HDI Dune HD Base Network HD Media Player W/Hot Swap SATA Review

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(More customer reviews)Before the Dune 3.0 Base, I bought an ASUS O!Play HDP-R1. It was and still is a very good player for its price, perhaps the best HD network media player under $100. But the O!Play has two major limitations. It cannot process the HD audio (Dolby TrueHD and DTS-MA) due to its Realtek 1073DD chipset limitation. It does not support the BD menu either.
So I bought the WDTV Live to see if it can do better. It can pass through the TrueHD audio but does not support the BD menu. Worse it does not show the DVD menu which the O!Play does. Both the O!Play and the WDTV Live can stutter on high bit-rate video streams over the network. But the O!Play can play the same video files stutter free when streaming from its eSATA port as long as no HD audio is involved. In the end, I kept the O!Play and returned the WDTV Live.
I wanted an HD network media player that can pass through the HD audio tracks to my Yamaha receiver and show the complete BD and DVD menus. After some careful research, I decided to get the Dune Base 3.0. It is based on the Sigma Design 8642/8643 chipset which is also used in the Syabas Popcorn Hour A-200 and C-200 as well as the HDX BD-1. All these players can support the BD menu and HD audio and claim the Gigabit ethernet speed.
I chose the Dune HD Base 3.0 over others for its more mature firmware, the built-in hotswap SATA HD bay, the eSATA port and the Gigabit ethernet. Until USB 3.0 becomes the norm, eSATA provides the highest speed for externally attached hard drives since it is same SATA interface for the modern hard drives inside the computers. I thought the Gigabit port would be a nice addition too.
The Dune HD Base 3.0 fulfilled almost all of my wishes. It supports the HD audio passthru and full BD and DVD menus. The picture quality is top notch. With the Dune HD Base 3.0, one can have the full BD experience with the menu support. The HD audio sound is exactly the same as the standalone BD player would provide.
What is there not to like? Well, not much. The price is a bit steep. At $350, it is one of most expensive HD network media players on the market. But no one else can quite support the BD ISO, the BDMV folder or standalone .m2ts files as well as the Dune 3.0 (Base or Prime). For example, while the PCH A-200 and C-200 were struggling to support the Blu-Ray PGS subtitles on the standalone .m2ts files, the Dune 3.0 worked without issues. The out of box Dune 3.0 supports the PCS titles out of BD ISO or BDMV folder structures. The standalone .m2ts file PGS support came With the firmware update.
The Gigabit ethernet is a joke. All three players, the Dune 3.0, the Popcorn Hour A-200/C-200 and the HDX BD-1, claim the Gigabit ethernet support. But the Sigma chipset itself does not. So the HDI recommends the Dune 3.0 users to disable the Gigabit ethernet. I tried with it enabled or disabled, the throughout was exactly the same, about 9MB/s or 72Mbit/s. Some folks got about 11MB/s or 88Mbit/s but I did not, even with my Gigabit switches and Cat6 cabling. The Dune 3.0 has a built-in feature that ensures the streamed video over the network is stutter free. In fact, the O!Play maxes out at about 36-40Mbit/s.
Because of the buffering, the Dune 3.0 is not as quick quitting as the O!Play. It can take a while for the Dune 3.0 to quit when one hits the stop button during the playback. The O!Play stops almost instantly. For DVD playback, I prefer the O!Play but for BD playback with HD audio, there is nothing better than the Dune HD 3.0.
HDI also promised the Netflix support for the Dune 3.0 but it has not appeared yet since it came to the market in the end of 2009 (Dune 3.0 Prime) and beginning of 2010 (Dune 3.0 Base).
Should one buy the Dune HD 3.0 Base? It would depend on whether one wants to play BD ISO or BDMV folders with HD audio, high bitrate, high ref frame count and BD menu support. If the answer is yes, the Dune HD 3.0 may be the right choice. Otherwise, the $99 O!Play can do the job just fine. There are tools one can use to solve the HD audio problem. The high bitrate issue can be solved by connecting a hard drive directly to the O!Play's eSATA port. The BD menu support, however, cannot be done with the O!Play regardless what tools one uses.

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Updated Processor: Sigma Designs 864xMemory: RAM 512 MB, system Flash: 128 MB, expandable with a HDD partition or USB flash drive (2GB recommended)Media sources: internal HDD (SATA 3.5"), external HDD (eSATA, USB), external optical drive (eSATA, USB), USB devices (USB flash drive, USB card reader, etc), PC and NAS in local network (SMB, NFS, UPnP, HTTP)Video codecs: MPEG2, MPEG4, XVID, WMV9, VC1, H.264Video file formats: MKV, MPEG-TS, MPEG-PS, M2TS, VOB, AVI, MOV, MP4, QT, ASF, WMV, Blu-Ray-ISO, BDMV, DVD-ISO, VIDEO_TSVideo output modes: wide range of supported modes and resolutions, including 23.976p, 24p, PAL, NTSCAudio codecs: AC3 (Dolby Digital), DTS, MPEG, AAC, LPCM, WMA, WMAPro, EAC3 (Dolby Digital Plus), Dolby True HD, DTS HD High Resolution Audio, DTS HD Master Audio, FLAC, multichannel FLACAudio file formats: MP3, MPA, M4A, WMA, FLAC, WAV, DTS-WAV, DTS, AC3, AAC Pass-through and decoding of HD audio formats, including Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master AudioPicture file formats: JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIFSubtitle formats: SRT, SUB, text/SSA/ASS (MKV), VobSub (MP4), PGS (full Blu-ray mode)Playlist file formats: M3U, PLSFilesystems: FAT16/FAT32 (read-write), EXT2/EXT3 (read-write), NTFS (readonly)