Fallback

A lot of people have been posting negative stuff about the DSM-330 and DiVX connected. I've taken a lot of it into consideration, but here's how I look at it.

I've gotten a lot of value out of the DSM-330 already. I don't think I'm going to chuck it. What I anticipate is that a better product will come out (one that supports 1080p for example, or maybe one that has local storage and a DVR, with the ability to fetch content from it as a NAS.)

Until that happens I'd like to maximize the return on my investment. I see that part of my return is educational (i.e., I've gone from ignorant to amateur in the encoding field in about two months.) I'm already getting good value in that my family can watch all of kid's video, travel videos, movies, etc. that I've ported without having to fool around with DVDs.

So here's another thing that informed my decision to purchase the DSM-330. I read the things on here that were a little downbeat, but in the end, what the heck. It's not perfect, but when the perfect one is available I'll get that, and this one will go into my bedroom. Then later the kid's room. Then the guest room. Then the basement. Perhaps not in that order, but you get the idea.

So what I'm hoping is that DiVX is successful with Connected, and promotes more products, and develops an ecosystem so that I can have one model for distribution of content to all locations.

But if they're not, it's not a big deal to saddle one server which would be serving content anyway with the task of also serving Connected to this one box.

If I was made of money I'd go buy a second one already. But now I'll probably hold out until I upgrade to HDTV, maybe by that time a new product will be available.

I'm sure this model doesn't work for everyone, there's probably plenty of people who are in an apartment or something where there's only room for one device.

So, here's to DiVX, I hope you're successful. A bolder release schedule would probably go a long way. If the DSM-330 side is constraining development, maybe you can release proposed features on the PC client (which is much improved from what I can tell) first so we can get a taste and you can get feedback early.

Maybe another thing would be to make the player client consumable by other apps (i.e., you could plug it into another app.) I've been thinking of trying something like MediaPortal as a DVR, it'd be neat if other applications could be user-extended to support Connected.

Thanks