I can see the attraction, but I worry that the cost (which will not be insignificant) will essentially be a penalty to the customers who don't need it.
This intrigued me because I have messed with wireless bridging (using a Linksys access point that was a pain to set up as both access point and bridge), so I started hunting around for some detail on purpose-built wireless bridges. My biggest question was how you handle configuring wireless encryption (WEP or WPA, presumably). I wanted to see the instructions for setting up a bridge. I may be overlooking something really simple out there, but what I found included the discontinued Linksys WET11 (which I remember seeing years ago), a replacement Linksys with some poor reviews on Amazon.com, a review of an SMC bridge that was pretty critical of the tedious setup procedure, and this D-Link unit that actually does exactly what we are talking about: a wireless bridge (assuming you set the rear panel switch to "bridge" instead of "AP") with four ports. The manual is close to 100 pages long, and the section talking about the bridge mode spent ten pages talking about how to set it up (logging in through a browser, entering the name of the access point, entering in a pin or other security code, and so forth). That's where I get concerned about Outlaw trying to integrate all of that into a surround processor: they will be the ones fielding calls from folks trying to configure the unit to work with dozens of different access points and network setups. The impact on their customer support resources could be painful if the feature actually saw heavy use. On the bright side, I did also find a D-Link gaming bridge (DGL-3420) with instructions that seemed more straightforward. I still think about the potential pitfalls some folks will encounter when messing with wireless networking (I've provided some free phone support for folks with wireless networks and in at least one case found that it never did quite get set up right, which may be contributing to my skittishness).
True enough. I don't dislike the idea - it really is a cool concept - I just worry that actually trying to do it (especially for a smaller company that does their own customer support) could be opening a can of worms that would cost them heavily, plus the potential first cost passed along to the customer. If D-Link is charging $100 to $130 for a device like this that's tucked into a plastic box when they have the benefit of shared R&D, the cost savings of tucking it inside an existing chassis is likely to be almost zero.