Dune HD Smart D1 High Definition Expandable Network Media with 1080p Upscaling

I have been using many different media players, both at home and for my work. So I have experience with probably 10-15 DVICos, 1 popcorn hour, a Western Digital HD, an Xstreamer and probably others I have forgotten.And then I bought the Dune HD Smart D1. It was a very good buy. It is really standing out of the crowd. The support of various video formats is very good. It is robust, silent (unlike many others). The video quality is very good. Most do a very very crappy upscaling wiht loads of flicker remaining all over the place even on progressive 24 or 25p contents. The Dune does a very decent motion adaptive upscaling. It is not as good as what you can get from say, a Panasonic Blu-ray player, which can do an outstanding upscaling, but it is way better than any other I have used so far, including the very select Popcorn hour 'C'.In addition, it is very easy to use jukebox software that generates very user friendly menus to access your video library (e.g. Yadis). It plays Blu-ray images with all java bells and whistles, and remembers where you were for each DVD/Blu-ray. This is very convenient because you do not have to skip the tons of previews and ads that the DVD makers force you to watch when you insert the disc into a player. So overall the Dune does its job very well and many things have been thoroughly designed by the manufacturer.Last but not least, the box is very complete. When I bought it, I opened it to put a hard drive. I thought, "of course those guys won't have put a SATA cable". Wrong guess, it was there. Then I gathered, "of course I'll have to find some spare screws because I am sure they did not put any". Again wrong guess, a small plastic bag was included with the screws.Overall the player has a very nice and stylish finish, from which even Sony could learn. The box contents is fairly complete (you should add a SATA drive and a USB drive though).The only negative point is the remote. It is decent, but has a very plasticky feel, and is of a lower grade than the player itself in terms of feel and finishing. But the Dune is still miles ahead of the competition. So if you are sick of juggling with broken and unstable and low-grade media players, buy the Dune and spend your time on more interesting stuff than working around the quirks of your media player.

First of all, I'll say this is a brilliant media player!! It was fairly easy to setup, but I am very technical anyway. Others may find it not so easy and the lack of clear documentation could be a problem for some. Having said that, the online forums are brilliant and can tell you everything you want to know.I've installed a 2TB WD Caviar Green 5400rpm into mine, which is whisper quiet and fairly cool in operation. This unit doesn't have any internal fans, so I don't recommend 7200rpm drives as the heat could be a problem... and the of course the noise! I did try it with a 10,000rpm WD Raptor and the noise and especially the heat was too much.So anyway, connecting it to my home network was a breeze and it picked up all my network devices straight away (NAS etc) and I had no issues connecting it to my Pioneer AV. Picture quality is great, as is the sound. I have filled the 2TB internal drive with Blu-Ray MKV's, so no loss of picture/sound quality from the Blu-Ray media... perfect!I've also played AVI's, MP4's and MKV's from a NAS without any issues. I copied all my files from an external drive using the eSATA port. It averaged 49 MB/s.I've also purchased the HE add on module to increase the capacity and connected it via the eSATA. I have a 3TB Hitachi 7200rpm drive in the add on module. This drive is louder than the WD Green, so I may replace it once HD prices have come back down.I installed Zappiti and myMovies digital jukeboxes onto the Dune, to manage all my media. They look better than the standard, but you don't have to do this. The Dune HD gives you the option to do this though, and there are so many free media jukeboxes available... pick the one you like the look of and install it!Finally, the build quality is brilliant, as is the styling. It looks great next to my other AV kit. All in all, a great buy and recommended to all film/TV lovers!