Customer Reviews

D-Link Wireless HD Media Player

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(39)
3 star:		(22)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

I was a bit apprehensive after reading all of these negative reviews, but I thought I'd give it a try myself, and return it if it didn't work out.
Turns out I am as pleased as can be. The main thing I bought it for was to watch downloaded AVI movie files on my TV over my wireless network, and it does the job perfectly. I was surprised at the quality of the picture. No video pauses or skipping issues. I haven't had it lose the network once.
It was simple to set up. For a while it wasn't detecting my wireless network, but then I realized it wasn't the units fault, it was my wireless network. I just needed to reboot the router. After that it was effortless.
If the main thing you are purchasing this for is video playback, then buy it. It works great. But if your main objective is music or photos, it is somewhat sub-par. Its not unusable, it just could use some improvement in those areas and I'm sure there are better units out there for a music player.
I think a lot of the negative reviews are the result of people having setup problems and giving up, or people who wanted to use it mainly for photos or music.

The DSM-520 is an great media server given its modest price with a few limitations.

The HDMI out works VERY well. The video quality is outstanding, as long as the streaming video file is done well. The audio out work perfect from the optical or coax.

The remote is fair and functional, however unit is a bit slow to respond.

FF and RW are pretty much worthless, and unit does NOT support chapters. However the search function (allows user to jump to a time) works well, but can not be enabled at the same time as the FF/RW. Not really sure why?

Limitations: will NOT play video files over 4GB correctly. This is NOT just a limitation with this player, but others will suffer from this problem as well. Most video will play, but stop at the 4GB point.

Unit does NOT currently support 5.1 audio via optical OR coax on Nero recode MP4 files, even when encoded with the . It will play audio out via HDMI or standard stereo outs on Nero recode files. My advice (based on HOURS of my own trial and error)stay away from Nero recode, and try out Dr. Divx (FREE !!!). Video file take MUCH longer to encode, but quality is excellent once encoder settings are set up correctly. (BTW... I am NOT affiliated with ANY software company.. just my own experience)

Nero recode video quality not as good as a high quality Divx file (a bit grainy... and unit WILL play 5.1 audio via optical on Divx files...

HD video's look incredible, though I have experienced a few skips while using the wireless connection, but is truly expected. When connected via LAN cable, unit has streamed EVERYTHING I've thrown at it flawlessly.

MP3 and windows media audio works well and sound quality is top notch (assuming the MP3 was encoded at a decent bitrate.

D-links media server is not the greatest, and will NOT stream videos with a divx extension; but it is functional. I've had great luck with Tversity (and it is FREE !!!), but don't care for it's interface much (nit-picking).

Rhapsody works AWESOME (as is free to Comcast cable subscribers). Audio quality is excellent (best streaming audio quality I've heard) as long as you pick a station with a higher bitrate.

OK.... short and sweet:

The good-
-HD Video looks excellent via HDMI (I am sure component video would look just as well).
-wireless connection works well, but wired MUCH prefered for flawless connection.
-Great support for Divx, Xvid, MP3, and even playsraw VOB files (as long as they are less than 4GB)
-Price is very fair, given units performance.
-Works very well with MANY upnp server's on the market, both free and not
-Once PC is initialy set up (not hard to do) the D-link player is easy enough to operate for my 7 year old to power up, and play movies
-Rhapsody support is excellent

The bad-
-Will ONLY play video files up to 4GB in size
-D-links software that unit comes with does not support divx files
-FF/RW function is POOR at best
-Does not support chapters
-Nero recode files (asvertised to work well with unit) have audio limitatins that can NOT be overlooked
-D-link customer support has been un-supporting


I HIGHLY recommend this product to anyone that wants to put their media collection onto hard drives or NAS. Makes it MUCH easier to organize and play your media files.

I bought DSM-520 thinking how great it would be to have people in my house and wirelessly show them videos, music, and photos archived in my computer. Well, after a few days using it I was a little disappointed. I found that my new toy was more a hassle than fun. I lost count how many times I lost my temper when that crap lost connection with the server. It didn't really matter if I used the wireless or wired network, it always got stuck eventually.

I updated the media server software twice (not the firmware, which hasn't been updated for almost a year now), and apparently, it got worse! Unbelievable. I was so frustrated I spent $200 on the thing and couldn't even return it (I bought it in Boston, but I live in Brazil). I didn't give up though.

HOWEVER, all isn't lost. I found out that when I connected DSM-520 to my laptop computer with the last version of Windows Media Player (WMP 11), I didn't need the media server software that enables the system to find and share the media with the laptop. Additionally, it would not lose connection frequently and the streaming is just fine. Amazingly, the WMP 11 does a MUCH better job than that of that crappy media server software.

All you have to do is have WMP installed in your computer and add the folders where the media files are to WMP library. You won't even need to have WMP running when using your DSM.

Dlink still needs to improve some features such as the fast forward/rewind, USB connectivity with more than 20Gb devices, among other. But I finally made it work!!! Hope my comment helps the desperate owners that, like myself, thought of throwing DSM-520 out of the window.

About a year ago, I received a Dlink DMS-320 as a birthday gift. It had LOTS of issues with video and wouldn't work correctly on a wireless network. It worked OK with wired Ethernet, but not via wireless 802.11g. Even in the wired setup, it was extremely picky about which files it would play. Some worked, some didn't. I finally gave up and used it for music only.

Fast forward one year: Dlink had introduced the DSM-520, so I (skeptically) decided to try it out. Good news: this one is the real deal! It worked out of the box on the same network.

It streams video across the network without breaking a sweat, even when the network is bogged down with other activities. As a test, I started streaming a movie, then initiated a giant (10 Gbyte) file transfer, then started surfing the web. There were absolutely no glitches. Very cool.

I'm generally using DIVX and XVID encoded AVIs, but I've thrown a bunch of different file formats at it, including some of my wife's ipod-flavored .mp4 files. No problems whatsoever.

Oh yeah, it plays music just fine, too.

My main complaint: the fast forward and rewind features are weak. You can move forward and back smoothly, but at a fixed speed that isn't nearly fast enough. If you stop watching a movie partway through and shut off the unit, it might take you 1/2 hour next time you power-up to find where you left off. That blows. Some sort of bookmark or resume feature would be handy. In the meantime, you can "bookmark" a video by leaving the unit on while your TV is off, but that's a pretty lame workaround. This is what kept me from awarding a perfect 5.

By the way, ditch the included software and buy a dedicated Network Attached Storage unit with media server software. (Or roll your own if you're a linux dude.) I'm using the Maxtor Shared Storage Plus. Plug it in, put your files on the drive, then you can use the Dlink even if your computer is off. This is a much better solution and it works wonderfully.

I suspect that a lot of people having trouble with this unit are really having trouble with the included server software, which isn't the greatest. That's why I went with the attached NAS.

Would I buy another? You bet...I just bought a second one for a different room. Eventually I want one at each TV. Yeah, it's really that cool.

This unit is getting returned to Amazon today. I was really looking forward to trying this "MediaLounge", but there's too many fatal flaws. You should be aware of them before you waste your time and money.

Where do I start? Well, my primary goal was to have a device that could play hi-def slideshows of large JPGs, so I could have a nice changing-artwork display on my Samsung HD 16:9 big-screen TV. Well, this is supposed to be a hi-def player. Two problems right off the bat: (1) Aspect ration was all wrong. No matter how I adjusted the (super-simplistic) settings on the MediaLounge, or the aspect ratio on my Samsung HD big screen TV (also a very simple no-brainer) the pictures showed up in either 4:3 format -- and looked right, or 16:9 format -- looking stretched-out and distorted!!!!. In other words, for photo slideshows, this device did not appear to support 16:9 televisions at all. And this was using either the Component video or the HDMI interface: both interfaces worked improperly. Also, (2) the information screen on my Samsung TV consistently claimed that the picture coming through the HDMI was standard def, NOT high def. I don't know why. There was no possible settings to adjust on the MediaLounge when the HDMI interface was selected. Maybe video files play correctly in 16:9 HD format, I don't know or care; if it can't do 16:9 HD JPGs properly, it's going back.

So many other little problems too, which might not have been killers had the primary function worked:

-- The "fit-to-screen" choices for photo scaling were horrible. The only choice that made any sense, i.e. "Fit to Screen" did NOT in fact fit the picture to screen; instead, it did one of those dirty tricks where it tries to calculate a zoom factor that it thinks you would like, based on the picture. Thus, no matter what I did, most pictures kept getting cropped. It would be nice to have a "fit to screen" choice that did not crop arbitrarily! Fit-to-Screen should mean Fit-to-Screen, period!

-- The Media Server software was horrible. Once you "share a folder", it software does not distinguish photos versus music. Thus, all my music's cover artwork was getting picked up and published as separate photo directories. There was no way to stop this. Extremely annoying. To rephrase, there was no way to say, "publish this folder AS MUSIC" or "publish this folder" AS PHOTOS". Your only option was to PUBLISH IT, period, and it was up to the server software to sort out what it contained. Again, I just think this is pretty brain-dead. Clearly I don't want my music's cover art appearing as photos. Oh, and needless to say, the software did NOT pick up and display the cover art while the music was playing. Duh -- again, pretty brain-dead.

-- The Media Server software was very, very slow. When it was in the process of sharing the folders, processing each file in each folder was so slow that I suspect it was making a copy of the files elsewhere on the disk. It couldn't have possibly been that slow otherwise. For a large directory with thousands of files, it might have easily taken all day to process it.

-- When browing music by Artist, my artists showed up in the Media Lounge with all lower case Artist names, even though my ID3 tags were properly cased.

-- Perhaps most damning of all of the minor stuff: There appeared to be no support whatsoever for subfolders. When browsing music by folder, if you selected an Artist folder that had four Album subfolders but no files directly under the Artist folder, D-Link's Media Server just chokes and tells you there are no files. Same with browsing Photos by folders. What kind of media server doesn't support playing music or slideshows that contains subfolders? A lame one, that's for sure. At least for Music, you have the option of browsing by ID3 tag (Artist, Album, etc.) but for Photos, you either browse "All Photos" (EVERYTHING you EVER selected lumped into one huge flat list) or you browse by Folder (which doesn't support subfolders during playback). Completely unacceptable!

Pretty much everything during the operation of the unit was SLOW. Moving from picture to picture took about two-three seconds a photo, which is unforgivable. My JPGS average around 150K-250K, and should have come across my WiFi G network in a fraction of a second. Every and button press on the remote took about a second to respond. It was very annoying.

The software in general, both on the server side and on the TV display side, seemed stripped down, overly simplistic, lacking in options, and generally rather lame.

In short, I don't see how D-Link could have possibly produced a less desirable device. I don't see the benefit of this 520 model over their 320 model, seeing how this device couldn't do HD properly.

Hope that helps!

The Specs speak louder than the performance.

1- GUI on the 520 freezes up many times when browsing quickly thru folders and forces you to power down to clear.
2- After power-up, you also have to search for the Servers and select the prefered one every time even though I saved the settings. I have 3 PC's on the net running Windows Media Server. If you forget to turn it off while running a slide show, it will eat your bandwidth past when the cows come home.
3- BTW, It will not read Media hosted by Windows Media Center Edition server. It will browse their menu's but will not open any file at all.
4- So, Forced to run the D-Link Media Server on the main PC holding the Media Content gobbles up all available unused ports inclouding 80 and 8080 that are used by my web server. This is a fairly primative app. that is not auto-updating so as you add content directories, you must re-scan the media that takes 20 minutes on my 3.3 Ghz machine with ATA drives.
5- It does a descent job of displaying JPG files at 1080i on my 40" Sharp Aquos LCD PROVIDED I pre-format the jpg size to exacly fit a 16-9 resolution multiple. Let it do the math and it adds 20 pounds to all the subjects on the screen including the dog. Wife joined LA fitness, but our house does look better, wider.
6- If you set the slide-show to auto-play, it will not respect the slide show delay between slides. I call support and after spending 3 hours in the bowels of Bangledor, India finaly got to a Level 3 Tech in California that said that was a known problem. He had never heard of Windows Media Center Edition and therefore could not comment on those problems.
7- If you have a new Sanyo Xacti HD Video camera, don't even bother tring to play the .mp4 files on this, it isn't supported.

I count the days till the KISS DP-600 hits the Amazon shelves perhaps thru LincSys with 1080P and Media Center Comatiblitly.

I was looking for this product since D-link released the first DS-3xx a long time ago. I bought mine, and found just minor problems, but nothing that I would give a low rate for the product. What I see as problems: since I have started to listen a music and jump to photos slideshow, I can't go back for something like a player page, I could only stop/pause the music or jump to AUDIO and search for something new (many steps...). The other problem that I see is I had understood that I would be able to listen my Internet Radios, but as far as read the manual, I could only listen to this Radio stations from the services they are partner. My house has many brick walls and the player is far from the router, but I am using one 6dB gain antenna in the router. Only had problem once, loosing the signal during one movie, and when came back it was without any sound (I had to restart the device). The server is very fast and FF/Rew had worked fine with xvid movies. Maybe if it had an internal Hard-drive or acess the pc dvd drive, I could give a five star. Misses the funcionality of controling a DVD movie like the DVD disk (with menus, options of sound, etc.). The device does everyhting that I need.

Received my DSM-520 about a week ago. Here is a summary of the first week experiences.

1. Cannot get the wireless connection to work. Disabling all security features on my router and still hit or miss and quickly fails. Even in the same room with excellent signal strength on my laptop. Email to tech support for help --> 5 days later told to call instead...

2. Wired connection took a long time as well. Finally installing Windows Media Connect seemed to have a function to adjust it's firewall settings. Still rarely can the DSM-520 view WMC. Also disabling my virus checker control center (AVG Free) seems to allow the DSM-520 to find D-Link's server.

3. No success getting it to work with TVersity yet.

4. Now working wired (100ft ethernet cable through attic) with firewall/antivirus issues as above seems to work great. Good audio with optical cable. Excellent video quality using component cables and with my Home Video saved DVD's (Windows Movie Maker and Nero's slideshows, MPEG2s, and XVIDs (however doesn't appear to pass through XVID 5.1 encoded signals and refused to even playback DTS audio encoded XVID files, however the sound with Dolby prologic II still is excellent).

Summary. Will keep it as it seems to do the basics, but unfortunately would like to see ALL video and photos in High Def. and true DTS/DD audio.

Pros: Stream music, photos, video from any UPnP AV compatible media server, stream online radio from radio@AOL, live365.com, direct USB thumb drive support, stream Windows Media DRM protected content using Windows Media Connect, HD interface, support most of the media format, above all affordable.

Cons: Photo thumbnail support is horrible, UI can be improved, no support for bread crumb, no music album art, video forward/rewind functionality can be improved.

D-Link DSM-520 Media Receiver (D-link call it MediaLounge) is one the best among the available media receiver in the market. Not only it's much better than it's predecessor DSM-320, but with ton's of additional features it's affordable too. Having USB thumb drive support in the front gives option to the user to play video files directly from the external hard drive.

If you are in the market for Media Receiver/Hub then you may end up buying this. Direct connection to the USB drive open up lot of option for many users.

It works great with Windows Media Connect and TwonkyVision media server. DivX support was surprise for me.

Detail review at: http://mediaproductreview.blogspot.com/

I backup all of my DVDs onto my hard drive as AVIs. I DVR Television into MPEGs. But I do not want to watch everything in front of my computer. I saw the MediaLounge and thought I would give it a chance... After about 7 minutes of setup, I got the thing working off of my 802.11g wireless network, and streaming media straight to my television. OMG I love this thing...

I have head it for about 3 weeks now and enjoy watching my media through it. It plays 99% of the files I own, it looks georgous, and it is far better than swapping DVDs in and out of a player. I read some of the other reviews, and I don't know why they had issues... If you know your way around a computer, this is a no brainer. I have saved all of my TV Series onto my hard drives, and no longer have to search through a rack of DVD cases!