| D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player, Audio/Photo/Video, 802.11g |
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| Features: |
Transfer Speeds Up to 54 Mbps
Supports all popular media formats
Allows you to access digital media content stored on your PC, browse your music files, watch your videos, and display your photos
Connects Wirelessly Using 802.11g or Via Ethernet
Compatible with Windows 98SE, Me, 2000 or XP |
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| Description: |
| D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player - The Wireless Media Player from D-Link merges your abundant digital entertainment collection on your PC, with the comfort and convenience of your living room. It's slim design fits into entertainment centers easily, and once attached to your TV, you can wirelessly stream your audio, photo, and video files. Navigation of your content is easy with D-Link's intuitive user interface and included remote control! Audio Compatibility - MP3, WMA, WAV,&Radio AOL Video Compatibility - MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, QuickTime,&XviD Image Compatibility - JPEG, JPEG2000, TIFF, GIF, BMP,&PNG |
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| User Reviews (143 total): |
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POS Do not buy under any circumstances, July 6, 2006
By tail dragger modeler (Atlanta Georgia)
Where to begin? Bought DSM-320 on July 2. Installation of software was not a problem, however, it required first call to tech-no-support to get the unit to recognize the Belkin wireless server. However, I have yet to play one song or look at one picture. Second call to tech-no-support on July 3 did not resolve this issue and I was told to call back on July 5 to speak with "product specialist" who was only available from 8 am to 5 pm PST.
Came home from work early (as I am on EST) and third call to tech-no-support and I was told that "product specialist" is only able to call me back and the "senior technical specialist" that I was speaking with was not permitted to transfer me to the product specialist and that he could only put a note in my log for the specialist to call me. Now, seeing as my computer and 320 are at home and I work away from home, as probably the majority of people do, I find it unreasonable and counterintuitive to have purchasers wait by the phone to be contacted by a product specialist, if in fact such a person exists.
I was also told that the supervisors were in a management meeting and then was told that senior technical specialists are the supervisors and thus, there is no one above them to speak with. Two plus hours on the phone and still unable to play any files.
I purchased this unit specifically because I use Yahoo music and this is touted by Yahoo as being compatible with the Yahoo music server. The first day the 320 recognized the Yahoo server, but it is now unable to locate at all. I will be returning the unit tomorrow and try my luck with another product.
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Too Many Problems, June 16, 2006
By Patrick M. Cloud (Whitefish Bay, WI United States)
I've had my DSM 320 for a little over a year now, and I have now given up on the unit. While the idea of the wireless media player is very enticing, the problems one encounters on the way make it less than enjoyable. To begin with, the initial installation of the product took two full evenings on the phone with Dlink Tech Support (who are actually quite pleasant). It finally would play, but not playlists or protected music.
Another two evenings spent solved this problem by installing windows media player. Then the DSM 320 crashed again, making hiccupping sounds. Tech support just told me to get rid of the windows media player, but then I could not use my windows playlists or the windows protected media. This one took several days to figure out, but was being caused by an interaction with a firewall.
As more music was added to my computer, the menu speeds got so slow that I had to run a CAT 5 cable to the unit, making the investment in a wireless unit pointless. Then I switched my MP3 player to an iPod and the DSM 320 crashed again. After two more evenings fiddling I have yet to solve this one, nor do I intend to. Save yourself a little money and a lot of heart and headaches and skip this one.
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Stay away from this unit!, June 8, 2006
By D. Butler (Portland, OR)
This media player is great.... when it works, which is rarely! I have had this product for over a year now and have had nothing but problems with it. The only way I got acceptable performance (meaning it doesn't lock up on me) is by ditching the wireless connection and going with a hardwired setup. I tried two different wireless routers, but the router didn't seem to be the problem. I also ditched the server software, which would hammer my machine, and went with Tversity instead. After all of that, it was finally working well, until all of a sudden it died completely. Since I've had it for over a year, DLink tech support and customer service said too bad. Their only solution was to offer to sell me another unit - I don't think so!
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Room for improvement, but still pretty good, May 29, 2006
By M. Bass (Falls Church, VA USA)
I bought this primarily so I could play music from my PC over my stereo system for the house. It works well and the sound is good (I have a D-Link router so no problems with compatibility). However, I have just two complaints:
1) The software interface on the PC needs a lot of improvement. This is where you designate various folders containing multimedia content to be accessed by the DSM-320. However, the software has very little functionality beyond simply designating folders. For example, it is a real pain to create play lists.
2) On not one but TWO units that I tried, the component video outputs did not work. I returned the first unit and discovered the same problem with the replacement. If you buy one of these, I would suggest checking those jacks first thing.
All in all, however, I think this is a solid buy for the money (shop around, btw; I got mine for $100).
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Not perfect, but very solid considering the competition, May 25, 2006
By JB Shmults (Franklin, MA USA)
So far, so good. After much reading and reviewing my options, I decided to get this media server and see if it works. I had my doubts after reading many negative reviews, but considering that there are very few choices of players that do all the same, I convinced myself that, worst case scenario, I could always use my 30 day money back guarantee (27 days to go).
Now, there are media servers out there that do a better job at playing music, or playing photos or playing videos, but there are very few choices that do it all. Originally, I had considered the Buffalo device, but their support and firmware seems to be terrible. Here are my main criteria and I urge you to make a list of what's important to you, because that should make a big difference in your purchasing decision. I wanted a device that plays both music (mp3, I don't do iTunes and don't care for online radio) and photos (JPG, GIF, TIF were a must), but I am not very interested in streaming videos. DVD and TV will do a much better job at that for quite some time to come and I don't have time to rip or download videos (and, in fairness: I have problems playing some small mpgs that I own but I don't care and probably won't spend any time to make it work). Wireless was a must, as well as good looks for my stereo system and I wanted at least digital audio outputs (both optical and COAX work well) as well as the ability to browse my file collection.
Installation was quite easy, I am familiar with WEP and what it takes to configure it and I didn't even bother to unpack the software CD but rather installed the free and very capable Microsoft Media Connect as my server. I also found out that my network storage drive (a Maxtor 300 Gb) has its own built-in media server, both of which I see when starting the D-Link and both of which work well (unfortunately, the Maxtor does not have the option to browse by folder).
The device works pretty much as advertised, I do not have problems with aspect ratio of photos, but I also don't have an HDTV set (and I assume that most problems that people complain about are caused by that, not the D-Link).
What I didn't know was that you can actually view your photos in a slide show and play music from your collection at the same time (choose to repeat, loop, random or stop music). Doing so, one problem I ran into is that that music skipped briefly whenever a large photo file was loaded. These files are 2-12 mb large (JPGs from my 6 mpixel camera or their 12 mb TIF versions) and I assume that this is a limitation of my wireless network, not the D-Link (the router is 2 rooms and 2 walls away). In fact, skipping was much reduced when I streamed directly from my workstation, instead of going to the network drive THROUGH my workstation or when I streamed directly from the network drive through its own server. I realized that 2-12 mb is ridiculous overkill considering the resolution of my plain old analog TV and I decided to simply size everything down to 1024x768 for a mean file size of 250 kb, which should do well and doesn't take up much space (my ThumbsPlus photo database does this automatically for the entire tree of 24000 files while I type this).
One concern or unanswered question I had was if the D-Link will enable me to browse/see/play files in sub-sub-sub folders, as my photo collection is sorted that way and my music is sorted by artist, then album (sub-sub) and all of that works well both with the Media Connect as well as the Maxtor server.
Oh: once I was done with setup and the device connected to my network, it went online, auto-checked for firmware and asked me if I wanted to upgrade to the latest version. I was skeptical but confirmed OK. Five minutes later, my player rebooted and had the latest 1.07 firmware. Nice!
All in all, this is a very capable media player. It has some limitations but for streaming photos and music over a wireless network to your stereo and TV, this works very well and does not have much competition. I will keep it until Media Center computers come down in price, look better and are near-silent without overheating....
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Waste of GeekSquad/My time & Money!, April 3, 2006
By Semi-Tech (Frisco, TX)
The details in the bad experiences are clear in the other reviews. I had GeekSquad come out after taking two of them back to store because I couldn't get them to work and tech support for D-Link said it was a bad unit - both times. So for quick fix, I called GeekSquad to come put it in, I thought easy. After 5 hours of trouble shooting, conference calls, tweaking, etc., etc., they left scratching their heads. COULD NOT MAKE IT WORK! They even set up a temporary network with a barebones pc and it still would not work. THIS THING IS GOING BACK! WASTE OF TIME AND MONEY. Which is a shame, because it sounded like such a great idea.
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Not That Impressed...., February 23, 2006
By C. Pikulinski (Lewisville, Texas USA)
I purchased this media player after using a Tivo box for the same type of wireless streaming from my pc. The Tivo box had to be moved into another room so I needed something to replace it.
The review... I'm not at all impressed with the speed of this media player over a basic wireless g network. The player loses it's connection and also takes too much time to load pictures. The indexing ability is poor if you have many photos in multiple directories. The internet streaming of Live365 and others web sites is cool but not that useful to me.
Use Tivo to stream content, it's much better.
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Doesn't do anything very well, February 6, 2006
By petej (Auburn, CA USA)
1. Streaming audio (C-) - Using either Windows Media Connect or the poor D-Link server in a sampling of about 100/2300 songs (WMA, MP3) (~250 albums) at least 10 percent stall and play eradically. My Roku M1000 navigates and plays these audio files perfectly.
2. JPEG rendering (D)is very slow and worse.
3. Video (AVI) (F) - Would not play any using D-Link server or Windows Media Connect server. Using TVersity server am able to play two or three until unit hangs and has to be rebooted.
The remote (C-) feels like a toy and the proximity of the buttons is probably adequate for a childs hands.
General usability of UI and navigation (C-)- D-Link designers really missed an opportunity given the fact that the user must use a TV or VGA equivalent screen.
Support (F) A call to D-Link support regarding the audio file problems was a waste of time.
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Great Product, February 5, 2006
By Dhruba Raj Khanal
After reading tons of review of D-Link DSM-320 mostly negative ones, I was hesitant at first to buy this product...not that I had not come across a few four stars. I decided to try it anyways today.
Installation was a breeze...took me about 7 minutes (and yes... timed it!!). I have 128-bit WEP-enabled my router...so it was just the matter of punching in the the security key.
The only thing i miss is the photo slide show random transitions....would have been great Otherwise...its a great product...works flawless for me.
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Setup was easy but some bugs, February 2, 2006
By Johnny Royale (Toronto, Ontario)
First off I'm not sure about the people who couldn't connect for x hours. I loaded the software, plugged it in and it saw it, I picked my network and bang, bob's your uncle.
However, I will let you know about software, which for me is the real issue at hand.
There are 3 software packages that I know of, the D-Link software that came with it, Windows Media Connect 2, and TVERSITY. The D-Link software is decent but doesn't support all types and I am having issues with the aspect ratio. It's changing the aspect ratio of my pics to fill out a 4:3 aspect ratio. This seems to be a known issue and makes all your pics look squeezed no matter what you select on the unit.
Windows Media Connect had a few troubles connecting at the beginning but then I got it going, (Windows firewall needs to be opened or disabled to see it and TVERSITY) Media connect clears the aspect ratio problem up, but the picture quality is not at the same level as the D-Link software, quite noticeable really.
TVERSITY has very little support for pictures at this point. And by that I mean it can't even play a jpeg.
With regards to music (MP3) they are all fairly even but you may want to got through your lists and clean up your ID3 tags so you don't have 5 instances of Barenaked_Ladies, Barnacked Lady's etc.
I don't play video on it because it's not hidef and those units cost about $800 and I'm not there yet and frankly if you want to do that, get a media pc and hook it up to your tv full time.
Over, the picture quality is decent, I think it does 1024x??? with component cables for still photography, and the sound quality is as good as your rip.
All in all it's a decent unit, I got it for $150 so I can't complain that much. I didn't have any problems hooking it up and everything after that seems like a software/firmware issue which will keep getting better and from what it sounds like, has already been significantly upgraded in the past year.
I'm keeping mine for tunes and the odd pic.
Try it out, if it doesn't work don't freak out like these other people, just take it back and if you want something to work no probs that has great features with a reasonable price, stay entirely out of the computer/audio-video market.
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good for music, not for video, January 26, 2006
By Katharina Sand
i bought this and quickly gave up on the included software. i then went with the tversity free software, which is miles better. however if you have a large divx xvid avi collection you wont be happy. some play. some dont. there's no telling until you try it, even hard wired, so its not a wireless bandwidth problem. i eventually gave up and returned it. who wants to spend all the time setting it up and wondering if it will work just to watch a video? instead i went with an old Xbox (at half the price as everyone is getting rid of them and going to the new 360), converted it to an Xbox media center (XBMC) and its genius. everything works no matter what...divx, xvid, ogg... and it can do so much else too (not to mention you can play games with an xbox if you want to). its not the simplest route but its 100 years past whats commercially available now.
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Hardware great, software sucks!, January 9, 2006
By Russ (Edmonton, AB, CA)
I recieved the DSM-320 as a christmas gift, and as an audiophile I love the idea! 500 CDs all at the touch of a remote. Then I tried to set it up... the hardware install is pretty easy, and the software install wasn't bad either. Once I was using it though, I noticed that the audio would cut in and out, and the unit would lose connection with the media server, it was slow, and wouldn't display some of my photos (even though they were only jpegs). DLink tech support tried gave me some suggestions, which helped not at all.
Then I did some work on the web and discovered Windows Media Connect, which I downloaded off the Microsoft Site for free, and away I went. All of a sudden it doesn't cut out much, the load time is much quicker, and pictures I couldn't see before I can see now. Also, the Media Connect sorts songs on albums by track number (a big oversight in Dlinks software) while showing them alphabetically when you look up artist. Photos can also be browsed by date shot, rather than clumsy file names.
Overall the hardware is fantastic, the software is garbage. I'm quite suprised the software was released and hopefully Dlink improves on it in future updates. Otherwise the software engineer should be fired (maybe from a cannon).
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Go straight for Microsoft WMC, January 8, 2006
By N. Greer
Although it only took about 5 minutes to get the device on my network (it's a bit fiddly entering a 128-bit WEP key using the remote!) I then struggled for a couple of hours trying to get it to see my computer. After resetting the unit a couple of times, downloading the latest firmware and re-installing the server software on my PC, I resorted to a Google search and came across some references to Microsoft Windows Media Connect, which also mentioned the DSM-320. I downloaded version 2.0 from the Microsoft website, upon which my PC detected the DSM-320 and asked which folders I wanted to make available. Seconds later, I was streaming content to my stereo downstairs without any problems whatsoever.
My advice? If you're running Windows XP with Service Pack 2, don't waste your time with the D-Link software supplied in the box but go straight for Microsoft Windows Media Connect. The DSM-320 appears to be a well built, well specified product for a reasonable price.
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Happy after adding TVersity media server, January 1, 2006
By Happy Amazon customer (Hawaii, USA)
Having read all the reviews, I decided to go ahead and purchase the D-link DSM-320 media hub, figuring that at the price and discount offered it was worth the gamble. Setup was easy going: wired first and wireless after the firmware upgrade. Took a bit of time before I realized that any media server software needs to be added to the 'Exceptions' list of the windows XP firewall. Duh. My major disappointment was that the D-link software still does not allow to listen to any radio station, just the 'supported' few. D-link customer service answer to my query was: "we are unsure when we will be adding more streaming radio options." Fortunately some googling found me the free 'TVersity' media server software. My problems are solved: I can listen to more stations from around the world that I care for :) plus get internet TV although I have not checked that out much since I expect that to run into bandwidth problems. All-in-all: this is a great product, relatively cheap, only limited by the software it ships with. However, third-party suppliers are coming to the rescue and I expect the available software to mature rapidly. I give 4 stars to the media hub + tversity combination. I withold one star on principle: one should be able to control these kind of devices from a PC. It is rather silly that I have to use my TV to tell the media hub to connect to the media server and navigate to the correct station/content. I should be able to select the content on my PC and tell it to serve it to the media hub. Maybe there is a way, but I have not found it yet. Thanks for the extensive reviews offered for this product: they are accurate and a great help.
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good product, December 15, 2005
By P. Cinquanti (Cortland, New York USA)
After reading multiple reviews I skipped the included software altogether and installed tversity server. It has a simple command line interface and quickly indexed my music and picture collections. I configured my firewall, router, and access point to allow access to port 41952 from a static ip. I then configured the DSM through its television interface, giving it a static ip. It connected right away and I was in business. The entire setup process took about 15 minutes.
The interface is fairly easy to use. I primarily use the folder listing since I have everything sorted the way I like it on my PC. Music streams well with a wireless b connection, but for anything else you will want g or wired connection. In about 25 hours of use (on and off, not continuous) I have had to reboot the server twice. I am not sure if this is an issue with the hardware or software. The DSM locks up whenever I try to view large images (over 2Meg or so). You cannot select a folder to play that contains other folders (if you have a folder for artist, and a subfolder for cd, you cannot shuffle through all songs in all folders). When you add items to your shared folders, tversity does not automatically detect it. You need to manually refresh. I also noticed the refresh option sometimes misses added items so I had to unshare a folder, and then re-share it.
Overall I am very satisfied with the performance of the dsm-320. The major shortcomings are the software on both the PC and the DSM. Fortunately these are items that can be addressed and hopefully will be.
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A mostly non-technical review, December 15, 2005
By Good enough for now (middle of the United States)
I've read through the past year of reviews on this product. I would have gone back past that, but the earlier reviews were based on earlier versions of the firmware and software, so those people were the guinea pigs who found all of the original problems. I'd like to thank those early adopters who helped improve the unit. One of the good things about it is that it can continue to be improved with downloaded upgrades. I'd like to address a few main issues in this review.
Combining music playlists with photo slideshows - Based on several prior reviews I'd say that many people haven't figured out this simple trick. I'm not going to go into the details of starting up a slideshow, but it's easy to learn. I'm not going to go into the details of setting up a music playlist, but it's also easy to learn. I just want to explain how to combine playlists with slideshows so the same song doesn't repeat over and over again during the slideshow. The trick is to assign music playlists to the number buttons on the remote. First you press the Music button on the remote to get to the Music menu. On the Music menu you highlight Playlists and press Enter. You then highlight one of your playlists. Then you hold down one of the number buttons on the remote until you see that number appear on screen beside that playlist. You can set up a different playlist for each number on the remote. You can change those playlists for each button at any time, so don't worry that your playlist choice is set permanently for that button. Okay, now when you start a photo slideshow you just press one of the number buttons and that music playlist plays with the slideshow. It helps to remember which playlist is assigned to which button. That's a simple way to play music with photo slideshows, but it's also a quick way to have easy access to some of your favorite playlists simply by pressing one remote button. In my opinion it's one of the best audio features, and many people don't seem to know about it, so I hope that this helps somebody.
Remote control - This is a very lightweight remote, but it's not a liability for me. I don't have to aim the remote precisely toward the DSM. In fact the remote seems to work the best when I aim it at the ceiling. I've transferred the commands over to a learning remote that I use for everything else, and every function transferred flawlessly. They could improve the remote functions through a downloadable upgrade. As an example, my Dish network DVR remote has been improved several times due to downloaded software upgrades. Whether or not D-Link will do that is questionable, but it could happen. That leads to the next issue.
Software - Many people have complained about the supplied software. In my opinion it was fast and easy to set-up in my computers, and it has worked without any problems for me, so that's the good part. The bad part is that it's very basic and vanilla, so it's not everything that it could be, which is too bad, but maybe they wanted to keep it as simple as possible. There are free software options out there that many people like better, but in my opinion those other options aren't much better. I stumbled across Windows Media Connect by accident, but I'm not satisfied with it. The real skill in developing software is to make it feature-rich while also making it as transparent and easy to use as possible. A really good software product could make this product much better, but I've tried all of the options, and none of them are great. Nobody out there should be scared of using the supplied software though. It's nothing special, but it seems to work now. There is still plenty of room for improvement. Software designers should be forced to spend their weekends with the home consumers of the software.
Network issues - Although I'm not an expert on networking, I think that I have a common sense outlook toward it that helps me use this product. The main thing to remember is that a wireless router is also a wired router. I'm using the DSM as part of an extensive and expensive audio/video/home theater system. There are already about a zillion cables behind the system, in a convenient walk-in access area where I can get to all the connections easily. It's already set up with ethernet back there, so it made sense for me to connect an ethernet cable from my wireless router to the DSM, and it made sense for me to run my videos from a computer that is also wired to the router. I can get audio wirelessly from other computers on the network with only minor and occasional glitches, but even the audio is more reliable from the wired computer. The DSM is a good wireless product, but it's a better product if you attach an ethernet cable to it. I don't think that this is a problem with the DSM. It's just the nature of wireless limitations. When you're surfing the web you aren't going to notice those limitations, but when you play music and watch video you will realize that wireless networking isn't as reliable as a wired network. In my case, when it comes to audio and video I would rather go wired for higher quality, but many people would rather be entirely wireless and accept occasional blips in the quality. That leads to the next issue.
Music and video and photo quality - I'm almost sorry to say that I haven't run into any major problems. When I removed a seemingly unrelated software program from one computer then that computer was suddenly removed as a server from the DSM, but that only took a few minutes to correct and then the computer was back in business as an audio/video/photo server. Most of the photos that I use were taken at eight megapixels, and none of those photos have crashed the DSM. They play without hesitation during slideshows. Some of my videos don't look great on a large screen, but that's due to the original quality. The higher quality videos look really great, at least compared to what I expected. I've only had one video file that the DSM refused to play. The audio quality and performance has also been great. I have somewhere around ten thousand CDs, so I'm never going to convert them all to computer files. I'm highly selective on what I will rip to files. I don't want to have the world's largest MP3 collection, so I just want to have a really great one that meets my needs. With that said though, I do love making playlists and programming music for a wide range of moods and themes, and that's where audio files let me do lots of things that would be slow and difficult to accomplish with CDs when I'm in those moods. In other words if I had my entire music collection on MP3s then maybe that might not work well with the DSM, but for my purposes it sounds great and is easy for me to use. The integration with Rhapsody is much better than I expected. It makes sense to let Rhapsody keep their music on their servers. The sound quality of Rhapsody is surprisingly good. They do have lots of holes in their content, probably due to legal reasons, but my CDs can be ripped and added to their playlists, so I can fill in many of those holes with my own CDs when I make playlists.
All in all, this product has turned out to be much better than I expected. That's possibly because I have it connected both wired and wirelessly. That's possibly because all of my computers are all the same brand on the same operating system with mostly the same software programs. Maybe I just lucked out that I didn't run into any issues. My overall point though is that many other people out there should be able to add this DSM to their audio and video systems without running into any longterm problems. It's a product that I now use a lot, and it didn't cost much, so I'd say that it's one of my favorite audio/video products. I'm sure that it's far from perfect, but I didn't expect perfection. This fills in a missing link in my audio/video system. I'm sure that this type of product will improve over the next few years, but considering the price that I paid and how much use I get from it, I'm glad to have it around now. It's not going to be a good option for everyone, but my general recommendation is that it's worth a shot if you like this type of thing, and you can return it if it doesn't work well with your system.
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Selecting my CD's is too time consuming!, December 14, 2005
By F. Mutzenberg
First: Hardware is good - works fine with my network and entertainment center. Had to change the wireless security from WPA to the older kind WEP, no big deal.
But using the on screen interface and the remote controller to select the music which I want to hear is not very user friendly.
I can only search for song titles, but not for CD titles or even more importantly for artist. I could browse by artist which would take me about 1 minute scrolling halfway through the alphabet - not very helpful with my CD collection of a few hundred.
If selecting a new song, then the current song stops instantly and the new one starts. What about putting the new one conveniently in a queue (like the Jukebox on the computer)? So I could select a few songs at a time. There is an option to generate playlists, but this requires even more time walking through the menu tree.
For every search, the keys on the remote can be used cellphone style, but using the ENTER key actually clears all my input instead of entering it - very smart! (because the cursor on the screen is on the ESC button).
What about scrolling by entering letters which would jump quickly to that location in the alphabet (similar to the windows help index)?
What about a function the display the last few searches?
What about a function something like: "Show me other songs of the same artist"?
What about dislaying the CD cover of the song playing?
This software is without any extra features which would make navigating through a music database a little easier. It's like a car with just the motor and the steering wheel, no headlights, no AC, no dashboard...
It takes me longer to find and start a particular song on the DSM-320 than grabbing a CD from the shelf and push it into the CD player. As a proud owner of 100-CD-changer for almost 10 years now, my very favourite CD's are primed in just instant, by just typing 3 buttons on the remote: 7 - 2 - 'play disc' --> and the Yellow Jackets are on!
Hey guys from D-Link: you gotta work on the user interface too, not just the hardware. The software you delivered is basically just the absolute minimum, just to see if the hardware works.
For some people, this device might still be useful, depending how their stuff is organized on their computer. Some might reorganize their music in directories named A, B, C..., but I couldn't find the time to do so.
Conclusion: Sorry about the single star, but I'm afraid to say that I sent it back. I'm not gonna use it. I will wait for the next generation of these media players, which hopefully will be quick and useful.
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Close - but not quite there, December 6, 2005
By Kevin Piccola (Rochester, NY)
This product has hope but is not there yet.
I have been looking for something like this for a long time. I have 60 GB of music on my PC and needed to get it to my stereo. I had been using an old laptop connected to the stereo and worked fine until I started purchasing music. With Microsoft DRM you can not play a song that is stored on another PC. It has to reside on the machine you are playing from along with the license.
The Media Lounge Player solves this problem by utilizing the Windows Media Connect Server sw that is a free download from MS.
The unit installed and was working in less than 30 minutes. You have to make sure you download and install all firmware and software updates for performance and functionality reasons. The system for the most part performs as advertised but has some usability issues. Significant ones in my opinion.
1. You can NOT build an adhoc list of music on the fly. If you pick a song to play and start it and then look for another and select it, it stomps on the previous and plays. This is a critical needed feature. It will play .m3u playlists that have been built on your PC. And it will play a complete folder of music. There is a new feature called "Editable Playlists" but again you have to create and play. You can not keep just adding songs to a playlist on the fly and keep listening to them.
2. The ability to stream purchased music works as advertised. However there is a software problem/conflict with the Media Lounge sw. To be able to use the updates in Media Lounge V1.05 you have to disable the Windows server sw. That means you can't play protected content and D-link has no definitive plans to fix it.
So, if all you want to do is play unprotected music and can live with picking your songs one at a time from the D-Link interface its not a bad product. I will be returning mine.
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Almost perfect if support foreign Text, December 5, 2005
By S. Dang
I have this unit for almost a week and paid $120 for it after rebate.. I tried to use the other media servers but end up using the D-link Media server, it works verr well once you upgrade to the latest version.
I have the unit wired directly to my linksys wireless router. It basically perform the way it was advertise EXCEPT EXCEPT EXCEPT it CAN't display chinese characters. I have about 2000+ chinese title songs and all i got are ???????? on the tile... Call D-link tech support and they said their database doesn't have information to address this issue. MY work around on these songs for now is to create the playlist per artist name. I hope D-link next firm ware upgrade will address this problem, otherwise they should forget to have a chance to sale this unit in the SE and South Asia Regions.... If they fix problem, I will give them a five stars rating. I hope the D-line marketing folks will read this message...
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It works fine, December 2, 2005
By Ben Gillihan (Des Moines, WA)
Before I bought this unit I read all the reviews about how difficult it was to set up. I had it running via wireless in about 10 minutes. I'm not a computer professional and I didn't think it was that hard. My network isn't that complicated or as secure as some people might require so that might make a difference, but it works fine with the standard software for me.
I plan to use this unit primary for playing video (tv shows) that I have captured and stored on my computer. The unit plays the shows, but you can't really pause or fast forward. It pretty much starts over every time you try. Also the volume seems to be pretty low and I have to crank up my tv volume.
All in all, it does what I want it to. Perfectly? No.
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