I know I'm not the only one who is sick of cable TV.  Comcast is one of the most hated companies in the US....and the alternatives aren't much better.  I've been looking into different media solutions and decided to give D-Link's MediaLounge a try.

At first glance it *looks* great.  It certainly feels like it would be more comfortable in an entertainment center than on a computer desk.  What the photo doesn't show you is the very bright, very obnoxious, flashing blue LED that indicates network traffic.  I've yet to find a way to disable the flashing, short of a piece of tape.

The server software is as important, if not more so, than the player.  The included software from D-Link is horrible.  Playback quality was really bad and support for various movie formats was poor.  Fast forward and rewind simply didn't work.  Thankfully, there are alternatives like Tversity. 

Regardless of the server, there are still issues with the audio and video getting out of sync from one another...and the fast forward/rewind functionality is iffy-at-best.  Naturally, if you are willing to convert/reencode your media to a format that plays nice with the DSM-520, you'll be able to avoid most of that.  But *good luck*.  There is no software included to help you, nor is there much in the way of documentation on how to support that.

Setup wasn't too bad, but there is a good chance you'll need to change firewall settings on your PC and the settings on your router to allow the upnp traffic.  There was little to no documentation included with the player to help you do that.  Unless you are a fairly competent IT guy or gal, you might struggle with getting this thing to work at all.

Along those same lines, if you are going to be running this wirelessly, having a basic understanding of how to change wireless channels and ensure all of your devices are running at wireless-g speeds is going to be a pre-req to getting decent performance out of this sucker.

Overall, with some hacking/tweaking - you'll be able to watch your PC's media collection on any (one) TV you want with a DSM-520.  But, I really feel like this player falls short. 

When you hook this sucker up - you've got a device that can connect to a PC, the Internet, and a TV - all at the same time.  You've got all the hardware you need to do so much more.  But you can't.  For no good reason.  Would you like to surf the web on your TV?  Lots of people do.  Why can't you do it with the DSM-520?  No good reason, they just don't let you.  How about use the DSM-520 to remotely connect to your PC?  How cool would that be?  Really cool....but you can't do that.

Even things you really would expect a media player to be good at, fail to measure up.  Pictures are a pretty mainstream media type...maybe you'd like to show the in-laws some pictures of your trip to Greece.  You can do that with the DSM-520.  But what if you want to rotate a picture?  Or zoom in?  Or adjust the color? 

MS PAINT CAN EVEN DO THAT.....


 

You can't do *any* of those things.  That's pretty basic picture viewing functionality, if you ask me. 

In the end, I felt like the DSM-520 was awfully over-priced for what it does.  When you consider the PS3, which only costs an extra $100 dollars, includes a blu-ray player, has it's own internal hard-drive *and* plays PS3 games....the DSM-520 really doesn't measure up.