» D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player, Audio/Photo/Video, 802.11g

D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player, Audio/Photo/Video, 802.11g Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: HATE HATE HATE This !@#% Piece of Garbage KILL KILL KILL
Comment: Even my wife and kids hate this thing. Just work for once, please, without me having to call tech support, who always make you do the same 5 things and nothing works. I want my 15 hours of life back Dlink. This product BLOWS CHUNKS. I want the engineers who created it to have to sit on the phone for a day with various tech support people from another country and be forced to repeat the same 5 steps over and over.

The beauty is that when it breaks (often), it's always something new and exciting. Of course you haven't changed a single thing since the last time you turned it on.

I wouldn't even waste my baseball bat on beating this thing hanging from a rope. I HATE the DSM-320 and hope it burns in hell forever.

*** Update ***

Uninstall the OLD media server that comes with it BEFORE trying to install the updated (1.10) version. You know, because the software engineers knew that you'd be smart enough to do that since you OBVIOUSLY have to do it with all your other software that you upgrade.

So now it works, even for videos, but I still want my 15 hours of life back, to erase the frustrated look on everyone's faces who is waiting for the movie to start, etc. I still hate you DSM-320. Just a little less now.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Apple TV its not
Comment: I bought this when it first came out and was disappointed. I was finally able to play videos, and music even from my PC, but the process was time consuming and never seamlessly enough to be used regularly. skipping through videos was a total waist. often crashing the video and was too picky about just how the video was encoded. every now and then I see it in the back of closet and think. I bet they have fixed all this, so I drag it out to find out still no updates. The DSM 320 came out when MicroSoft first tried to strong arm the media center PC on everyone, at that time you could not buy the software or build your own. In the end I bought an Apple TV and haven't looked back.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Such potential! (but alas...)
Comment: I struggled over buying this thing. I wanted a turn-key solution; I'm just getting too old to trial-and-error all this stuff and find the 'magic combination' to the modern-wonder of watching electronic-media on your home entertainment system.

Still - the price dropped enough I said "what the heck" and dove in. D-link has been a solid company with other products, why not? Do glean goodies from all the other reviews, but I'll highlight my PROs and CONs here:

GOOD:
* UI decent, actual playback of media not too bad. (mostly video, I have not tried to suffer audio or music; our TIVO does that and it does it well so why mess with it).

* The machine can detect and talk well across a home-network.

BAD:
* Audio is WAY OFF (too low) compared to your other input devices; everytime we have to crank the volume WAY up and then remember to take it down when going back to other media sources. D-link needs to fix this.

* Playback of video was troublesome at first (I stream media from a Synology CS470e which did an OK job before the last firmware upgrade and does a fabulous job now with the v2 of the firmware). Playback now is hampered by no FF or REV! You better not pause either; it's re-starts-ville. Working with D-link email support to figure out why/who/how this all happens. It's a bug that's media-agnostic and server-agnostic as well.

* Boot-up is slow; either a sluggish ramp-up or alot of start-up loading. Sugg just leave the blasted thing on when you start your entertainment system (our Harmony remote is trained to leave this puppy alone on power-cycles.)

Overall my suggestions: (Don't set your expectations high on streaming video content to your entertainment system easily here. I did not try the wireless config; just pulled a CAT-5 and called it done. If I had 20-20 hindsight I'd have waited till D-link released the next firmware for this baby (with hopes it clears up alot of problems) and then give it another try.) That's kinda the story with my synology, the next version of the firmware was so much more mature and powerful it's like getting a whole new box for free.

Good luck!

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Comment: D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player, Audio/Photo/Video, 802.11g
This product appears to be running a linux-based OS, and will "crash" on any video file that is over 4 GB in size, and sometimes on smaller files. I was able to get a full refund after sending samples to their engineers who never fixed the problems. I replaced this unit with a LINKSYS WMCE54AG, which is a real Media Center Extender (and cost about $100 more) although it will randomly crash on occasion requiring a complete reboot by cycling power.

It should be noted that none of these units is supported on WINDOWS VISTA: in the inimitable Microsoft fashion, VISTA will only support the XBOX 360 as a media center extender. This is why I still run the XP version of Media Center edition and have refused to "upgrade" to VISTA.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: DSM 320 Media Player
Comment: I bought the DMS 320 to use with Tversity to stream content from the internet to my TV. The 320 actually works pretty good. I can send video and audio via wireless and the picture is regular definition 640x480. The problem is there are only a few streaming channels that work with Tversity and the Dlink media server software only plays content that you have on your hard drive. The bottom line is if you have lots of movies or music on your PC this isn't a bad option for getting them to your TV or stereo. If you want to display streaming content especially flash, you'd be better off using a RF modulator and the S Video output of your video card (If your PC has Svideo out).

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