D-Link DSM-320 Network Media Streamer: Hands on Review
We have had the
D-Link DSM-320 in the office for far too long without doing an in depth review, so we thought it was time to just gather all of our information and share with you our thoughts. How does it stack up to the rest of the market? How does it handle all the new media types? These are questions we have been playing around with and hopeful we will answer them to you satisfaction. We knew going into this that the device had been out for awhile so it wasn't going to be as cutting edge as some of the devices we have seen recently. The DSM-320 is one of D-Links first attempts at a full featured media streamer and for a first attempt they got a lot right. We have been toying with this device for awhile now and if we'll share our thoughts after the jump.
We spent a lot of time with this device checking out how it preformed all of its advertised abilities. We tried to be as thorough as possible as we tested out its capabilities and tried to see where it fell down and where it showed that it deserved to be mentioned with the more modern streamers on the market. So lets get right to it shall we.
So let us first say what this device is not, it is not a HD streamer. The 320 can output via Component, but you should never mistake this device for a true HD streamer. Its big brother the
DSM-520 is the true HD streamer. OK so now that we have that out of the way we can get down to what this guy can do. This is the standard video/audio/photo streamer with a little extra web content thrown on top for good measure. Lets start with the general setup first then we'll move into the individual areas.
General Setup
Well right off the bat we had an issue with the 320. It is a problem that effects far too many of these media streamers and can be solved with a simple advert when you open the box. The 320 defaults to using Composite output when you first plug it in. If you do not know this and go with Component cables first you may spend a lot of time trying to figure out what you have done wrong. There is a button on the remote that is supposed to change the TV out setting for you, but in our testing we did not find this a reliable way to change it. We had to hook up composite cables, switch the output to Component and then hook up our Component cables. I'm sure the video out button works for some, but we just could not get it to work with our setup. These are the little things that can turn someone off when they first try and hook this up.
Another thing that really bothered us about the setup was the wireless network setup options. When we setup a new box we make sure to check both the wireless and wired experience to make sure that both function as advertised. Well we had forgot that this device only supports WEP for its wireless encryption. Even though this is an older box, we still refused to change our network settings around in order for the 320 to work. At this point we just went with a wired setup and chalked this up to reviewing an old product that didn't have the luxury of the knowledge of WPA.
OK so setup could be better but we have definitely seen a lot worse!! Let's get to the actual meat of the device, the reason you are reading this article.
Video Playback
Video playback is accomplished by running a
UPnP server on your network that will serve up all of your media to the 320. The device ships with D-Links version of a media streamer, but we will save you the trouble. Either buy
TwonkyMedia or use the free
TVersity. The server software that ships with the device is pure crap. It did not seem to get the attention it deserved and it is not up to date with the rest of the offerings out there. Needless to say, we won't be running the D-Link server for any of our tests.
For video we tested a bunch of different formats to see how the 320 performed in the different areas. For starters it has no ability to play ISO files, so that is a big strike against it as we have most of our DVDs in ISO form for easy storage. Also, as we stated above, there is no option for HD output so don't even think about it. Here is are the results from our tests. For MPEG playback we got very good results even over composite cables. The playback was smooth and the audio output was very decent. We were surprised at how clean the playback was and how crisp the audio was.
We were very happy to see that it supported Divx files, being an older player this is very impressive. The quality of the playback was not top notch though. The player had a hard time keeping up with the stream. The video playback was jerky and choppy with frequent video hangs. We noticed a lot of dropped frames as the player tried to keep up with the data that was being served up. We have used these same files in the same network location with other players and streaming software and we did not notice the same issues. So with all other factors being the same we can only conclude that it is the player that is having a hard time dealing with the data. Whether it is simply keeping up with the amount of data coming at it or having to decode the files on the fly we aren't sure, but either way watching DivX movies basically isn't possible. We did notice much better performance with AVI files. They had less dropped frames and we didn't notice any major jerkiness with the playback.
They also offer online video playback which surprised us since when this was released the online video explosion hadn't happened yet. Well it is cool that they have this offered, what isn't cool is that it is basically broken. We didn't get one video from YouTube to playback. The YouTube videos would either just fail to play or it would spin for awhile and then say that it had reached the end of the video. It is possible that YouTube changed something fundamental about their service since this part of the product was written so now it is forever broken, either way it leaves a sorrow taste in our mouth. We also tried the Washington Post video section and none of those files would play either so it is also possible that the entire online player section of the the DSM-320 is just broken and we shouldn't waste any more of our time on it.
Image Viewing
Overall the image playback on the device wasn't half bad, definitely better then we thought we would get from it. Load times of pictures were fairly snappy while transition times were pretty slow, between 2 and 3 seconds for pictures sized 800x533. Other pictures that we had that were bigger took 5 seconds or more. This may not seem like a long time, but when the device is suppose to act as your picture viewing device for all of your pictures the seconds add up as you scroll through large sets. One really nice feature that the 320 does have that is not included in all streamers was the ability to interact with the pictures like zooming and rotating. The fact that other streamers don't let you rotate pictures seems absurd to us. So many of our pictures are in portrait mode and if we couldn't rotate them via the player those pictures would be totally useless. Stacked up against a lot of the other devices we have tested the DSM-320 holds its own and, in our opinion, beats out some newer, fancier devices out there.
Audio Playback
Audio playback on the DSM-320 was pretty spartan with just the basics to get the audio playing from the server. When you play a song there is a fairly nice screen that shows most of the tag information from the song that was selected. This is a great screen that any decent audio player needs to have. The problem is that if you navigate away from this screen there doesn't seem to be a way to get back to see this information again. There is no 'Now Playing' button or any other obvious way to see all the tag info again. Sound quality was what you would expect, not high fidelity, but definitely good enough for the standard stereo equipment most of us have. They have an online music section that had us very excited until we went there and saw how bad it was. Most of the services need you to download software on your PC and subscribe to some service. Most of the instructions on how to accomplish this were just about impossible to read. This part of the device was not very well thought out. It seems they just wanted to offer some online ability and didn't really put the effort in to make it anything but functional. The only online music that wasn't total crap was the Internet radio section. Most of the streams we selected played back clearly with no major hiccups.
Conclusion
While there are a few nice parts about the DSM-320 it seems that time has caught up with it and past it by. While it does a decent job playing back media for the money you would spend on this you are better served to save it and spend it on one of the newer devices out there, like the
DSM-330. We can't give this product a recommendation, but since it has been out for awhile we hope that most people have read enough to know that this isn't a valid choice for a modern streamer. The DSM-320 served its purpose at one time, helping to push the concept of streaming media from a central source, but now is the time for it to go into retirement and enjoy the world it help create.
Read More in: Audio Streaming | Hands On Review | Image Streaming | Internet Radio | Video Streaming
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Posted by David Ficocello at February 18, 2008 11:48 PM
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