D-Link DSM 330 First Impressions
We have had the
D-Link 330 Divx Connected device in the office for about a week now and we just wanted to post something quick to let you know our initial thoughts. We had been
reading about this device for about 6 months now as rumors of its existence started to surface. Well now that we have started to kick the tires we can tell you that this is the future of media streaming in the home. The interface is intuitive and slick and works so nicely. We find ourselves fighting with so many of these devices, battling the afterthought that is the menu system. Well the Divx guys and D-Link have really thought this out and produced a fluid interface that makes sense. The overall design of all of the screens are top notch, some of the best we have seen in a media streamer to date.
The 330 does all of the basic things you would expect: video, music and photo. But it also can do so much more. The Divx Connected platform was designed with the expectation that the community would develop plug-ins to extend the functionality of the device. They have designed the system so that not only is this possible, but very easy. There is a very active community over at the
labs section of the Divx site.
The one area that this device might let people down is that it only plays Divx and Xvid files currently. You can't load an ISO or play WMV files. This is the initial design and the thought was that this is an evolving platform that will add features over time in new devices. The 330 is just the first device that has the Divx Connected software installed. If you can get past the fact that you need to covert your media to one of these two formats then you are setup to have a fully functioning media streamer that will blow you away. Everything about this device is quick and responsive. Loading up our huge collection of photos or music took seconds and scrolling through them showed no lag. They have really worked on the server side of this to ensure the fast response, something many of the other streamers should do as well.
So after a week of playing with this we are thinking of doing something we never thought we would do. We are going to encode all of our ISO's into Divx. We really think this is going to be a HUGE hit when it lands in the States in a few months. The only real downside that we have seen so far is that it requires a windows machine to run the server. This is a deal breaker for some that either don't have a Windows machine or would rather not have a PC running all the time. Hopefully this is something that can be addressed down the road, but as for now you need a PC on and running Windows.
We will have another post soon with our more in depth review, but we just had to say something quickly and let people know that there is a great new media streamer on the horizon. Oh and just wait till we tell you about the cool plug-ins that we have been playing with, so cool! Stay tuned.
UPDATE: We just got word from the good people over at Divx that the 330 does indeed playback WMV/WMA as long as they do not contain DRM. Looks like we must have had some crappy test files. So there ya go, one more format to add to the list. And if you check out the community sites you can find out all sorts of cool ways to add support for a ton of more formats.
Read More in: Audio Streaming | Image Streaming | Video Streaming
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Posted by David Ficocello at February 14, 2008 6:00 AM
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