I’m impressed with the D-Link DSM-330 DivX Connected HD Media Player’s interface and ease of use and the playback quality for formats supported out of the box. There is a market for this type of device, similar to Apple TV, and there’s compelling online content that will appeal to many with this media extender. Unfortunately that online content is relatively scarce. A bigger issue is the default restriction to only DivX video or MP3 and WMA audio, which limits this product to those who either already have encoded the bulk of their collection as DivX or who take the time to “hack” the unit to stream other formats. In talking with a DivX representative, I’ve learned that they are planning to provide additional format support. In fact, the next version of the server software will support Flash video support, which should help quite a bit with online content in particular.
I can recommend this device with qualifications. If you have a large DivX collection or are just starting out and like the concept of all video on DivX then this is definitely a very desirable media extender for you. If you don’t fit into that category, I still encourage you to consider the device for it’s nice interface and strong potential for online video and other online content. It’s not for everyone, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Sorry, but if it doesn’t even support Xvid, it isn’t even useful for playing pirated copies of TopGear. If you look, you’ll see that most of the torrented TV shows are encoded with Xvid, rather than DivX, not sure why other than the obvious open source nature of Xvid. And DivX’s encoder, while easy to use, is horribly slow. Sorry, but I’m not interested.
Connected plays Xvid out of the box (just like any DivX certified device). It supports .WMV out of the box as well. I’ve been using Connected for over a year now (beta tester) and it has completely replaced my DVD player, my TiVo, and now with built-in access to Revision3, I’ve even canceled my cable service! http://www.vreel.net is already living up to stage6 as a source of quality DivX content.
More format support can be added by way of a hack, but it’s fairly involved. I just couldn’t get the energy to toy with it this past weekend to try it out…