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D-Link DSM-320 Media Player

I have had my DSM-320 for almost 2 years now, so this post does not exactly document a new device, but my experiences with it may still help those looking for a media player in terms of what to look for and what to look out for.

The DSM-320 is a so-called streaming media-player. It contains no local storage, so the media must be stored somewhere else. You could compare it with a DVD player. A DVD player does not contain any local storage (the storage is the DVD you insert), all it can do is navigate the media that sits on the DVD, it can decode the media you select and send sound and picture through its plugs to a TV and/or an amplifier. It is the size of a thin DVD player, in fact in my home it sits underneath the DVD player. I have had a love/hate relationship with it. I love the idea of a small set-top box with decoding built-in and the rest of the functionality located elsewhere, the actual device has however had a number of irritating bugs which D-Link hasn’t seemed very committed to fix.

Basic description of how it works

The idea behind the DSM-320 is that you have all your media located on a computer somewhere on you network. This media can be music, video and photos. On this computer you run a media-server (a uPnP server). The media-player has cables connecting it to your TV, your stereo and of course your network. When the media-player is turned on, it connects to the media-server over the network, and through the user interface of the media-player you select the media you want. The media-server sends that media to the player, the player decodes it and your TV shows the decoded data (if it was video or photos) and/or your stereo plays the sounds.

Using the DSM-320 media-player

Music

Firing it up (using the TV to show the user interface) I can select whether I want Music, Video or Photos. If I select Music I can select a particular genre, a particular year, an artist, an album or… well, the choices for how I want to find the music I want is huge. The choices I have are actually not dependant on the media-player, but on the media-server running in the background. I’ve got close to 200 CD’s that have all been ripped and MP3 encoded so I have a fair amount to choose from. It is a lot easier to find the music I want through the DSM-320 than hunting for it in the bookshelf (I have tried to institute some kind of system a couple of times and it is always messed up within a month). The data that allows me all this choice in how to select is held in the MP3 tags in the MP3 files, the media-server reads that and organises the lists accordingly. Being able to choose music (or audio books) as easily as I can and then play it on the stereo is great

Video

I have also encoded several older VHS tapes (particularly children’s videos) that are now selectable and playable via the DSM-320 without having to find the right tape and (even better) without lots of tapes taking up space in the bookshelf. There is no such thing as an MP3 tag for MPEG2 files, so here I have had to decide on a directory structure on the hard-disk. Video is selectable either by name or by browsing the directory structure. Things have not been good on the video front for the DSM-320. The DSM-320 remote control has a fast-forward and a rewind button. Within the setup for the DSM-320 you decide whether pressing the fast-forward button makes the video play twice as fast or whether it will bring up a question about where (in hour:minutes format) you want it to start playing. Sometimes I would like to have the one, sometimes the other function, but I can’t have both (which is probably understandable). With some video formats, the “play faster” option just doesn’t work, with all video formats, the time-based format doesn’t work past 1 hour. So if I want to “fast-forward” into a film after the first hour and 20 minutes, sorry, you can go to the 59 minutes into the film location and then play normally from there. I have some MPEG4 files that played fine when I first started using the media-player, after applying the last European firmware upgrade it could no longer play those files (Unsupported Media was the message I got).

Photos

Displaying photos is a feature I haven’t found that usefull, Photos just don’t look that good on a normal TV. But we have occasionally sat down to look at holiday snaps on it rather than sit in front of the computer (where the photos look much better). The DSM-320 will read the date and time from the EXIF header of JPEG pictures, but I haven’t found that way of selecting the pictures I want that great. As with the videos, a good directory structure (Year, Month, Occasion) is much better at finding the images I want.

Internet Radio

D-Link have made it possible to subscribe to music from services such as Rhapsody and Napster. I haven’t tried those services, the media-server software from TwonkyVision I used makes it possible to listen to Internet radiostations using Shoutcast.

Media Server Software

The media-server software that came with the DSM-320 was fairly basic, but to be honest, I only ever used it once as an initial test so I can’t really comment on it. There are several media server implementations around, I have primarily used TwonkyMedia from TwonkyVision as their software can run on Linux.

10 things I hate about you

Well maybe not 10, I am well pleased with the overall functionality, but the DSM-320 is not particularly well thought out and it is buggy, in no particular order:

• The remote was obviously not designed by someone who never used the device. Look at this picture of the remote control. This is how you would use it to play some music: First, turn the DSM-320 on (red button at the very top), then press the “Music” button (4′th row of buttons from the bottom), select the artist or album you want to listen to (use the navigation arrow keys, this actually works fine), now press “Play” (2′nd row of buttons from the bottom). If you want to skip to the next song, you do that with one of the buttons on the very bottom of the control. It is not a one-handed affair, you need one hand to hold the remote and the other hand to press the right buttons. On the remote for my TV and my DVD player, the buttons I use the most are located in such a way as to make it possible to operate with one hand. Ok, so maybe the usability of the remote control is not the end of the world, but it sure is the most irritating remote control I have ever used.
• On the European version, the plugs were placed by someone who never actually tried plugging it in. The SCART connector is too close to the network connector. A SCART cable sits at an angle to the plug, and on the DSM-320 this means that the network cable is bent close to the connector (of course this only happens if the device is cable connected, if the wireless option is used this is not an issue).
• Connect the device wirelessly and the only security option is WEP. This may be something they can’t do anything about, but if it is something a firmware update could “fix” I sure would like WPA. Until recently it hasn’t been an issue as it was connected by cable.
• The bugs, none of them cause the product to be dysfunctional, but there are several in different parts. Which leads us to…
• Firmware updates are very easy to perform. The DSM-320 will itself check for them over the internet (if it can reach it over your network) and if there is an update will suggest that it applies it. I think there have been 2 firmware updates in the 2 years I’ve had it which considering the known bugs is not enough. It is not very difficult to find irritated owners who on the internet have documented reporting a bug to D-Link and then nothing happening. In summary, the firmware updates have been few and far between and when they have happened they haven’t fixed all the known issues and they have usually introduced some new ones.

Summary

Overall I have liked the DSM-320. The bugs it has I have been able to overlook. Some of the known bugs in the DSM-320 media-player also exist in newer products such as the DSM-520. That does give one the impression that it is a product-range D-Link don’t intend to focus much on. It does make one wonder when one reads that D-Link claim to have a strategy for the digital home and to be the leader of the digital home arena. I’m still using my DSM-320, but I am looking for something to replace it.

Other DSM-320 reviews:

• NoDRM.com review
• PC Magazine
• Geekzone
• OzCableguy

The year of Media-players, Media-servers and Media-hubs?

In the first real post on this website, I described the basic infrastructure in my home: A LAN with primarily wireless access to a server and the internet. I thought I would gradually build up to describing more and more media-rich functionality by starting to describe the most basic functionality first. But it seems like this, the beginning of 2007 is becoming the year where digital media-centres of various types are really starting to take of.

My own media-centre setup consists of TwonkyMedia on the server and a D-Link DSM-320 media-player. The basic idea and functionality behind my own setup I like, but I am not 100% happy with the implementation. In general it is a specialty that has yet to mature. Which is obviously why it is still so interesting
The Microsoft Windows Media Center has been out for some time but without a lot of success.

Now Microsoft has introduced the Microsoft Home Server, I still don’t quite understand what it is about and I’m a little sceptical as to whether it will be a success. It is going to be sold by other hardware vendoes who can OEM the concept and software from Microsoft. What happens if or when they lose interest?
Apple are releasing the Apple TV. Again I’m a little sceptical, for one the avalable hard disk space is woefully inadequate plus it sounds like it is tied very closely to iTunes.

What I want are devices that support the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) standards such as uPnP. My current setup does that, but it is lacking in usability.