New Dune HD Max and HD Smart anticipation thread Q3 2010 - Page 7

Dune hit a homerun with the Base/Prime 3.0. It really cleaned things up for me and got me down to a single media player per TV.

If they could only integrate with a networked DVR. I really don't care if it is TiVo, Moxi, MCE or even their own home-grown using their proposed future tuner module or something like the mythical Silicon Dust cablecard network tuner. Anything - as long as I can schedule recordings, watch what is recorded, and and a bonus watch live TV...

I'd pay incredible amounts of money to only have one media device attached to my TV...

Right now SageTV is the main player for this (MS to a lesser extent using Xbox 360s as extenders)

Neither one really meets all of the requirements...they come close. I guess when you figure the Dune doesn't have the DVR integration then they are not any closer. But from what I have seen, Dune is the most likely to get there.

I would expect that a new SageTV Extender (to replace the HD200) would come out before year end and hopefully add some sorely missing features (such as HD Audio bitstreaming, downmix, etc...). If so that could make it a real player in the market

I'd definitely be interested in that to use in conjunction w/my HDHomeRun tuner.

How did you say to them to return your C-200? Or just stated that you don't like it? How long for the policy to return it at Amazon? You have to pay for shipping back?

You can return it for up to a month. If you say the C-200 is defective, you don't pay return shipping and get a full refund. If you return it simply because you didn't like it, you need to ship it back at your cost.

For me, if it was just a recorder I needed, I could have stuck with a dozen other cheaper digital options over the last nine years other than TiVo. But I've found nothing that allows me to as easily go through my TV recordings as the TiVo and it's remote.

If I try to watch Tv content on any other device, the experience is never as pleasurable as when using a TiVo since the remote and how it FF/REW and skips is not a nice as how TiVo does it.
it will work on the other devices, but the experience is never as good. Now if all the commercials are removed, it wouldn't be an issue. But I have not removed commericials from my HD recordings over the last nine years.

damian, not that i don't consider you a reputable source in-and-of yourself, but if you don't mind, told by whom? if you can't disclose, i understand.

regardless of your source, any comments/thoughts on the rest of my post (ie. if two devices have the same hardware and the same firmware, how can one have capabilities that the other does not)?

I spoke with Mike at duneplayer I think either yesterday or wednesday. Basically you should expect the same exact functionality with the new players as you would with the base/prime (unlike what happened with PCH)

OK, I played a BD Iso (main movie only) of District 9. When I hit the subtitle button a little popup appears where I can selelct the various subtitles. The same thing occurs for Audio. Is this what you consider BD Lite?

thanks damian . so maybe the 3d and flashLite are upcoming enhancements to the smart series, even though they're not listed as such?

With BD lite with the C200/A200 and PopBox. A full BD ISo will start playing the movie right away. And with the C200(in BD Lite mode/simple Bd) and the A200, you can choose the audio track, subtitle track, and chapter.
But if you put the C200 in full BD navigation mode. When you load the Bd ISO, the experience will be like putting a Disc in a regular BD player.

All my BD ISOs are a direct rip of the disc. so I can watch it as if I'm putting a disc in a player with the c200, or in my other viewing areas, I just start watching the movie right away.

I guess I'm in the minority with full BD ISO rips. In the early 2000's when I started ripping DVDs, I would take out everything but the movie and burn it to the Disc or shrink down the whole title. With BDs, I just want a full copy of the disc. Plus there is little effort on my part except for inserting and removing the disc from the BD rom drive.

Well, I know for my full BD Iso that I tested on the Dune it was the same as putting in the disc. For the main movie BD Iso it went right to the main movie and I could change the audio/subtitles (didn't check for chapters). So you are saying there should be some setting that you can enable BD Lite whereas if you have a full BD Iso it will just jump to the main movie (I am an mkv guy)?

That is how the C200 does it. When I had my Prime, Base and C200. I was only testing for full BD menu navigation. Plus I don't think the C200 had BD lite menus yet. But I've found that I like using that in my secondary and tertiary viewing locations.

Chris, be honest. You will buy all of them and then sell all but the one you want to keep.

Hehe, he does do that a lot doesn't he

Out of ALL of the electronics I have had come and go in my system, the ONLY one I have bought and not replaced has been my DUNE base. (of course that may change once I order the MAX) :-)
C
And on another note bought yet another blu ray player to try. Samsung 7500 (I think) lots of wireless streaming stuff and it was a cheap deal on buy.com...

Got some x-amps for you smart guy!

If all you need is ATSC or unencrypted QAM, you can already do this with a TViX M6620N with the Dual Tuner. A major plus, the latest firmware allows recording 1 or two channels while watching media files, the downside is that it only offer the EPG embedded in the broadcast.

I was thinking more of a true server/client type relationship where you could set up a tv tuner farm at the server end which could then be accessed by all the clients, etc... It is definitely nice to see players like the TViX offering tv functionality

Any idea how big HDD the units support? How about 2TB?

I thought Dune had full BD nav menus?

It does, read closer what I wrote, I tested out a blu ray iso that only contained the main movie, so in this case there are no blu ray menus. If it was a full blu ray rip it would have the full Bly ray menu

If they added on a slot to pop in a Ceton wouldn't that be something.

With the Ceton card now shipping I'm taking a second look at building a custom htpc for media playback.

W

My Dune Base 3.0 is scheduled to be delivered tomorrow to my door. What I don't understand is I thought the Base 3.0 had a hot swappable internal 3.5" sata drive? What's different about the new models?

Should I really worry? Is my Base 3.0 obsolete now? The new Sigma chips aren't in these new players so how are they gonna offer better performance? Also I don't think they'll playback 3-d because I talked to the head guy from DunePlayer.com on the phone and he told me not now or ever offer 3-d support. It had nothing to do with HDMI 1.3. They weren't interested the slightest bit for 3-d playback. Yes I was bummed because I am getting a 3d-tv.

So my take on it is that next year's model with the newer chipset will be superior to these new offerings so the Base 3.0 is still great afterall. Am I right?

The new ones will allow an upgrade next year to the new chipset. The Dune Base may or may not, no one is sure. But yes, the Base is still great

Keep in mind also that the new models are meant to compliment the current Base/Prime (i.e. give users more options along the pricing scale)

As far as 3D, the impact as far as HDMI is concerned is that HDMI 1.3 will give you 1080i 3D whereas HDMI 1.4 will give you 1080p 3D. Who knows for sure if 3D will be supported. I don't know how 3D relates to this advertised feature of the dune players:


Regarding the latest/greatest, unfortunately this technology is fast moving, and when you think you have the latest/greatest in only a few months something comes out that is better. The key is to make sure you have something that you can use NOW. Latest/greatest is great, but also means you can potentially deal with instabilities/bugs as the technology matures.

Looks cool, but not for $400 bucks!!!!