D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player, Audio/Photo/Video, 802.11g
by D-Link
List Price:
Our Price: $99.95
You Save: $91.04 (48%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy Used: from $28.95 (click here)
Category: CE
See more product details
Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Photo Product Details
Manufacturer: D-LinkAudio: English (Original Language); French (Original Language)
Model: DSM-320
Color: Silver
Product 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
- AmazonBasics RJ45 Cat5e Ethernet Patch Cable (50 Feet/15.2 Meters)
- AmazonBasics RJ45 Cat5e Ethernet Patch Cable (14 Feet/4.2 Meters)
- H2O Audio - Sport Series Headphones - Black
- Able Planet Clear Harmony Over the Head Stereo Headphones
- AquaPod" Splash-Proof iPod./MP3 Speaker Case
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player, Audio/Photo/Video, 802.11g
Customer Review: A mostly non-technical review
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Description of D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player, Audio/Photo/Video, 802.11g
D-Link's DSM-320 Wireless Media Adapter is a next generation multimedia product that streams all your favorite media files to your home entertainment center. It supports 802.11g wireless standards with transfer speeds up to 54Mbps. The DSM-320 supports all popular media formats including MP3, WAV, and WMA for audio files, MPEG1/2/4, AVI, and DivX4/5 for video, and JPEG, GIF, BMP, and PNG for images. Plug the DSM-320 directly into your TV to easily access all your media content through the user-friendly TV interface with the included remote control. Experience your digital media like never before with the DSM-320 Wireless Media Adapter.Digital Cameras & Photo Categories
Similar Digital Cameras & Photo Products
