Media Servers

[tazman]

Just a general question.  I am looking at ethernet streaming media servers.  Two products I have been looking at are the Roku Photo Bridge and the D-Link DMS-520.  I have been able to find plenty of reviews on the Roku box, but not much on the D-Link product.  Does anyone on this forum own the D-Link product, or can point me to a forum or online magazine articles that have reviews of it.

Thanks

[HDefinicktion]

I bought over a year ago now the DSM-320, which lacks the HD feature.  I like it for many things.  In order for it to stream music from your computer, you will need Windows Media Connect which is available in a Windows update.  Once this is installed, the Dlink will find that computer on the network as the server.  In theory, it should work well, but trying to search through your music seems to be a challenge, at least for my unit.  They may have changed some things internally to make the interface easier to use.  I have over 100 GB of music on my computer, and in order to get anything played, the best way is to create playlists in Windows Media Player.  This way it is easier for the media server to find the playlist because there is most likely less of these as you have artists, albums, and genres.  When you have hundreds of artists, and only 5 are shown on the screen at one time, it makes it tough to get to Tom Petty without a long search typing it in on a remote.

I have tried to stream digital video that I have captured from my digital video camera on my computer to the server, and it never seemed to work.  It might have something to do with the bandwidth that wireless G offers, compared to the wired LAN.  I was very successful at using it for picture slideshows, and works nicely to show friends and family of a vacation.  In the end, and I sort of retired this unit and built a computer with Media Center 05 installed...works like a charm.  I am not sure what the cost is of the newer unit, but taking an PC and converting it to a media center offers more options, however, I do not know your intentions.

[oz]

I have the NetGear Wireless Digital Music Player MP101, which is strictly for streaming music. I think it was $25 after rebate.

I use the TwonkyMusic server software.   It's cheap (or free) and has a very small footprint.  Their MediaServer software does video and pictures too, and it works with tons of hardware.

[kevbeck122]

Here's a review of the D-Link: http://mediaproductreview.blogspot.com/2005/12/d-link-dsm-520-excellent-media.html

Here's another: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=643256

[tazman]

Thank you everyone for your responses.  I spent a little time reading the reviews for the DNS-520.  Unfortunately it appears to have most of the same pitfalls as the Roku unit.  Which are for the most part software related.  As I read in the AVS review, that person wanted something to basically replace his HTPC.  That also is my goal.

I currently run VLC on my computers.  The software works very well as a server and as a client.  I am able to browes for any share on my network and play files or mounted DVD's from them, without the need for propriortary software which is the case for DNS-520.  With the D-Link product, you need to have their server software installed on each of the computers on the network that will be sharing files or folders.  My goal is to get away from that and palce external drives directly on my network using USB 2.0 to ethernet storage servers.  They also mentioned frame skipping as a problem.  Possibly the hardware MPeg encoder doesn't have enough power to handle the higher bit rates.  I know from experience that without a video card with hardware MPEG encoding it takes at least a P-4HT 3.0Ghz PC to play back HDTV *.ts or *.tp streams without frame dropping.  My 2.66 Ghz P-4 wont do it, it even has a G-Force 4 ti4200 card in it, but without a hardware MPEG chip on the video card, your relying on the CPU.  My 3.0 Ghz HTP-4 will however play those streams just fine, but at 70 to 80 % CPU usage on the perf meter.

I will spend some more time reading reviews on the other products mentioned.  But at this point in time it appears that this technoligy has just not matured enough.

Again thanks for the responses. :wave:

[tazman]

I have tried to stream digital video that I have captured from my digital video camera on my computer to the server, and it never seemed to work. It might have something to do with the bandwidth that wireless G offers, compared to the wired LAN.

I also have wireless G in addition to my wired network and playing HDTV *.tp streams over that on my son's SONY Vaio is not a problem.  If you get to far away from your AP or router, to the point where your connection speed is below 30 Mbits, then it will either freeze or drop frames.  

I wish my Hauppauge card could be used as my video card, because it has an MPEG encoder on it.  My 3.0 Ghz PC is not the computer setup next to my SONY HDTV.  I found that you do not need alot of power to stream the video, but rather on the client end where your playing it back, is where it is needed.