A Cheap and Easy Network Digital Media Player?

hethatishere asks: "Does such a thing exist? Better yet, is it easy enough for my parents to use? PRISMIQ seems to offer a pretty good one, but it has very limited codec support. D-Link also offers a wireless Media player, but it too struggles with the copious number of codecs available. So is there a cheap and affordable Wireless Networked Media Player, that supports most if not all common and advanced codecs (DivX, XviD, and various wrappers like MKV and OGG, etc), or is this still a pipe dream?"

Re:DLINK DSM320

[Jim Robinson Jr.]

While I agree the the DSM320 is not-yet-ready-for-prime-time (yes... I own one) I *can* tell you that it's not terrible either. It plays music well, has both analog and digital outputs, and supports (pay special attention to my word choice) VOB files, so theoretically I can rip DVD's to my PC and serve them up across the network. Your observations about sync problems, lockups, etc., are correct. However I think the problem is at the server rather than the remote unit. Because the DSM320 feeds from a UPnP server it does NOT require the DLINK software. In fact, any UPnP server will do.

I'm still testing this myself, so please don't consider this an endorsement, but TwonkyVision (http://www.twonkyvision.com/ [twonkyvision.com]) makes a UPnP server that runs on Windows, Linux or MAC and supports a huge range of files and formats, including support for music (MP3, WMA, WAV, LPCM), photos (GIF, JPEG) and videos (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, AVI, WMV, VOB).

Since you are interested mainly in music, you'll be pleased to know that they have a free version that only plays music.

Worth a shot!

Jim

Cheap, Really Easy, But not Networked.

[pretentiousPPC]

I just bought this DVD player at Amazon [amazon.com], and I'm really happy with it.

It plays nearly everything; DVDs, CDs, DIVX, XVID, MP3s, Don't think it plays Ogg though. All you need to do is burn it to some CD-R or DVD+-R and put it in, just like a regular DVD.

No need try to teach someone the intricacy of a networked home theater system, that's still more of a geek project right now, and costly to boot. Far easier it is to just burn it and tell your wife/mother to put in the DVD player.

I used to have to s-video to my TV in through my laptop for all the times my wife missed her Survivor. A thing she would always need my help to do. Now I can just burn the show to a CD, and I don't have to be there to deal with it. It's Great!