Zyxel HomePlug DMA1100P review

Zyxel’s DMA1100P may look more like a router than a hi-fi component, but it’s the only media streamer we’ve ever seen that has built-in HomePlug AV networking.

This turns the mains wiring around your house into a network, allowing devices to communicate with each other. It’s a great alternative to WiFi but you’ll need to buy at least one HomePlug adaptor to connect your PC or router to the mains. Like the other multimedia receivers here, the DMA1100P has an HDMI output. If your TV doesn’t support HDMI, you’re limited to composite video. For audio, it has a pair of stereo phono outputs and a coaxial S/PDIF out.

The DMA1100P’s interface looks bland, but everything is clearly labelled. Helpfully, the menu options are replicated as buttons on the remote control, which makes it easier to find the file or setting you want. You can view image, video and audio files in separate lists or simply browse your shared content. We experienced slight lag when scrolling through long lists of files, though.

The DMA1100P supports only UPnP. It comes with DiXiM media server software, which you can use as an alternative to Windows Media Player. DiXiM scours your hard disk for media, but the streamer wasn’t always able to play what it found, including our H.264-encoded MP4 video files and many MPEG2 VOB files. There’s no internet radio client but Zyxel provides easy-to-follow instructions on using Windows Media Player to stream content from the subscription-based eMusic server, LoveFilm and BBC iPlayer.

The DMA1100P lacks SMB capabilities and can’t handle H.264 video, although its integrated HomePlug is ideal if you can’t get a decent wireless signal. Otherwise, this is an adequate but unremarkable streamer. If you can stretch to another £30, Syabas’s excellent Popcorn Hour A-110 is a better choice.