I've been using MyMovies and ArcSoft TMT 6 as DVD and BD TV Series playback solution for last 3 years. Finally got the kinks worked out and ArcSoft is dropping TMT.

Looking a future options and the Dune Standard HD has been suggested. At first read it has many great features.

What do the experts thing about it?

I'm not familiar with a "Dune Standard HD".

The last models with full support for BD menus were (I believe) the Smart series:

[Link: dune-hd.com]

I have 7 of the above units and they work well.

The are not "streamers" in the sense of having support for all sorts of on-line sources.


Recently I ran across this which sounded promising:

[Link: avsforum.com]

So now the hardware is sitting on the bench and I need to set it up and see how it performs.

You're very correct. I can't type. Smart somehow got morphed to Standard.

I'll look at the link you listed and if you have more news as you research. I would appreciate it.

Paul

I took a good look at Chromebox last night (at least the HP/Asus versions) and while it is a nice, cheap Intel based system for XBMC, there do seem to be a enough annoyances/limitations to give me pause... even with the ugly white HP on for only $130.

Well I got the Chromebox with OpenELEC installed up and running.

It was easy enough BUT XBMC (now Kodi) seems to have some issues.

Now I am brand new to XBMC so there may well be solutions to some of the issues so take this all with a grain of salt.

Using the only built-in "scraper" for movies it only identified 143 out of nearly 1000 rips. Now some of these were odd-balls that I didn't expect it to find but I did think it would do better then 143.

It is supposed to be able to play BD rips with support for the BD menus. But the first rip I tried would not play. Another one did play. So at this point I need to take the time to try all of the BD rips and tally the results.

Now from a user interface point of view XBMC, at least in its default install, is presenting too much "low level" information for a non-tech person like my wife.

For example when selecting a BD rip it gives you that option to play what XBMC believes to be the main movie but it doesn't call it that - it gives the file name. It also offers the option to use the BD menus or to select another file.

For someone like my wife that is just too much. She needs to be presented with the selection of movies and then the one she picks needs to play.

And there is a lot more that should be hidden from non-tech folks.

Perhaps there are options to control all of this but the default setup is not going to cut it with my wife.


I perhaps should mention that XBMC is going up against a Dune Smart D1 with a simple text based index where the wife can chose to view the available movies by title, rating, genre, actor or category (a category would be something like a set of related movies like Harry Potter or a TV series).

After choosing how to view the movies, all she needs to do is scroll up/down to find the movie she wants and hit play.

This is the level of simplicity she desires - pretty much the same as choosing what TV channel to watch.

And the Dune (so far) plays everything that it has been asked to play.


Much more work to be done with XBMC.

The Dune has an automation interface as well. CQC supports it, and though it's not the best control interface ever it works well enough. So you can hide the details that way as well and just use the Dune as a passive player.

Chances are there's an error in your titles, and/or your filenames don't have years included. It rarely makes "educated guesses" when there are multiple possible matches. If you select one of those unmatched titles and press info (which should bring up description/cast etc), you'll get a screen showing possible title matches, you can select one and it'll scrape that data. If you get no info, that means there's an error in your naming - like if you labelled something as 2013 when it was really 2012.

On my own collection of over 1000 titles, I'm running a 100% match rate, but it occasionally involves some manual intervention.


Are you sure about that? I don't recall XBMC having full BD Java menu support. Perhaps basic menus, but no one uses those any more.


There are all sorts of different ways to present movie info. Everything from the detailed "file view" up to a giant scrolling list of movie posters.


There may be a way to customize that behavior. I'm not sure. However full BD support (like on an older Dune) isn't really its thing, it does better with a direct movie rip.


Before my XBMC system, I used a Dune BD Prime 3.0 for a number of years. The Dune is a very good system, and the XBMC "feels" overwhelming in comparison, but honestly... now that I'm used to it, now that I know what its options are, and now that I've customized its remote keymap to do things I want when and where I want them done... I would never go back to using the Dune exclusively.

In fact, I want more XBMC systems. :-)

Thank you Daniel for the extensive reply.

I intend to continue working with XBMC since, as I said, it is brand new and I have much to learn.

That information about how the scraper works is helpful.

I suppose lots (most?) folks are OK with just ripping the main movie. I guess I'm one of the few that like having access to the entire contents of the disc.

How does one handle discs that contain, say, multiple TV episodes, if you don't have access to the disc menus?

I understand what you mean when you talk about becoming used to it - but for someone like my wife that will never happen. Unless I can simplify the UI to something she is comfortable with she simply won't use it.

Thanks again.

Unfortunately, due to changes in BD licensing requirements (look up Cinavia), your choices for actually making use of full BD rips with Java menus are, at present, extremely limited - basically only older media players like the Dune Smart. Dune was supposed to release a new Max 3D YEARS ago with full licensed BD playback for ISOs and mandated Cinavia support for discs, all with a customized XBMC front end... but it never actually happened.

For television shows, basically you have to rip each episode separately. XBMC supposedly has ways of organizing those, although I've never tried it.