Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/03/04/review_hd_hdi_dune_bd_prime_3_blu_ray_media_player/

HDI Dune BD Prime 3.0 Blu-ray media player

One box, plays all?

By Alun Taylor

Posted in Personal Tech, 4th March 2010 08:02 GMT

Review There is no denying that the idea of one-box Blu-ray player, media streamer and HDD storage is a good one but, to date, we have not come across an example we could wholeheartedly recommend. Popcorn Hour's C-200 Media Tank came close, but the price – which doesn't actually include a Blu-ray player – the slight whiff of DIY and the persistent on-line chatter about firmware problems, all stacked up against it.

HDi Dune BD Prime 3.0

Mixed media: HDI's Dune BD Prime 3.0

American manufacturer HDI has now taken up the baton with its BD Prime 3 Blu-ray media player. The essential idea is the same as the C-200 but HDI supplies a Blu-ray drive already installed. The machine is also being pitched as a media hub for everyman, rather than the technically accomplished hobbyist.

Certainly, the Prime looks the part and resembles many other pieces of low-to-mid-range AV kit from Japan or Korea with its black brushed aluminium and plastic case, discreet fluorescent display on the left of the fascia and a slimline footprint of 420 x 262 x 50 mm.

We say low-to-mid-range, because the disc tray and door actions aren't the most refined we have encountered and the drive makes a fair old racket until the disc has settled down to play. Fascia controls are limited to basic media navigation buttons, the disc tray control and an on/off switch.

The Dune certainly doesn't want for ports and sockets. With three USB 2.0 ports – one on the right side and two round the back – an eSata port, Ethernet that is switchable between "experimental" Gigabit or 10/100 Mbps, an HDMI 1.3 socket, optical and coaxial S/PDIF, 7.1 and 2.0 analogue audio outputs, plus component and composite video.

HDi Dune BD Prime 3.0

Hooking up an external drive is supported, format permitting

Unlike Popcorn, HDi doesn't expect prospective users to go poking around inside these machines with screwdrivers to upgrade it. So if you want a built-in HDD, you need to specify it at the time of purchase. In the USA, HDI offers a range of drives ranging from 500MB to 1TB.

While the option of plugging in your own external HDD using the eSATA port may not be as aesthetically pleasing, it's certainly more flexible. If you want Wi-Fi you will need to buy a dongle with HDI recommending the D-Link DWA-140 for optimal out-of-the-box performance. Incidentally, while the Dune will read and write to FAT32 and EXT2/3 formatted storage, NTFS drives are read-only.

HDi Dune BD Prime 3.0

Home menu

Like all the best modern media streamers, the Dune supports a broad selection of video and audio files. The codecs and containers are all listed on HDI's Dune product page but the Vorbis codec is excluded. So, not only could we not play our Ogg Vorbis music files, but we couldn't play any of our MKV videos with Vorbis sound files either, and that is just not good enough.

Flash is the other missing file type though HDI does promise that Flash Lite 3 will arrive in a future firmware update. The Dune played all the other 1080p test files we threw at it without a hitch along with a selection of Blu-ray ISO and VIDEO_TS files. It also managed to interpret all the advertised subtitle formats.

For those wanting to take their network a step beyond run-of-the-mill UPnP media streaming the Dune supports SMB, NFS and FTP file sharing and it comes with built-in support for IPTV, Internet radio and torrent downloading. Yet all three features involved a fair amount of messing around to set up, so we are not too sure how much use they will prove to be for the less tech savvy.

Under the hood the Dune is powered by a 667Mhz Sigma Designs 8642 processor with 512MB of RAM and 128MB of ROM, which is enough to keep the OS moving at a fair old lick. To take advantage of BD-Live you will need to stick a flash drive into one of the USB ports and initialise it with a firmware patch. That done we settled back to put the Blu-ray player through its paces.

HDi Dune BD Prime 3.0

Set-up menu

Load up time for discs ranged from a poor 'best' of 1min 20secs to a geological 2min 11secs but, once loaded, picture quality proved to be very good with excellent definition and beautiful colour saturation and balance all apparent in Casino Royale. Upscaled standard definition DVD also looked good on the 50in LG plasma we partnered the Dune with.

In tests, no judder and very little in the way of visible image artifacts showed up when we watched The Return of the King at 1080i. However when we tried to access the Terminator Salvation BD Live content things went pear-shaped. The content downloaded well enough, but then the Dune froze necessitating a re-start. That happened three times before we called it a day.

HDi Dune BD Prime 3.0

Responsive to commands, but Blu-ray loading time are glacial

The Dune's on-screen UI is refreshingly well designed and thought out. The system reacts to commands with commendable speed, but it does have one hugely irritating feature. When launching video or music files the TV screen signal is temporarily interrupted, so you get the same 'looking for source/signal' display you see when you switch your telly on, but not your set-top box. The same thing happens when you navigate back to the main menu after watching a video or listening to music.

The problem is not merely aesthetic because, while the system is deciding what signal to send where, the clock is ticking. From pressing play on a video file to seeing the first frames takes 10 seconds and the same delay occurs between pressing stop and seeing the original menu file list which is not particularly impressive. Other lesser niggles with the Dune include the inability to play music while running slide shows and having to download firmware updates using a PC, rather than directly to the unit.

HDI does, however, get a pat of the back for supplying HDMI and eSATA cables and a USB/eSATA adaptor, along with a rather fine IR remote control that suffers only from not being backlit. For those concerned about their carbon footprint the Dune sucks down a not inconsiderable 11W of power on standby rising to 21W when playing Blu-ray discs, both figures taken with a 3.5in external USB drive.

HDi Dune BD Prime 3.0

Well-equipped, but needs refining

The Dune is available in the UK for £370 including a Blu-ray drive but without a hard drive. In our book, it seems is pretty fair value when you consider that a half-decent BD player will set you back in the region of £250 and Popcorn's less user-friendly C-200 is £320 without the Blu-ray player.

Verdict

While a decent enough box of tricks, the Dune is let down by the the lack of support for Vorbis files, shaky BD Live support and the unsatisfactory way the screen signal goes walkabout before video and audio files launch and after they quit. However, none of those failings are beyond rectification with a future firmware update. So, fingers crossed this will happen because, as it stands, the Dune is a good basic BD disc player with significant network ability which just shades the Popcorn Hour C-200. ®

Thanks to AdvancedMP3Players for the loan of our review machine.

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