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HI I did the research on this and they said it was great except for installation, actually it was easy ( the installation) and we are very happy. I would rec'd this product.I also bought the media player which works but is harder to use.
The sounds quality is fantastic (depending on your speakers of course, and also assuming a good quality of the ripped file)However, once again the system makes you jump through hoops or struggle to figure out how best to use it.for example:- Browsing to a ripped CD through the Album option gives the album tracks in a different order than when you browse to the album through the Artist option. I anticipate that this will be a short term thing for me (a year or two), before I get a newer generation one that has as more rounded set of features. If you try to use the next/previous chapter buttons on your control you'll end up jumping to the next/previous media FILE not CHAPTER. As long as you know what to expect, it is a decent unit, but certainly not a perfect media player.For example, just straight-up playing videos over the LAN is fantastic.
One is in alphabetical order, the other is in the correct album order. e.g. Yup, when watching a video they jump you forward 30 seconds or backwards 15 seconds. This is a very interesting kettle of fish. The ratio on many of my video files was wrong and vertically stretched. I knew these weren't supported so they don't affect my score as such, I just mention it as part of my reasoning for why its 'not a perfect media player'.Overall, I like the unit, and I got it at an excellent price. For example, I was VERY pleased to see it play VOB files which is a common format for just ripping DVDs.
Nothing more, nothing less, and when you press play again you often end up playing up to 10 seconds away from the point you pressed the button at.- PageUp/PageDn. As soon as I sent the output over HDMI it went back to normal.2) I use a master-switching power strip for most of my electronics. Relatively speaking this was only out by an inch or so, but the result was that everything looked weird. pressing 7 will take you to 70% of the way through the movie.- FFW/RWD only go at double speed. Quality of video and sound is excellent (assuming the video source is also good)However, trying to navigate through the video to points is frustrating or just bizarre.for example:- Chapters don't work. If you're unfamiliar with them, when one specific device is turned off, it powers off the other sockets on the strip to save energy. However when I ran the 520 on one of those switched sockets, it would routinely reset itself to factory defaults. Surely this wouldn't be hard to implement.
Useful but peculiar.Audio is again good but the unit's slow interface can make this a bit of a chore. - There doesn't appear to be a way to just play randomly/shuffle across your entire collection (or even a subset of it). The only problem is that a DVD ripped to VOBs is actually stored in a number of 1GB VOB files. I should also note upfront that I don't use wireless streaming (even though I have wireless-N) because I had planned ahead and run a gigabit cable to the wall behind the unit.In general, it does what it does pretty well, but there is a lot it doesn't do (and doesn't even try to do). I haven't had any issues since I did that, and it was resetting about once per day before.3) It does play some video formates not listed, but only to an extent.
I have no idea why this was happening, perhaps it was something with the way the power trigger interacted with the power on signal to the device from the remote, but I was minutes away from sending it back before I decided to try it on a 'real' power socket. When it reaches the end of one VOB file, it stops and doesn't move on the the next file in the movie. I would not have paid more for it, but I would recommend it if someone can get it for about a hundred after rebates. Don't do it. Needless to say this is maddening.- You can skip to a percentage of the video by pressing the 1-9 buttons, which will jump you to that 10% of the file.
DivX, even ISO perhaps). Why on earth would you want album tracks in alphabetical order. I find this strangely lacking.Other observations:1) While waiting for my new HDMI cable I initially ran this over Component. Its not a big deal for me since I know this wasn't even supposed to be supported, but its sooooo close to working right that its just a little frustrating.4) There are a number of video or audio formats I would like to have seen (e.g. Just be aware of the limitations and you'll be fine.Hopefully future firmware updates might fix some things, like the shuffle to the music or the album track listing order problem, but its been a while since a new one has been released so I get the feeling DLink are moving on to newer models and leaving this behind.
Bought this to replace a Hauppauge MediaMVP device I was using in my livingroom to relay video from my HP server machine (Vista64) in another room. Hardware seems fine, but the supplied software is spectacularly bad and I don't see many options available to improve/replace it. Am using it now mostly to allow the wife to easily find and show photos, but still hope to find some other software to allow me to use it more fully.
I actuallly love this product - especially for the price. But, I don't expect it to perform as well over a wireless network. (1TB and 500GB using DVD shrink, reauthor, main movie only, without 1 GB splits).
Then I found this. Some of my biggest files are King Kong, Lord of the Rings III, most Disney Pixar, and Harry Potter 2 all of which are over 7GB. I hate scratched DVD's, so I used to just burn copies (DVD shrink,ISO image file, burn with DVD decrypter)but those would get scratched too with how often we use them.
We are up to 210 movies and I haven't had a single problem with the 4GB limitation like some claim. I have ripped all my movies to a the hard drives of a refurbished Dell dedicated as a media server. It isn't connected to the internet so there's no need to run excess software to slow it down.
We use a wired network with a basic router and we can watch on different TV's at the same time even while I am ripping another to the hard drive as long as it is in a different folder.I agree with the FF and RW complaints, I have settled on the jump feature where you can press 0 thru 9 to jump to different sections of the movie or you can enter and actual time in minutes.Over all I am very happy with it cause it does what I want. D-Link DSM-520 MediaLounge Wireless HD Media Player
Every few years, I buy another media player and get my hopes dashed again. Another disappointment:I have an mt-daap server sitting right next to the thing and it can't see it/doesn't know anything about it. Tversity, a separate product, improves the 520.
The software that comes with it is good for streaming stuff that's on your hard drive. Hulu is what I was really interested in. The Media Lounge is down there with the rest of them.
It allows you to stream content from the Internet. Many of the rest of 'picks' are pay-for items--some of which have already been beaten to death. If never see the Napster logo again it'll be too soon.
But the codecs in the 520 are so out of date that Hulu refuses to stream. So, in summary, I'd say that the Media Lounge would be a good fit for someone who really doesn't want it to do anything.
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