Hey Hugh,

After reading your review of the DSM-320, I broke down and picked one up for $199 at BestBuy. Pretty cool unit. I had a lot of difficulty getting to play purchased downloaded music (had all sorts of difficulty with DRM).

Anyway ... if anyone else has this difficulty I can walk them through all the steps (it's pretty nuts ... set up an FTP server to dupe the DSM into downloading the US, not Canadian firmware) and then several uninstalls/re-installs of Media Connect. Pain the ....!

But now that it works, I am impressed. The sound quality is pretty good (not quite in the league of my Marantz CD-67SE for music) but far more convenient.

Thanks for the review (and separating me from my hard earned money!!)

Glad you're enjoying it!

Are you using the D-Link software as your media server or Windows Media Connect?

Played with many servers over the past few days. I was not particularly fond of the D-Link server for a couple of reasons. One is that insists on starting as a minimized app in my taskbar and I hate that (system tray is fine). The more critical reason is that it seemed to have difficulty with certain video content (esp. avi files).

I looked at other server solutions over the past few days:

Windows Media Connect (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/devices/wmconnect/default.aspx) - the only one that lets you play DRM protected songs (eg. downloads from MSN Music or Puretracks). Runs as a service and I use it for music
Twonky MusicServer (http://www.twonkyvision.de/UPnP/) - the MusicServer is free and integrates with WinAmp so if you have large WinAmp playlists it is pretty convenient. The full MediaServer is shareware. I tried it and think there are better freeware solutions.
TVersity (http://www.tversity.com/) - Even though it doesn't have a GUI and you have to add share folders using a command line interface, this is the best server I found. It's video playback is superior to D-Link's and it has a lot of flexibility when it comes to online content.


In the end, I am using Windows Media Connect for music (because of DRM), and TVersity for everything else.

I tested with the Dlink server (which comes with the unit) and Windows Media connect (free download from Windows).

If I could use it for Launchcast, I would buy it myself.

I love my Launchcast personalized station and its what I listen to almost exclusively on weekends when we have music on most of the day.

Hugh, is your review of the DSM-320 still online somewhere? I'd like to read it if it's still around. Can you point me to it please?

http://www.digitalhomecanada.com/forum/showthread.php?t=38485&highlight=DSM-320

That's the DSM-520 thread. Any idea where the DSM-320 review is?