DSM-320 Digital Media Receiver
I purchased a D-Link DSM-320 Digital Media Receiver some time back. This product interested me as it was a video thin client of sorts.
The DSM-320 utilizes Intel’s UPnP AV protocol which attempts to create a standard method for consumers to distribute media throughout their homes.
Devices like these will likely play a large part in our future much to the dismay of many a large media conglomerate. The Internet has reduced the cost of distributing data significantly. The role of the traditional media company will lessen if they do not adopt the new technologies.
The DSM-320 upon first examination was absolutely horrible. The video refused to stay synchronized with the audio. I almost gave up on the product after playing around with it for hours trying to figure out what the cause of the problem was.
I learned that the product did not work properly with videos where the audio was in MP3 format but not CBR (constant bitrate). The problem was with the firmware. D-Link had rushed the product out too early. My best guess as to what was causing the problem was the demuxer. This is run in software and is the part that separates the audio from the video. The video is decoded in hardware, and it is my hypothesis that the audio may be decoded in software.
D-Link is not the OEM for this product. The firmware and reference design are actually by a company called Redsonic. This means that the product is by no means unique. An Australian company, Zensonic, also produces a digital media receiver based upon the Redsonic design that they call the Z400. Early firmware releases for the Z400 had the same problems with audio synchronization.
Zensonic was likely more active in their dialogue with Redsonic as they were able to release a viable firmware for their device before D-Link was able to do the same. I was able to flash my player with Zensonic’s firmware and the synchronization problems went away.
I was not very content with this solution. It angered me that D-Link was not able to release a workable firmware as quickly as Zensonic was. It took D-Link a while, but they finally released firmware version 1.05 and the device became usable. I put D-Link’s firmware back on my DSM-320 at that point.
The other main issue with all of the digital media receivers on the market is the server software. You need to run a server on your computer in order to allow the device to access your media. These servers differ in quality and ability. The D-Link server in its current incarnation works well. My main gripe is that you can not set it to run as a service. Thus, my machine which is set up for multiple users needs to have one user logged in at all times running the server program. If that user logs off, then another user needs to make sure to start up the server.
If the server could run as a process, then it would be available even if there were not any users logged in. This would make the device much easier to use, and less of a techie toy.
The media server also needs to figure out when new files have been added to a directory so that it can reindex them. If you add a new video and the server has not reindexed, then the video will not show up on the menu of your digital media receiver. The D-Link server has two options. You can either tell it to manually reindex your videos, or to reindex them automatically every x minutes. It would be better to tell the server to check if the directory has changed and then reindex if need be.
Right now I consider the DSM-320 to be more of a proof-of-concept. It is possible to create a working digital media distribution system in one’s home; however, much work needs to be done to make it practical for the non-techie.
There is also a more comprehensive review of this hardware over at Mirror World.