8. Installing & Using The DMP-HD610 In The Real World, Continued

The DMP-HD610 has four buttons that surround the outside of the unit. These four buttons are the following: Program; EQ/Settings; Browse; and Stand By/ Stop. On the center of the unit are the navigation buttons, which control the up and down movement, as well as the Play, Fast Forward, and Rewind functions. The Play button is big and easy to find in the dark or a dimly lit room, and you can lock the keypad once the unit is playing to prevent input from other buttons that could disrupt your playback.

The Program function of the DMP-HD610 offers six play modes, which include Repeat, Repeat All, Random, Random All, Directory Only, and Continuous Playing Mode. The DMP-HD610 also offers five EQ settings: User Defined; Rock; Pop; Jazz; Classical. The DMP-HD610 offers full balance, bass, and treble control only in the user defined EQ setting.

A close-up look at the display of the DMP-HD610 while the unit is playing music.

Navigation on the DMP-HD610 uses a point and shoot interface. The DMP-HD610 allows scrolling between directories and supports multiple directory levels. This is important, since the supported multiple directory levels make it easier to better organize your entire music collection on the unit.

We found the included headphones to be comfortable, but lacking in bass quality when compared to similar headphone units. Attempts to use the DMP-HD610 with other headphones met with simular results, and due to this we can say that the unit does not have as much bottom-end bass punch that many people like. The volume range of the DMP-HD610 was acceptable, but we would not consider it to be capable of being played overly loudly. We would have liked to have been provided with more playlist control than that which is available with the DMP-HD610. We found that, in order to overcome these limitations, your favorite music must be recorded into the directories at the volume in which you want to hear it. It also would have been nice to be able to D-Link upgrade the playlist support.

We had no problem playing our MP3 files that were encoded in a variety of different programs with various bit rates, including variable bit rate encoding. We also didn't encounter any problems with the DMP-HD610 unit's reading of our ID tags on the MP3 files.