Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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50 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not ready for prime time yet, January 7, 2007
First off, I'd like to say that I firmly believe that digital media players similar to this one are the future of digital home entertainment. A simple and inexpensive device like that allows you to stream digital media to your home theater from your laptop, desktop or a dedicated media server located anywhere in your house. This is a great idea. This technology is here to stay. It's just a question of maturity. And, sorry to say, D-Link DSM-510 is not quite there yet.
I truly liked its design simplicity. There are no frills, but all essentials are there - WiFi, Ethernet, HDMI, optical audio and USB port. Exactly what I needed, no more and no less, in a small and neatly done package with clean and straightforward user interface.
However, the device is palgued by fimware bugs that eventually made me take it back to the store where I bought it.
First, the most obvious and the most stupid one is the absence of the on/off indicator. The blue light on the front panel goes on once the power adapter is connected and remanis lit whether the device is turned on or off. So you have to turn your TV on to tell whether it's on or off.
Second, there's no on/off or reset button on the front panel. Well... there's no buttons whatsoever, period. And boy, will you miss that reset button now and then. The only way to turn it on or off is by using remote control.
The most annoying thing is, the device's video output goes completely dark for no apparent reason once in a while and won't come back even if you power cycle it using remote. The device appears to be alive (you can ping it), but video output remains black no matter what you do. The only way to remedy from this is to physically disconnect power supply (there's no reset or power button, remember?)
I upgraded to the latest firmware version (1.01), but to no avail. By the way, firmware upgrade is done via Internet and went very smoothly, although at some point you're left wondering if it's hung up or what? Just be patient and wait for a couple of minutes for it to finish.
I'm really surprised and disappointed that D-Link's QA have not caught this nasty "black screen" problem. Hopefully, it can be fixed with a firmware patch. But until then, the DSM-510 goes back to the store shelf.
And D-Link, take note. If you want to enter consumer market, you have to change your attitude. Consumers are less forgiving than computer geeks you sell your networking stuff to. They won't tolerate bugs that require reaching behind the box and pulling the power cord.
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Do not buy!, February 25, 2007
Like the previous review, I also think that Digital Media is the way of the future. I had high hopes for this device as it support DVR-MS format, except, it does not. Your home PC needs to transcode the DVR-ms files in order for the DSM to work. Said another way - you better have one fast PC.
Now to the problems. It looses sound quite often - easy to fix by just turning power off/on, but after the 10th time that gets old.
As reported before the screen goes blank every once in a while - only way is to un-plug power.
The quality is bad. First unit I got was DOA. Second unit worked for 4 weeks then started to default to Analog output whenever you power it down. So then you have to plug the analog cable in, change the setting to digital and never turn it off.
Customer Support. It only took me 1 hour to go through the normal service desks to be forewarded to their expert level support. But there is nothing to do. His advice - return it to the store as their service call take quite long.
This experience was bad enough that I'll most likley never buy D-link again - or at least until there are enough review to warrant oterhwise.
Stay clear!
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This is recommended but you have to know what you are doing., December 10, 2007
Finally, something I can recommend: the Dlink DSM-510. Here's my story.
My wife bought me DSM-510 around Thanksgiving for this Christmas. They had it on sale. I did lots of research before hand to ensure that I knew what I was doing. I was going to ensure that the firmware on the unit was upgraded to v1.07. Problem was this unit was fubarred. I turned on with the Dlink screen and then went black. No video no nothing. The only way to get the unit to work again was to unplug it and wait acouple of minutes before plugging it back in. Regardless of what I tried. The Dlink screen would come one and something I could get alittle further into the next screen and then the video would go out. Back for a full refund. I found out that this particular unit was purchased and returned twice. I told them not to try to resell this brick.
I purchased a new one it was a different story. I plugged it in to the TV. It came on and went searching for the wireless network. I put in the wpa passcode was immediately connected. I had previously download TVerisity on my pc. Started the server and shared my media drives. I even went into the Windows firewall and made an exception for Tversity. Everything seemed to work on the network PCs but the DSM still could not see the TVersity server. It turns out that the you also have to go into your router and open up the port 41952. After I did this the DSM-510 saw the server and all my share folders and files. I had set TVersity profile to DSM-510 and while i could see the share divx/avi files they were grayed out and inaccessible. After searching on the TVersity forums and here on avsforum, I got the answer from a thread by tonedeafdan. You have to change the profile.xml file in the TVersity software application.
Open profiles.xml with Notepad or Wordpad and search for DSM-510, and then find the line:
<mimetype value="video/MP4V-ES"><!-- MPEG4 video format-->
Now delete that line, down through the line:
<mimetype value="video/msvideo" rename="video/x-msvideo"/>
And replace with the following lines (between the cut lines):
-------------- cut line -----------------------------------------------
<mimetype value="video/avi">
<codec name="MPEG4"/>
<codec name="MP2" maxBitrate="320000"/>
<codec name="MP3" maxBitrate="320000"/>
<codec name="PCM_S16LE"/>
<codec name="PCM_S16BE"/>
<codec name="AC3"/>
<codec name="DTS"/>
<codec name="MP3" maxBitrate="320000"/>
</mimetype>
<mimetype value="video/mp4v" rename="video/avi"/>
<mimetype value="video/mp4" rename="video/avi"/>
<mimetype value="video/x-msvideo" rename="video/avi"/>
<mimetype value="video/msvideo" rename="video/avi"/>
<mimetype value="MP4V-ES" rename="video/avi"/>
---------------- cut line ---------------------------------------------
Then don't forget to save the file and restart sharing!
After I edited the profile.xml. All was good. All my divx/xvid/avi files came up in black on the DSM-510. Everyone of my movies plaved wirelessly without any problems, no glitches, no skipping, or locking up. I even took the DSM-510 to rooms on far end of the house and hooked it up to TVs in the other rooms with serveral walls in between on different floor and still was able to run The 510 and play a video file completely with no stuttering or locking. Likewise the I was able to play the photos, and music files without problems. Actually, I was so happy with the way this unit finally functions that we went back to Fry's tonight and purchased another DSM-510. Now I will have one in the theater room and another in any other room I choose.
Summary: This unit is great for the money. Athough it is not recommended for the uninitiated. It is by no means just plug and play. Dlink has done a horrible job with there supplied Nero server software and their firmware is never up to date. If you update the firmware to the latest v1.07 and use TVersity as the server with alittle modification then all will work well. Once you take the time to modify the setup for the way you want it will work flawlessly everytime. It does have an HDMI connection and you can also connect via RCA cables.
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