Firmware Update: Dune HD Base 3.0 / BD Prime 3.0 091211_1311 Beta

HDI Dune released new firmware for the HD Base 3.0 and BD Prime 3.0 on Friday. These full-HD media players are built around a Sigma Designs 8642 media processor. The HD Base 3.0 has a drive bay that can accommodate a 3.5″ SATA hard disk or a BD-ROM drive, while the BD Prime has a Blu-ray loader and has internal space for a 2.5″ drive. hard disk. More information about these media players can be found in this topic on GoT. The new firmware is in beta status and has not been extensively tested according to the developers, so it is possible that there are still a few minor bugs. The changelog for this release looks like this:

Changes since 091023_1444:

• Added more convenience for working with subtitles and audiotracks during file and DVD playback:
  • Added the setting “Misc / Playback / Enable subtitles by default for files” which allows to choose one of the following settings:
    • “No” — do not use subtitles by default.
    • “Yes” — always use subtitles by default if any subtitles exist (internal or external).
    • “Internal only” — if internal subtitles exist, use them by default.
    • “External only” (default) — if external subtitles exist, use them by default.
  • Added the setting “Misc / Playback / Default subtitles preference” with choices “Internal” and “External” (default), which controls which kind of subtitles have priority if “Enable subtitles by default for files” is set to “Yes” and both internal and external subtitles exist.
  • Added the setting “Misc / Playback / Quick toggling of single subtitles” (enabled by default), which enables special behavior of SUBTITLE RC button when there is only one subtitles track: instead of showing the usual subtitles menu, the SUBTITLE RC button allows to quickly toggle this single subtitles track (select / deselect it). To enter the subtitles setup, press SUBTITLE and then SETUP.
  • Added a new possibility to conveniently and quickly show/hide the currently selected subtitles track (even if there are multiple subtitles) just by pressing the RC button “D” (blue).
    • When a subtitles track is selected, the “D” RC button toggles the visibility of the currently selected subtitles.
    • When selecting a subtitles track from the subtitles menu, the “D” RC button allows to select the subtitles track but hide it initially (until the “D” RC button is pressed during playback to show the subtitles).
  • Added the setting “Misc / Playback / “ENTER” closes subtitles/audio menu” (enabled by default). When enabled, selecting a track from the menu of available subtitles/audio tracks (by pressing “ENTER” RC button, or also “D” RC button for subtitles), automatically closes the menu (instead of keeping it shown).
• Added bookmarks functionality also for file playback (previously was worked only for DVD playback).
  • Bookmarks work similarly to how they work for DVD playback: when stopping playback of a file, the current position is remembered and then automatically resumed when the file is played again; the bookmark is automatically deleted when the file is played until the very end; bookmarks are remembered for up to ~200 files.
  • NOTE: you can press “0” (jump to 0%) to quickly start file playback from the very beginning, if bookmark was used.
  • NOTE: there is no yet ability to disable bookmarks or confirm bookmark usage, possibility to review recent bookmarks, etc.
  • NOTE: still no support for generic Blu-ray bookmarks (only standard bookmarking possibilities provided by some Blu-ray discs on their own are supported).
• Added zoom functionality for photo viewer.
  • Instructions:
    • Use P+/P- to zoom-in/zoom-out.
    • Use arrows to scroll through the zoomed picture.
    • Use ZOOM to toggle through “fit to screen”, “pixel to pixel”, and “custom” zoom modes.
    • NOTE: Any zoom action shows ZOOM information box, which is automatically hidden after some period of user inactivity. Press ENTER or RETURN to hide it immediately.
    • NOTE: Any zoom action pauses the slideshow. To resume the slideshow, press PLAY.
  • NOTE: When working with photos having very high resolution (much bigger than FullHD 1920×1080), photo viewer initially loads photos with a reduced resolution (minimal resolution which is enough to ensure excellent photo quality on FullHD display, in order to speedup things); after zooming into the picture, photo viewer initially shows the already loaded version of the picture (with reduced resolution), and then automatically loads and shows the version of the picture with full resolution in background (so it may take some seconds to show the best quality photo in zoom mode).
• Added time search (go to HH:MM:SS) functionality also for file playback and DVD playback (previously was provided only for bluray playback, while for file/DVD playback it was only possible to use +/-10sec/1min/10min navigation ).
  • Instructions:
    • Press SEARCH, enter HH:MM:SS, then press ENTER.
    • When entering HH:MM:SS, the following RC buttons are available: ENTER, RETURN, CLEAR, LEFT, RIGHT.
  • NOTE: the “Quick Play” feature is still available, the same way as before: quickly press SEARCH, then PLAY.
• Added more font sizes for text subtitles (file playback) in addition to “small” and “medium”: “large” (+25%), “x-large” (+50%), “xx-large” (+100 %).
  • NOTE: This feature is intended primarily for relatively small screens (or for relatively big viewing distance).
• Added a possibility to switch between Internet Radio stations, IPTV channels, or other streamable media (where time search is not supported) via P+/P- buttons. Instructions:
  • Launch the playlist with streamable media sources in the usual way, then use P+/P- buttons instead or in addition to the usual NEXT/PREV buttons.
• Various playback and file format compatibility improvements:
  • Performance of network playback from SMB servers further improved (effective data transfer rate is now up to 20% bigger, and may be even comparable to NFS, so even playback from problematic SMB servers should work better now).
  • Bugfix: specific Bluray images could not be played properly.
  • Bugfix: specific DVD-Video discs with MPEG audio streams could not be played properly.
  • Bugfix: specific DVD-Video discs could not be played properly.
  • Bugfix: playing TS files in a loop (more than 40 repeats) could cause playback crash or hangup.
• General/miscellaneous improvements:
  • Added more menu languages: Italian, Romanian, Spanish. Some other languages ​​updated/improved.
  • Added a warning when the user attempts to choose non-recommended settings in the “System” setup section.
  • Improvement: FTP server and SMB server applications running on Dune consume less processing power during playback now (their “nice” level increased).
  • Improvement: switching directly to the main menu in file browser (via RC button STOP/REPEAT/TITLE/TOP-MENU) works slightly faster now.
  • Change: “IPTV” and “Internet Radio” items are now always shown on the main screen when they are enabled in the “Applications” setup section (even if their configuration is missing). To remove these items from the main screen, disable them in the setup.
  • Bugfix: setting “HDMI audio” to “off” caused wrong colorspace on HDMI video output (purple/absent/distorted picture).
  • Bugfix: after playing a video/music file from UPnP server and then returning to file browser, an empty folder content could be shown in specific rare cases.
  • Bugfix: initialization of System Storage during firmware update could not work for partitionless USB flash drives.
  • Bugfix: system storage could not work properly in some cases after putting the player into standby.
• Various “dune_folder.txt” mechanism improvements:
  • Added support for images files not only in Dune-specific AAI file format, but also in BMP, PNG, JPG, and GIF formats.
    • NOTE: For BMP and PNG formats (as well as AAI), transparency and alphachannel are supported.
    • NOTE: The performance of reading images from various file formats may differ, depending on the exact file format, image resolution, and media source kind (eg local or network disk). In most cases, AAI and BMP are the recommended formats having the best performance. If you need a standard and widely used image file format with transparancy/alphachannel support and good performance on Dune, use BMP.
  • Added progress indication during loading of custom background image when image loading takes a while (could take place eg when loading FullHD 1920×1080 background from a network media source).
  • Added a possibility to show just icons w/o captions (filenames) below them. Syntax:
    • “paint_captions = no” (default is “yes”).
  • Added a possibility to hide the “path box” (the box showing the path to the current folder at the top of the screen). Syntax:
    • “paint_path_box = no” (default is “yes”).
  • Added a possibility to hide the scrollbar. Syntax:
    • “paint_scrollbar = no” (default is “yes”).
  • Added a possibility to hide the “help line” (“CONTROLS: …” text at the bottom of the screen). Syntax:
    • “paint_help_line = no” (default is “yes”).
  • Added a possibility to hide the “icon selection box” (a frame around an icon indicating that the icon is selected). Syntax:
    • “paint_icon_selection_box = no” (default is “yes”).
  • Added a possibility to not paint the shaded background for the “content box” (the area listing icons). Syntax:
    • “paint_content_box_background = no” (default is “yes”).
  • Added a possibility to alter the location and internal padding for the “content box” (the area listing icons). Syntax:
    • “content_box_x = …” (>=0, -1 means default = auto).
    • “content_box_y = …” (>=0, -1 means default = auto).
    • “content_box_width = …” (>0, -1 means default = auto).
    • “content_box_height = …” (>0, -1 means default = auto).
    • “content_box_padding_left = …” (>=0, default = 20).
    • “content_box_padding_top = …” (>=0, default = 20).
    • “content_box_padding_right = …” (>=0, default = 20).
    • “content_box_padding_bottom = …” (>=0, default = 20).
  • Added new options for altering the way custom background is painted. Syntax:
    • “background_order = first/last”. Lord:
      • “first” means paint custom background before “path_box”, “content_box”, and “help_line” (ie under these elements).
      • “last” (default) means paint custom background after these elements (ie over them).
    • “optimize_full_screen_background = yes” (default is “no”). “yes” is reasonable to specify in order to slightly improve the performance in the following cases:
      • Custom background image is full-screen (1920×1080) solid image (w/o transparent pixels).
      • “background_order = first”.
  • Added a possibility to paint a custom scrollbar using a user-defined image file. Syntax:
    • “scroll_path = ”
    • “scroll_x = …” (>=0, -1 means default = auto)
    • “scroll_y = …” (>=0, -1 means default = auto)
    • “scroll_height = …” (>0, -1 means default = auto)
  • Added a possibility to paint custom “mark” icons (icons used when marking files via SELECT RC button, eg to select items for the playlist) using a user-defined image file. Syntax:
    • “mark_path = ”
    • “mark_dx = …” (-960..960)
    • “mark_dy = …” (-540..540)

The following downloads are available:
Firmware 091023_1444 beta for Dune HD Base 3.0
Firmware 091023_1444 beta for Dune HD Prime 3.0