HDX BD-1 Part 2

This post takes a little longer to appear here after I posted the part 1 a month ago. Similar to what I've posted about HDI Dune Prime 3.0, the focus of this part 2 post is the software or firmware features. Let's start with the main GUI...

You're presented with 7 icons after the boot up screen. From left to right: USB (if you've plugged in any USB drive to the player), external Bluray or DVD ROM (if you've plugged in any to the USB or eSATA port), internal harddisk, UPnP, network (SAMBA and NFS), internet browser and last is the setting. This post is not about accessing the different sources i.e. USB, eSATA etc, I will jump directly to the setting, more pictures less text.

Come to the setting, you get Audio, Video, Language, Playback, Network, System setting and Information which is not in the picture below...

Audio setting...

First you set to either bit stream (or called passthru) or to have the player decode. Second you set to output audio to all the available audio ports on the player.

Video setting...

The description for each option may sound confusing. For instance, TV Mode may better be described as Aspect Ratio, right? Anyhow, that is minor and the player has support for quite a range of options for you to pick the optimal setting for the output screen. This player is also friendly to old PC LCD monitor as it supports 16:10 ratio, I believe all new LCD or LED monitors are 16:9 except for older models. One thing to note is the deep color support! Enable it will enrich the viewing experience, of course provided that your screen and the HDMI cable support it. By the way, I am running 9.2.1.4.1.4 version of firmware, firmware older than this will not have some features you see above. To digress a bit, suppose 9.2.1.4.9.0 is higher version than 9.2.1.4.1.4? Apparently nope. Don't look at version number when download the firmware, look at the released or published date.

Move to Language setting...

The onscreen display only supports 2 languages but very promising, the subtitle supports a long list of languages.

Before you scroll down to the playback setting, I must warn that the picture is getting blurrier, the Jack Bond phone just fails me. The shutter button fails to focus. Hmm... is it the right time to get a replacement?

The play mode setting may be useful to those who like to skip the commercials in the bluray. Select Intelligent Play brings you directly to the root menu of the movie whereas BD Navi is to follow the original flow of the bluray disc. And I can't find any difference between BD Navi and General mode. Loop play is self explanatory, play once or repeat the playback.

Following that is the slide show settings for photo presentation...

Show a file or multiple, how the player deals with different aspect ratio / resolution and how long to display for each photo, these are the options you have.

Now the last three playback settings...

The default region is A. If I am not mistaken, you are limited to only X (3 - 5)times to change the region setting. This is similar to DVD drive. On the other hand, I think 3-size option for subtitle may not be good enough, it would be best if the users can numerically select the font size.

Move on to the network setting...

Pretty standard, manual IP or DHCP. You can plug in a selected model of USB Wifi too. I am not sure if the player is capable to support dual networks where you have a wired and a wireless network. I don't own any USB Wifi dongle so won't be able to try this out. You can also manually add a windows share (SAMBA) or NFS shared folders. This is usually not required but the forum users reported that the player failed to pick up SAMBA shares.

Reaching the bottom of the setting...

Some general player setting such as theme, screen saver and whatnot. I don't run Bit Torrent and CSI (not sure what is this) on the player so I don't need to enable them.

One last thing before I end this post...

The browser (the 6th icon). Unfortunately I can't use the remote control keypad to enter text. Meaning, I need USB keyboard and mouse to browse internet with this player.

Stop for now. Catch back later.