Now that we have had a few days to test out the new Motorola Atrix it was time to install the Entertainment Center kit, this is an add-on option that basically builds on the Webtop (laptop like) add-on, but instead of being a laptop chassis that you connect the Atrix phone to, this is a docking module that connects to your home TV via HDMI.
It comes with a docking module, Power supply, remote, Bluetooth keyboard & Mouse:
Motorola Atrix Entertainment Center
The kit comes with everything you need except the HDMI cable, and it’s not just a basic HDMI cable, you have to get one with the MicroHDMI connector to mate to the docking module and regular HDMI to connect to your TV. For this test we connected it to our 30 inch desktop DELL monitor via HDMI.
After a little technical fiddling with attaching the Bluetooth keyboard with the basic pairing technique we were able to get it all up and running, although not too involved, someone who doesn’t understand Bluetooth pairing will have to pay close attention to the manual. It did work the first time and it took only a few minutes.
One thing that was interesting is the phone in the dock becomes a virtual mouse until you get the mouse paired on Bluetooth, so between the remote and the phone you can navigate enough to then pair the mouse and keyboard.
Once everything is paired and working correctly the phone becomes a clock and the first screen is the Media Center mode, you can also select Webtop mode (as seen above) and the experience is pretty slick. You get a little window which is an expanded display of the live phone screen, anything on the phone is available here and the larger Webtop desktop which supports a Firefox browser and some other included tools.
Additionally the dock supports external speakers through the standard audio jack, I didn’t see any optical option but it was easy enough to add our Bose desktop speakers.
My first thought was, “What a great dorm room or apartment type setup, between the Entertainment Center option and the Webtop laptop chassis this is pretty cool”.
It is a pretty zippy system running at 1080 HD from a phone over HDMI. Although it wasn’t the native display resolution of the 30 inch monitor (which is much higher then HD), it looked pretty good. on a native 1080 monitor it would look very crisp we suspect.
The idea is that you would watch TV on the included ATT U-verse application powered by HULU, listen to your music and view your photos. If it is on your phone or available over the internet, you could use this expansion kit to watch it on a regular TV. If you already have a heavy investment in Apple TV, ROKU or other media centers it wouldn’t make as much sense to buy this kit unless you wanted to add to your geek appeal, but if you don’t have that stuff, this is actually a pretty cool solution.
Next we will test HD content playback, the documentation says it will handle 1080p, amazing… can’t wait to play, oh, I mean “test” it some more!
Motorola Atrix with Entertainment Center browsing the Web
We loaded the included Firefox browser and did some website testing, it was very usable, the cool part is you can use it on the big screen, save a bookmark and get to it when all you have with you is the Atrix phone.
One phone, lots of content, 4G download speeds, multiple ways to use it; Phone alone, Laptop and entertainment expansion options. No wonder this little gem was CES product of the year for 2011.
