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[shedmeister]

I've had my DSM-520 for about a week now and wanted to share my out-of-box experience with this group:

First of all, thanks to this Forum for getting me past some of my early issues, like the low volume.  I didn't expect this device to have a digital volume control.  And I see that the distorted aspect ratio of the photos is already on the list, so I won't bring that up again.

I keep seeing an intermittent 'reverse video' problem (chroma channels are swapped).  I've seen it on HDMI and composite output.  When I first powered up, I couldn't get rid of it.  But then when the unit upgraded itself to V1.06, it got a lot less frequent.  A power-cycle usually fixes it now.

The video fast-forward / rewind speed looks like ~1.2x to me, but with other ways to skip around, it is tolerable.

Manually advancing in photos is extremely slow, possibly the large file size from my 4MP camera?

I installed the D-Link Media Server (V1.10) on my PC and the DSM-520 found it OK.  Then I installed Active TV and it appears that this steps on the D-Link Media Server.  I had to re-add my local content into the Active TV Media Server setup.  Is this right?

Slide show with music - how do you switch the controls (skip, pause, etc.) between the music and the photos?

Video formats
==========
I tried a number of video formats and had the following results:
- some played fine
- some gracefully reported that they wouldn't play
- some MPEG-2 files played slow (voices were noticeably lower pitch).
- some crashed the unit so bad that I had to physically unplug it to regain control.  One type of video that did this was an MPEG-2 variant as created by my Canon FS-100 camcorder.  Is there a place to upload videos that completely crash the unit in case D-Link is interested in why?

Active-TV
======
Veoh:  "No items to show"
YouTube:  None of the videos play
Google:  ~20% of the videos play, no trick modes work


Thanks

[fccgrant]

>> I had to re-add my local content into the Active TV Media Server setup.  Is this right?

Yes...because it is also a media server.  If you have Active TV and D-Link media servers both running the 520 will see both of them.  Most people run only one.  So you can keep both running or turn off one of the servers.

>>Active-TV
>>======
>>Veoh:  "No items to show"

No longer accessible due to Veoh changes.

>>YouTube:  None of the videos play

YouTube changed their API's.  I made a fix which can be downloaded here...

http://www.midwestgrants.com/sca/onlinemedia.zip 

Rename the onlinemedia.html file and replace it with this one.  It will be in the Program Files\mediamall folder.

>>Google:  ~20% of the videos play, no trick modes work

Haven't played with Google videos too much as this was my experience as well.  However, because Google and YouTube are one in the same it is quite possible that the fix on YouTube is also in Google.  I would have to look.

Check also http://active-tv.blogspot.com/.  He has a new YouTube and Google channel that may work.  It's under Free Tv Web Channels on the right side of the webpage.  I think he has a Veoh but only one of them works.  I played with it but don't watch it.

Video formats are tricky.  Bit rates too high, too low, etc. could give mixed results on the DSM-520.  It's a nightmare with everyone who has a format that they think is better than everyone else's.  It is frustrating and makes me want to rant. 

ff/rw is the worst.  I use the jump feature.

I have not used my DSM for photos or slide shows so someone else will have to chime in on that one.