back to article HDI Dune BD Prime 3.0 Blu-ray media player

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 …

COMMENTS

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  1. Sulphur Man
    FAIL

    Just not competitive

    This just doesnt stack up against something like the ASRock 330HT-BD, which has all these features and is a decent little PC for less money

  2. MJI Silver badge
    Pint

    Might as well get a PS3

    Does this do anything the PS3 does not?

    PS3 is cheaper and also you can play games on it.

    1. nilbud
      Thumb Down

      If you know nothing why post?

      The PS3 is junk, it is the worst media player in all of history.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    The one box of tricks that plays them all.

    Is clearly the PS3. Nothing else has yet to come anywhere close...

  4. Funar

    PS3 FTW!

    Sony's PS3 is an excellent Blu-ray media player, is cheaper than this box and has a hard drive built in. It does everything I need of a media player and much much more.

  5. Daniel Owen

    American?

    HDI aren't american

    Company address:

    Rooms 2002-2003, 20/F., Nan Fung Tower, 173 Des Voeux Road, Central, Hong Kong

    The increased network speed (over C200) is due to them messing with the Sigma libs, that will break any updates they want to do in future.

  6. lfcfan_uk
    Thumb Up

    A good review

    Good review but HDI is owned by a Russian guy and they make the goods in china (in the same plant philips or panasonic make blu-ray and dvd players i think)

    You can install your own drive but yes they do like you to order one at the same time, but its only handy if you want to use the built in apps.

    I see you got the machine from advancedmp3players a fine site but a little slow i purchased my C200 AND BD Prime 3.0 from digitalera.co.uk months before advmp3 had heard of either i expect.

    Out of the 2 i enjoy the C200's modular design but the prime meets the "Wife approval factor"

    Remember the C200 has new firmware that fixed a lot of issues AND is due for a UI revamp soon.

  7. voshkin
    Happy

    Got one

    I got one, it is very good.

    much better than popcorn hour (the leader of the market)

    supports everything, very good network support.

    only a bit slow when opening bluray ISOs over the network, but plays well.

  8. A B 3
    WTF?

    It's a joke that there are not more of these...

    Considering it is upper middle class folks that have taken the first plunge into Blu-ray there isn't any top of the line system with HDD recorder. Except for Playstation 3. Sorry to say not all folks are tech savvy enough to set up there own system or rich enough to have someone install a much more expensive system.

    I'm tech savvy enough to DIY, but I wanted to wait to see how much the 'boxes' were going to be. This one is impressive, I just hope they iron the bugs though.

    1. Citizen Kaned

      BR recorder combos...

      yup there are. some panasonic BR recorder and HDD combos. the problem is that with DRM likely to cripple BR recordings what is the point?

      personally as an AV buff i wouldnt go near PC media centres as i much prefer dedicated AV kit.

      what fan does this have? things like noise are a major concern to me. i didnt buy 2Ks worth of B&W speakers to listen to a dull hum in the BG (another reason i bought a dedicated BR player along with my ps3)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Better than the Popcorn Hour?

    The PCH seems to be marked down for firmware problems. This appears to already have more than a fair share and hasn't yet had much exposure. Promises of fixes in future firmware are worth as much as those made by politicians. Popcorn hour also would have you believe everything will be fixed in the next release - until they abandon your purchase and move on to getting their next shiny new box ready.

    At least the PCH and the cheaper lookalikes such as the Egreat range have easy access to the Linux OS underpinning them so that not only can most firmware problems be overcome or bypassed, the usual boring menu displays can be replaced by a variety of superb looking interfaces supplied by an active community on a web forum provided by the device manufacturer.

    The HDI Dune hardware looks good, but I'd expect at least a terabyte of built-in HDD for the basic price.

    Knocking about 10% off that rating would seem about right.

    P.S. And where do you get 'experimental' gigabyte network adapters from?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Can only agree

      I can only agree with "Popcorn hour also would have you believe everything will be fixed in the next release - until they abandon your purchase and move on to getting their next shiny new box ready."

      I've been really disappointed with PCH and the firmware updates, but at least they did the refresh rate one; I'm still waiting for a native resolution one though. i.e. sent out 720p60 as 720p60 and 576i50 VOB as 576i50 signal and not badly deinterlace and scale to single fixed output resolution. Although less of a problem if you're just playing downloaded rips of stuff in MKV files, I want ISO of my DVDs on a NAS and play them at native resolutions over HDMI. :(

      Posting anonymously so rabid PCH fans, and there are some, don't attempt to find me with pitchforks and torches.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Thumb Up

        I was in the same boat..

        Do what I did...get an ASRock 330 instead - running XBMC - perfeck!

  10. Al Taylor
    Alert

    American?

    HDI are indeed Honk Kong based. Apologies for the error.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Gave up on media players

    I've had a few media players and they all had significant problems. Some got fixed, most got ignored as soon as the next shiny new product was released. The new product of course doesn't work 100% either.

    Assuming you could actually play the content, it always took too long to start, too long to FF and god help you if you were stupid enough to try to RW. They are always, without exception, underspecced.

    So I built an ION-based windows 7 box which streams from NAS, plays TV from a HD Homerun, discs from external bluray drive and consumes a max of 40W (SD=22W). Now if it doesn't play the content I download a codec. Admittedly Windows Media Centre has its issues but there's plenty of choice for other htpc s/w. Oh and it runs the home mailserver and does a few batch jobs during the night.

    Anyone who buys a media player is, IMHO, totally deranged.

    It WILL have problems and they WON'T get fixed. Really, they won't and it doesn't matter what manufacturer you pick.

    1. Charles King

      Not even remotely worth it

      @John Naismith:"Anyone who buys a media player is, IMHO, totally deranged.

      It WILL have problems and they WON'T get fixed. Really, they won't and it doesn't matter what manufacturer you pick."

      Amen to that

      Anything north of £300 (or even less these days) just can't compete with an HTPC. Commodity PC hardware and software is a far better choice in every way.

  12. nilbud
    Megaphone

    Public information

    Just in case anyone reads the three "PS3 is great" posts in a row let me point out that the PS3 is a garbage media player. Anyone who ever actually used it would know that. So the only people who could think otherwise would have to be so stupid they would have great difficulty reading and typing and/or be paid to do it by Sony.

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