HDI Dune Prime 3.0 Part 4

There are few items to follow up after the third post on Dune Prime. It sounds awkward to test a bluray player without playing bluray discs on the player. So I picked up few discs for testing...

When inserted the disc, you will get this...

Very Windows-like right? You insert a disc to your PC, you get some sort of similar prompt in Windows. Just one press on the Enter button on the RC and the disc will start spinning.

Nothing surprise. The disc start playing with previews and teasers if any then the movie menu just like the DVD menu. One thing worth noting is the noise coming out from the bluray drive. The spinning sound is quite loud if there's no sound from the movie and you're sitting close to the player. Not a big deal though. The other thing I observed was the shuddering playback during startup. Perhaps the player is catching up the spinning momentum and to cache the data into the buffer. After all the bluray playback is a pleasant one until I insert the third disc...

Violation?! Hello, the disc is original from Amazon.com! Then the screen went blank after I pressed Stop on the RC. I tried to shut it down using the Power button on the RC and I was greeted with this message on the player...

This message was followed quickly by RESTART. And? The player rebooted itself and returned to the Home screen. I ejected the disc, reinserted but still the same result. I then powered down with the power button on the player, whacked the player with some vulgar words :P, powered it up, reinserted the disc and finally the disc begun to play!

Yes, the movie start playing! Strange right? The movie should not play no matter how many times I reinsert the disc, if there's really a security violation. Like DVD, bluray disc also comes with region code protection. Meaning, an Asia region player will not be able to play bluray released in North America and vice versa. This player was bought from overseas, I can't be sure its origin. But, think about it. If this player is coded as Asia or Europe region, then all discs must not play at all since the discs were from North America. Similarly, if the player is from North America, then why "security violation" for North America discs? Bottom line, hopefully this can be addressed in upcoming firmware release and an option to allow users to select the region (for 1 or 2 times) should be included so that it does not stop users to buy online from other region.

Other than the violation error, BD Live feature is also not available in bluray disc. I guess it may be due to hardware limitation after a search on google to check the hardware specification and wikipedia on Bluray profile 2.0 requirements. Like I mentioned in 2nd post, an internal harddisk may be able to address the storage limitation to support higher profile.

I think that's all for the test. I wish but I doubt I would have time to unpack my AV receiver for further tests on decoding such as decode of Dolby TrueHD and whatnot. I learned from forumers in MPC Club that the player is capable to passthrough TrueHD and HD-MA without glitches. So I would take that as the test result.

Conclusion? This player is yet to be developed to its fullest potential and the developers look to be very aggressive in releasing new firmware and features, there's even a feature voting page! So IMHO, it's worth invest to take home one. In addition, its RM1388 price tag makes it the cheapest bluray player in the market, cheaper than PS3. Where did I get it? It's a "friend price", you can try to hunt in LYN forum, the price may be same or slightly higher.

Anyway, this player is not going to sit in my Mega Project's living hall, it's gonna to be "shipped" to Singapore for my brother this weekend. He is not as hardcore as me, this player should fit his plasma for a simple setup just like what I had for the test. Hopefully, the little darling would also enjoy watching HD cartoons using this player. :)