Matti Robinson
12 Jan 2009 8:48
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