! The list price is a hefty $250, but it seems X10 has it constantly on sale for around $90. You know you want one of these, and it is my recommendation that you indulge yourself in the awesomeness that is X10’s DVD Anywhere Kit.