Media extenders such as the Pegasus Cynalynx are popping up left and right these days. The most famous of them, the Apple TV, is geared toward the iTunes-loyal masses, whereas Netgear's Digital Entertainer HD EVA8000 seeks to appease folks with a varied media library who need versatility from their box. Although the former has serious limitations (iTunes-only) and the latter is saddled with issues (it likes to crash . . . a lot), both are worth looking into. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the Pegasus Cynalynx. On paper, the Cynalynx boasts an impressive feature set. It streams DVDs that are playing on your PC, as well as your computer's audio and video files, to your television. It can be used to browse the Internet and view photos, too. And unlike Apple TV and Netgear's device, it has its own built-in wireless router. There's only one problem: We could hardly get any of these features to work.

Measuring about 8 inches by 8.5 inches and just less than 3 inches tall, the router-like Cynalynx is not a very attractive device. Simply put, it looks cheaply made and won't exactly fit in among living room–friendly consumer electronics products. The rear connections are VGA out, an Ethernet port, two USB ports, an S-Video out, a composite-video out, a stereo out, the power jack, and (unlabeled) on the left-hand side, sits a digital coax out. Mounted on each side of the unit, in the back, are two 5.3-inch antennas.

Using an Acer laptop running Microsoft Windows XP (sadly, the Cynalynx is incompatible with all Vista and Mac systems), I attempted to stream a DVD playing on the computer to our television here in PC Magazine Labs. Because the Cynalynx needs its own client software to run, you need to play DVDs using this application instead of any other DVD program. I connected the box to the TV using a VGA cable and the Cynalynx's 3.5mm stereo audio jack. The first problem occurred before the DVD even began running. The software refused to load properly on my laptop and produced graphics that looked, to say the least, very funky. Later, after installing this software on other systems, I learned that the Acer's integrated ATI Mobility Radeon X1600 graphics isn't compatible with the Cynalynx application. And although the software appeared to load successfully on other systems, the Acer was the only computer I ever got to talk with the Cynalynx application in any way. I tested the device with two additional PCs (a desktop and another laptop, both running Win XP).

Soldiering on despite the strange-looking software graphics, I eventually got the DVD to stream over to the television, whereupon I encountered more challenges. First, there was no audio. After speaking with the CEO of Pegasus, who's also the primary tech-support contact (he declined to respond to any of my findings in this review), he told me that the stereo output on the rear of the Cynalynx is not for DVD audio—you need a stereo coaxial cable for that. Once I hooked the stereo coax up, just as he promised, I had not only audio, but 5.1 Dolby Surround sound (it also supports DTS sound) piping through my speakers, and it sounded great. But what if you don't have a receiver that has a digital coax-in and just want to use the stereo-in on your TV? Sorry, pal, you're out of luck.

I'm sorry to say that the DVD-stream quality wasn't great, either. It would sputter occasionally and even freeze and crash the system once in a while. I did, however, manage to use the remote to skip forward a few scenes on my DVD without any real issues. I achieved this seamless DVD navigation exactly once out of several attempts.

Another big problem is the Cynalynx's remote. Unlike a standard DVD control, it navigates across the television screen like a computer mouse but is achingly slow, about as fast as a spider could crawl across the screen. And with only four controllers (up, down, left, and right), it requires some aiming that traditional computer mice have overcome by using trackballs, lasers, or a good design.

But, hey, at least the buttons work, right? Sure, some of them do. But don't get your hopes up that pressing Play or Enter on the remote will cause a predictable effect on the DVD's menu page. For example, the Play/Enter feature works after repeated pressings of the Toggle controls. It took hours of trial and error to make this crucial discovery. The product's documentation wasn't helpful in any of this.

Now, I could go on and on about how the Pegasus Cynalynx also had problems playing all of my music files—whether they were ripped from a CD in iTunes or downloaded completely DRM-free from eMusic. I could tell you how it didn't even show up as a wireless router on one of my other systems, even though I turned off the firewall and spent hours trying to will it into action. The less-expensive Apple TV took me less than an hour to set up. The Cynalynx took days and never really worked as promised. I didn't even get to listen to one full song or view one full movie. Not good.

Compare the media hubs mentioned above side by side