A $9.95-per-month Rhapsody subscription will allow you to stream music on demand from the premium service's vast catalog to the DSM-520 and your home stereo system. Using the DSM-520's remote, you can easily navigate your entire Rhapsody library and fire up playback of Rhapsody radio-style stations and custom playlists. Other compatible online offerings include subscription-based Radio@aol as well as Live365, which provides free and subscription-based memberships. Each features extensive programming, but it's worth noting that the DSM-520 can't stream Radio@aol's assortment of XM stations, which are available to the service's PC-based users.
On the connectivity front, the DSM-520 has it all. It's fully stocked with HDMI, component-video, S-Video, and composite-video outputs, plus coaxial and optical digital and stereo analog RCA audio outputs. In addition to a removable wireless antenna, the DSM-520 has an Ethernet port for wired networks. The unit utilizes the 802.11g standard, which offers the bandwidth to stream HD video, but it'll connect with slower 802.11b Wi-Fi networks if you don't mind video hiccups. D-Link offers a $49.99 extended-range wireless antenna, which might help out if you run into wireless snags. Connecting a USB drive or an MP3 player to the DSM-520's front-panel USB 2.0 port enables playback of compatible files located on the external device. According to D-Link, the DSM-520 supports any drive or MP3 player with a FAT or FAT32 file system, but iPods aren't compatible.
Over an 802.11g wireless connection, high-bandwidth video such as DVD-quality MPEG-2 and WMV HD files played smoothly for the most part, even with the unit set up approximately 30 feet away from our wireless router and a plaster wall separating them. Naturally, the D-Link DSM-520 also did a reliable job of wirelessly streaming audio from Rhapsody, Live365, Radio@aol, and our PC's hard drive. Also in wireless mode, the DSM-520 capably ran a slide show of 3-megapixel JPEGs with MP3 and noncompressed WAV accompaniment. The device's analog audio outputs sounded clean and video looked sharp with the unit connected to our HDTV's component inputs.The DSM-520 successfully streamed music from a USB-connected Cowon iAudio M5 and was generally capable of displaying image files stored on the MP3 player, although they loaded somewhat slowly and BMP files weren't viewable via USB. You navigate USB-connected devices strictly by directory. You can't, for instance, navigate the tracks on a connected MP3 player by genre or album, and to reiterate, iPods aren't compatible. What's more, the D-Link didn't recognize our Canon PowerShot A510 digital camera. Those snags notwithstanding, we found the D-Link MediaLounge DSM-520 to be one of the better HD video-capable digital media receivers we've tested to date.
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User reviews
- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 62 reviews
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47 out of 48 people found this review helpful
"Reviewed 4 different Media Centers & Dlink 520 is the BEST"
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14 out of 15 people found this review helpful
"D-Link DSM-520 Media Receiver is one the best among it's class and affordable too."
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D-Link MediaLounge DSM-520:
