- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 62 reviews Back to product review
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15 out of 17 people found this review helpful
2.5 stars
"Depends on your needs - uses only TV displayed menu"
Pros: Plays videos, pictures, music stored on your computer or external hard disk
Cons: does not allow you to play music using media platyers like window media player etc on your laptop - you have to use TV displayed menu
Summary: I'm reviewing this item based on my individual need which may no apply to someone else's.
My need was that I wanted to be able to play music on my laptop/computer using any one of the computer based programs like Windows Media Player, Winamp, JetAudio etc with on my home stereo system (a Sony receiver hooked up with 4 sattelite speakers + center + sub-woofer via cords). I wanted to be able to re-utilize my stereo system without running any wires and having to get up and go to living room where stereo system is setup and browse through albums and start or shuffle. I wanted to use my laptop for all musing playing control + user interface at the same time.
This product does not do that for you. While it is true it plays music stored on your lapttop/computer harddisk or an external hard drive, you are still bound to use your TV to browse through different songs/albums/playlists etc to play them because the menu to play audio/video displays on your TV. Because of ONLY this reason I am returning my unit. Otherwise I would have kept it.
For my need, I am going to use Motorola's two bluetooth adapters, DC800 Home stereo adapter that goes into stereo, and USB PC stereo PC850 adapter that goes into laptop/computer USB port. That does the job wonderfully.
Using these two adapters, the sound quality is exactly what you're playing on your computer. Or at least I could not tell the difference. This also means that if you are using a good quality media player software like JetAudio to play your mp3 files then you can use various equilizer settings to enhance the sound even further. Of course, the biggest thing is that now you are not bound to save and play your music in a particular format (mp3, wma, aac, avi, mpc, whatever) because of regardless the file format, whatever you can play on laptop/computer, you can listen to on home stereo all without running any wires/cords!
D-link media player costs around $217 at amazon (cheepest among all) and it's best used with a 54 mb/sec wifi card which is about another $50 which makes a total of around $268. Both Motorola adapters cost me only $157!
Having taken this need out of the way, I do have couple of comments specific to D-link DSM-520:
1- The setup is not as much of a snap as many have mentioned if your wifi networks is protected by WEP enabled key. I am using 128bit-hex key at home and it was pain in the neck to manually enter a combination of numeric and alphabetical characters using remote control. 128bit-hex means 26 characters and you're bound to make a mistake while entering using remote control and looking at the TV screen. I made the mistakes about 3 times after which I gave up. You also have the option to use Window xp's Start -->accessorieds -->communication-->wireless netwok wizard (product manual has the steps, see it) and put config on flash drive and plug into d-link dsm-520 that automatically reads it and configures but somehow that did not work for at the end of the day. It read and used the configs but still I was not able to connect and have my media server recognized over the network. The final solution was that I disabled the WEP encryption in my routher and then it worked. I guess you'd have to spend some time to make it work using the WEP encryption. It's a bit of "thumbs down" as far as rating goes in that regard. But I still think it's not a deal breaker. You can make it work if you're a bit patient and get used to it's working arounds.
2- Functionality - Like I said in the earlies part. I you want to play music using menu/user interface on computer/laptop instead of TV then this is not the product you want.
3- Sound quality and playing - If above two points are not of much value to you then this product will definitely please you. I'm returning this product ONLY because I want to use my laptop to control which song/album I'm not TV. As little as I was able to set this up and play some music stored in the fomr of wma and mp3 file format, the quality was great. You can't tell the difference between playing on computer or d-link or CD in CD player.
So. If your need is more on the lines of the #3 above them I'd suggest ignore everything else I said before that and go ahead buy it. If however it's same as my need (#2 above) then don't buy this product. I'm going to return mine for the sheer reason.
- 2 replies to this review
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Out of the box, what you say is correct, that you need the TV displayed menu. However, you can actually control the playlist on DLink using a uPnP media controller such as Cidero (http://www.cidero.com/) then it serves the exact purpose you were looking for.
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I had the same issue as you, lots of music on my computer, and I wanted to play it on my Stereo with Surround Sound. There is a cheap & easy solution, use an FM transmitter. You can buy one at almost any retailer (Walmart) for like $20. You will then be able to play your music on any radio in your house, and even your car if your garage is within 100ft! Sound Quality is not perfect, but for $20, it's was a great solution for me.
Where to buy
D-Link MediaLounge DSM-520:
$184.99 - $345.79
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$227.79 | Yes |
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$233.73 | Yes |
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$199.99 | Yes |
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$229.99 | Yes |
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$214.95 | Yes |
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