AfterDawn: News

HDi introduced MKV and Torrent supporting Blu-ray players

An Israeli company, High Definition Israel or HDi, has introduced couple of interesting Blu-ray players. In addition to playing Blu-ray movies, the players support MKV and DivX files as well as BitTorrent downloads.

HDi has two product families, Dune HD Center and Dune BD Prime, both with four models for different network connection and external hard drive setups. With Dune BD Prime you can choose between the base model, one with WiFi 802.11n, one with Gigabit ethernet, and one with two eSATA ports. In addition to the same upgrade options the more expensive Dune HD Centers feature a rack for internal SATA drives as well.



All of the players have BD Live support, 1GB of internal flash memory, BD/DVD/CD playback, three USB ports for external USB drives, support for NFS and Samba file sharing as well as support for IPTV and Internet radio.

HDi's players have also extensive file support, including support for AVI, MKV (Matroska), M2TS, TS, MOV, MP4 and WMV files.

MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX, XVID, WMV9, VC1 and H.264/AVC video codecs and AC3 (Dolby Digital), EAC3 (Dolby Digital+), DTS, MPEG 1/2/3, AAC, LPCM, WMA, WMAPro, Dolby True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio audio codecs are supported as well. Dune BD Prime players are able to display both SSA/ASS and SRT subtitles.

The players feature HDMI and component outputs that are able to pass 1080p resolution video. Audio outputs include digital Toslink and RCA and analogue 7.1 RCA.

To make it even more impressive, all the HDi Blu-ray players also feature a BitTorrent client and a Gecko-based web browser.

HDi lists resellers around the world but the only price we found in the US or UK was for the entry-level Dune BD Prime player for £429 in DigitalEra.co.uk. MKV Players lists the entry-level Dune HD Center for 599 euros.

MPC Club reviewed the Dune BD Prime in last November and it impressed the reviewer and users even in its pre-release form.



Dune BD Prime




Dune HD Center

Written by: Matti Robinson @ 12 Jan 2009 8:48

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• 12 comments

• emugamer

  Wow...a little cheaper and a full breakdown, and that's on my list. The all-in-one I've been waiting for.

  12.1.2009 09:57 #1

• david89

  nice player so how much are they in us dollars?

  12.1.2009 13:31 #2

• canuckerz

  Originally posted by david89: nice player so how much are they in us dollars?802.30 USD using the current exchange rate.

  12.1.2009 15:39 #3

• emugamer

  Quote:Originally posted by david89: nice player so how much are they in us dollars?802.30 USD using the current exchange rate.I'm only willing to pay $300 tops for it. Guess it will be a while :(

  12.1.2009 16:12 #4

• PantherM

  Sweet!
  
  Now, let's hope if forces Sony to add MKV. support to the PS3! Heck, if the PS3 could handle BitTtorrents off the HDD, that would be paradise!

  12.1.2009 19:51 #5

• atomicxl

  Quote:Originally posted by david89: nice player so how much are they in us dollars?802.30 USD using the current exchange rate.Wow, that was almost worth it until I saw the price. At that price and for its features, you're basically buying a PC that can't do anything other than torrents and movies... but you're paying like $100 more than a pre-built PC that could do all of that and more. Or you could buy a laptop that does all of that and more for like $100 more dollars.

  13.1.2009 00:47 #6

• emugamer

  Quote:Quote:Originally posted by david89: nice player so how much are they in us dollars?802.30 USD using the current exchange rate.Wow, that was almost worth it until I saw the price. At that price and for its features, you're basically buying a PC that can't do anything other than torrents and movies... but you're paying like $100 more than a pre-built PC that could do all of that and more. Or you could buy a laptop that does all of that and more for like $100 more dollars.Yeah, may as well just build a nice *gulp* HTPC

  13.1.2009 06:08 #7

• Matt898

  I was really excited about this until I saw the price point. That's diff a bit much. I agree with Emugamer for that amount of dough i'm better off building a HTPC

  14.1.2009 12:12 #8

• afterenoo

  Thank you.

  15.1.2009 04:03 #9

• sstella

  good article - the site you mentioned (digitalera) also sell the 1gb version (no idea why this isnt default)and i noticed they also will be stocking the eva9150. Now that looks interesting
  
  ps. had a login many moons ago but forgot details (great site)

  26.1.2009 18:38 #10

• philly37

  I have one on order an am waiting for the company i ordered from to get them in stock. They are 350.00 US dollars.
  
  http://www.duneplayer.com/shop/

  12.1.2010 06:19 #11

• stellaart

  been using my bd prime 3.0 for a while now and love it - got it from digitalera.co.uk who seem to know a thing or two about media players.
  
  my only issue was some networking problems but that was fixed in a patch.

  2.3.2010 17:48 #12