I just got my Christmas present delivered from buy.com. Since I didn't expect it to arrive that fast (within two days!) I had no choice but to open it...After unpacking the box I found a brand new D-Link Wireless Media Player DSM-320. This was a replacement for an old junk PC that was used as our Media Center, which needed a MS MCK (including a remote) and a wireless keyboard with a mouse and a new case to look a little cooler and be quieter... There was no point to get all these upgrades, hence the present
To make my new media player work it needed a little tweaking with its wireless settings and a UPNP compatible server. I tried server software from D-Link, but was not impressed with it: some files didn't play and there were no option to add Internet TVs that I used to watch on the old mediaplayer. After spending some time researching for the right UPNP Music server I found a good (free) one from http://www.tversity.com/ and their software worked the best (and it had those Internet TV channels from all over the world)...
There was another company (TwonkyVision) that had some nice reviews, but their server cost around $30 and I'm not sure if this is worth it.
Anyway, my old PC is gone and I have a nice slim media player which I'm totally happy with (it was $88 from buy.com after rebates and google checkout). I think this is a very good alternative to having a full blown media center...
Updated 12/25/06:
After dumping media server software that came with the box and using free version from Tversity I wanted to watch some of my favorite Internet TV stations that are available on the wwitv.com website. Here is how to do that:
1. Open wwitv.com/portal.htm url, choose and click on the tv station you want to watch. I'm using Winamp to play media files. When Winamp starts playing the TV station, just double click on the file controls (or press Alt+F3) and it will open the file details info.
2. Highlight the mediastream url which usually starts with mms:// prefix (or rtsp://) and press Ctrl+C (to copy that URL)
3. Open TVersity window, click on the "plus" sign and select video url. This will open up a small window with three fields. Click on the first field (URL) and press Ctrl+V to past the video URL. In the secon field type the station name and the third field is for tags (sucj as music, news, international, or whatever)
This should add the video URL (mms://blabla) and now you need to verify it works. To verify, select Library tab in TVersity, navigate to Video->Internet Video->Video URL and find your link listed in there. If you click on this URL and will be able to watch this on your PC it should work on the MediaPlayer too.
To share and play my video and audio files on my DSM-320 I used this small procedure:
But first, since all media files are located on my Linux network server and are available via SMB for the Windows PC where I'm running Media server software, I had to do a few changes to change TVersity process to be running as user instead of System. This ensured TVersity has an access to my networked files and here is how I did that:
Click Start->Control Panel->Administrator tools->Manage Computer->Services. Locate MediaServer process and change its properties to run as "username", where the username is your (usually) account that is used to access the PC and files on the storage server. Then stop and start Mediaserver service.
To share all videos that I've mounted as disk V: and all music on Z: run MShare.exe program (available from the Programs section in the Windows Start menu or is installed in /Program Files/TVersity/Media Server folder). This will open Mshare Window.
Type this at the prompt: MShare "V:" "Z:" "C:\mp3" This could take a few moments depending on the size of those disks and folders.
When new files are uploaded or deleted from these folders, it's a good idea to refresh (synchronize) the entire library against the shared folders/disks by typing: MShare -R
From time to time my library corrupts (I do not know why??) and I have to use > ResetShare command to completelly rebuild the shared library.
more updates to come..