D-Link Wireless-N Dual-Band MediaBridge (DAP-1513)

I have been looking for a way to get internet into my Home Theater for awhile. Yes, I have streaming media already via my ROKU box, but I wanted to connect my internet-ready TV and maybe other devices in the future. Running CAT5 cable to my AV cabinet is impossible. Enter the D-Link Wireless MediaBridge. It does exactly what it claims to: namely, to allow components that need to connect to wired ethernet connect over the air (e.g., home network-->wireless router-->[the air]-->mediabridge-->AV component).

I can say that the media bridge works as advertised. Now my AV components act like they are plugged directly into the rest of my home network. No more entering wireless passwords via TV remotes, yay!

Caveat: My use case doesn't test the ability of the bridge to handle multiple simultaneous data streams (I only watch 1 show at a time on my TV, obviously). You might have trouble connecting a busy media server via this device, for example.

The bad news is the setup is incredibly awkward. Since this unit is a "bridge" and not a router, you can't just connect a laptop to it: No, you have to get into the network settings and setup a static I.P. on your computer just for the bridge setup.

Another bad news item is that the dialog where you set the bridge user name and password doesn't show the password as you type it. This makes long passwords really hard to get right.

Having said that, I would buy this unit again: It fills a niche and does it well.

I spent 2 hours on the phone with Dlink tonight, only to find that I had been doing the setup exactly correctly. (And, believe me the setup is nuts!)

So it turns out my box was DOA. I'm changing to a DAP-1525 instead. If that doesn't go any better, then I'm swearing off of Dlink forever!

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I'm pretty "techo" savvy (not patting myself on the back) but, this Media Bridge was a real pain to get set up and working properly. I have a Netgear N450 router and use the dual band for keeping my computer and home entertainment systems on separate bands and networks. Besides the 5.0 band is cleaner for video and audio streaming. Anyways, I added this D-Link product to my network (took me 4hrs. to get it right using the D-Link Manual and setup disc) and tested it all out. It works...finally!

Wanted to mention that if any D-Link person reads this review, you guys really need to do a better job on the gui thru the IP address interface for configuring the Media Bridge. Take a tip from the Netgear router line of products. You might want to follow their lead on that one. The user manual is not the easiest to follow when trying to set up the system to add as a network repeater-Bridge.

If you're looking at this D-Link 1513, you better have a good working knowledge of wireless networks and how to set them up, manage, and test them. It's not as easy as pressing the WEP button to connect to your network. You have to make some adjustments first in order to get the WEP to work and connect.

I'm only giving 2 stars for the rating due to the setup procedure. I'll give 3 stars on the performance of the product. Good Luck!

Update.....started dropping the connections while watching movies....Boxed it up, it's going back to the store where I bought it!

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Spent many hours troubleshooting this device. Long story short, it is not reliable. Not the sort of thing you can just plug in and rely on. Because multiple wireless MAC addresses are being sent through the bridge to the router, that introduces a host of problems that D-Link neither documents nor solves. Eventually realized that this was not compatible with "reserved" IPs on the router, because the bridge was cloning the MAC addresses for the "reserved" IPs and was a different IP. With that solved, then realized that the unit is just not reliable; it times out or goes to sleep and requires frequent hard resets because the wireless signal on it just stops responding. Along with that, the web interface screen. Equipment like this makes me think: what were they thinking? Very bad.

************* Update 3/30/2013 **************

Switched the bridge to a dedicated 5gz wireless network (from a sort-of crowded 2.4gz network). Now it works beautifully. Not sure if the problem was the competing wireless devices or the 2.4gz band. The bridge also communicating with a non-D-Link access point now. So there's that possibility too. I'll go up to 3 stars for the device as currently configured. Still one star for the documentation.

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The DAP-1513 was a bit difficult to setup, but once I got it up and running it does the it's job.

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