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(More customer reviews)Bought at Costco as it was the only router for sale, and it has a USB port which means network printing OR file sharing without having a server turned on. My first complaint is that the "Easy Setup" diagram on the box clearly shows two USB ports on the back of the device while the spec. list says that it only has one. Two would make sense, since the router can act as a print server or a media server using an external hard drive. I can see that doing both at the same time would overload this router's abilities, as connecting an external hard drive and then trying to stream DVD quality video over the WIRED connection is sluggish and will cause VLC or Windows Media Player to hang. Forget about playing ripped DVDs from the hard drive if they have a menu. The menu will load and you will do nothing but wait once you click "Play Movie." Hell, even browsing files on the external HD will cause explorer to lock up.
If I stream a video from a computer on the network (over the wi-fi) as opposed to the external HD hooked up to the router, everything works as normal (when everything's working -- see below), throughout my apartment, despite the lack of signal bars (I always had full bars everywhere with my Linksys).
From my review thus far, one would assume that my only beef is with the USB functionality. However, you would be wrong. The main reason I bought this router is because I despise power cycling. I cannot stand pulling a plug in the back of a router, and then wasting a half minute of my time daydreaming of unicorns or whatever, and then fumbling with the plug and some unseen port. Do you miss the 90's when you would see pictures load line by line or do the slowly enhancing pixel routine? Remember server timeouts with their cute "Server not found" errors and their "Try again" buttons that never worked? Remember seeing red "X's" instead of pictures? Well, if you want to feel like a kid with a 28.8 modem again, then this is the router for you!!! You'll be nostalgically transported 15 years back in time approximately every day until you realize the Internet sucked in the 90's and so you get up, unplug the router, and continue your unicorn daydream where it left off. I'm currently at the part where we take a nap in the meadow together.
Oh yea, you'll have to power cycle so often, they even added a "feature" to do this automatically for you called "self healing" where you lose Internet completely at some specified time once a week. So I guess you only have to power cycle six times a week. THANKS BELKIN!!!
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Belkin's Play Wireless Dual-Band Router optimizes multiple media files like streaming HD video and games
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