D-Link DSM-520 MediaLounge

I've been waiting a while for a product like this. In keeping with the convergence occurring across the IT and AV industries, a number of manufacturers have grasped the nettle and created technology that will enable you to enjoy on your TV and hi-fi, media more often now stored as MP3 or AVI files on the PCs around your home.

It was inevitable wasn't it? Tracks topping the charts on downloads alone proves that downloading is the medium of choice for the market. That being the case, surely you'd want to play those same files through the hifi system you've spent a decent amount of cash on?

Apple has it's Apple TV product, and D-Link has created the DSM-520 Media Lounge (there are others, too). Unlike Apple TV, the 520 doesn't store any media on the device itself, merely streaming content from the devices already present on your network.

To be fair, I was a little dubious about streaming quality, particularly of video. In fact, the unit performed extremely well even though I only connected it using the poor quality composite cables out of the box. I didn't detect any degredation in signal quality of either audio or video, or the constant buffering that occurs when watching video online.

The feature I found most enjoyable though, surprisingly, were the photo functions: using the 520, I played an MP3 album and navigated off to the photos stored on my PC and had the unit play a slideshow. In an unlikely way, the convenience of digital photography also means that most of the holiday snaps and kids' birthday memories are buried out of sight in a directory on the PC somewhere and rarely see the light of day: this unit brought them to life, much like having a 43" digital photo frame in my lounge.

Overall, it delivers what it set's out to and is only let down a little by the user interface which is functional rather than pretty. I expected to see album artwork and thumbnails of pictures and video instead of just a pageable list: I could just imagine the trauma of an extremely large music or movie collection even with the search function. Perhaps that's expecting just a little too much?