Dune BD Prime 3.0
Version "100307_2100_beta"
(BETA version, not well tested, may contain critical bugs and broken
functionality; not recommended unless you really want to try)
Changes since "091229_1411_beta:
NOTE: This firmware version includes quite a lot of internal code changes,
and, despite a lot of preliminary testing performed, there are good chances
that some functions may not function correctly under specific
circumstances. The most probable areas where things may be broken are:
- File browser (working with network shares, "dune_folder.txt"
mechanism, and any other file browser features).
- File playback.
- DVD and BD playback (especially when autoframerate is switched on).
- USB WiFi.
- Improvements for autoframerate:
- Implemented autoframerate also for DVD-Video and Blu-ray content (in
addition to autoframerate previously supported for files only).
- Supported for both optical discs and disc images.
- For DVD-Video, supports switching between 50 and 59.94 framerates
(no support for switching to 23.976 on NTSC pulldown content).
- For Blu-ray, supports all framerates (including 24p).
- If a disc consists of multiple fragments with different framerates,
framerate switching is automatically performed also when switching
between disc fragments.
- Bugfix: autoframerate did not work for specific TS files.
- Improvements for HDMI output:
- Added a new Setup option (Video / Advanced / HDMI color depth)
allowing to switch between 8-bit / 10-bit / 12-bit HDMI output signal.
8-bit is now used by default to ensure the best compatibility with
various HDMI equipment and cables (this solves the problems with noise
on HDMI output).
- Added a new Setup Option (Video / Advanced / HDMI CEC) allowing to
enable/disable HDMI CEC. HDMI CEC is now disabled by default to ensure
the best compatibility with various HDMI equipment (this solves the
problems such as unneeded messages shown by TV on HDMI
reinitialization, wrong switching of HDMI input, etc).
- Bugfix: The setting "HDMI audio = off" could cause severe problems with
HDMI output (such as wrong picture/colors, no picture at all). Now, these
problems are fixed. NOTE: For file and DVD playback, using this setting
still, as before, may enable DVI output mode for HDMI output (with RGB
colorspace) instead of HDMI-native output mode (with YUV colorspace),
that may have some effects on the picture, depending on a particular used
equipment; this issue will be addressed in future firmware versions.
- Bugfix: Blu-ray playback could hangup when disconnecting/reconnecting
HDMI cable, switching off/on the attached HDMI equipment, or switching
HDMI input on the attached HDMI equipment.
- Improvements for subtitles support:
- Added support for PGS (Blu-ray) subtitles in M2TS/TS files. It is now
possible to use Blu-ray subtitles not only playing full BD-images, but
also when playing individual M2TS files.
- Added support for external subtitles in SUB/IDX format.
- Added support for UTF-16 encoding in SRT and SUB (MicroDVD) external
subtitle files.
- Improvements for USB WiFi support:
- Finally fixed the support for USB WiFi adapter D-Link DWA-140 rev.B2
(in addition to the previously supported rev.B1).
- Included WiFi driver for RALink RT3070 chipset (the latest available
version 2.1.2.0), and allowed the use of all USB WiFI devices
supported by this driver (31 USB-IDs in total).
- Upgraded WiFi driver for RALink RT2870/RT2770 chipsets to the latest
available version 2.3.0.0, and allowed the use of all USB WiFi devices
supported by this driver (66 USB-IDs in total).
- See here for more details on the
supported USB hardware.
- Improvements for working with network shares:
- Added a new function "Add to Main Screen" for SMB shares in SMB
browser. Allows to easily add a new network folder corresponding to a
SMB share to the main screen. NOTE: Supported for the SMB shares only,
not supported for other items in SMB browser (SMB workgroups, SMB
servers, or folders inside SMB shares).
- Implemented a better scanning for available SMB workgroups and hosts
in SMB browser. Now, there are more chances that SMB resources are
found immediately, w/o the need to wait or restart network components.
(This should fix the problems such as certain SMB workgroups sometimes
visible, and sometimes not visible.)
- In SMB browser, all printer shares are now excluded from the list of
SMB shares (previously, some printer shares could be shown).
- Added showing drive information (total/used/available space) in the
"Information" dialog for network shares (the network share should be
in the "connected" state).
- Added a possibility to explicitly "disconnect" (i.e. unmount) a
mounted NFS or SMB share. Press INFO on a connected network folder, or
on a connected SMB share in SMB browser, and then choose "Disconnect".
- Bugfix: Iw was impossible to access SMB shares on a SMB server after
deleting some files from another SMB share on the same SMB server.
- The Setup option "Fast SMB Access" (introduced in the previous beta
firmware versions) is now disabled by default (since some users
reports problems when using this options with some SMB servers).
- NOTE: When upgrading to this firmware version from one of two
previous beta firmware versions, the value of this option is kept.
If you experience any problems with SMB access from the player,
please manually disable this option.
- NOTE: Even w/o this option, on Dune 3.0 models, playback of any
content via SMB should work w/o any problems under normal
circumstances, so it is safe to keep it disabled (unless you have a
specific setup/requirements.
- Improvements for bookmarks:
- Reenabled a simple support for bookmarks when using playlists (the
initial version of such a support introduced in 091211_1311_beta was
disabled in 091229_1411_beta, and now a more reasonable implementation
is provided):
- When starting playing a playlist (e.g. by presssing PLAY button on a
file in a folder containing several files), the bookmark is
checked/used for the initial file in the playlist.
- When stopping playing a playlist, the bookmark is saved for the
current file in the playlist (so, by pressing PLAY on this file, the
playback can be later resumed from the saved bookmark).
- When switching between files in the playlist, bookmarks are neither
checked/used nor saved (as in the previous firmware version).
- The Setup options for disabling autoresume for video/audio files
influence both individual files and playlists.
- NOTE: Full-fledged support for playlist bookmarks (remember
bookmark for the entire playlist) is still absent; will be
addressed in future firmware versions.
- Improvements for IPTV support:
- Added support for viewing the list of audiotracks and switching
between them when watching IPTV (multicast UDP) channels.
- Added online firmware check/upgrade function:
- A new Setup section "Miscellaneous / Firmware Upgrade" allows to
conveniently check for the presence of new firmware version directly
from the player, and, if a new version is available, automatically
download and install it (w/o the need to use a PC to download the
firmware upgrade file).
- Also, if the player is connected to Internet, the player periodically
automatically checks for the new firmware updates, and when one
becomes available, informs the user about it and proposes to
download/install it.
- System Storage or any other attached storage can be used as a
temporary location to download a firmware from Internet; if no
writable storage with enough free space is found, the user is prompted
to attach one.
- When downloading a firmware from Internet, progress is indicated, and
a possibility to stop/cancel the download is provided.
- Advanced users can fine-tune various online upgrade settings via Setup
menu: enable/disable checking for non-stable (beta) versions,
enable/disable automatic checking.
- "dune_folder.txt" mechanism improvements:
- Added support for "smb://...", "nfs://...", and "network_folder://..."
media_url values, allowing to reference media content on SMB and NFS
network shares.
- Syntax:
- "smb://[user[:password]@]host/share/path"
- "user" and "password" are optional.
- "host" can be IP-address, DNS-name, or SMB-name of SMB server.
- "share" is SMB share name.
- Example: "smb://10.0.0.1/MYSHARE/folder/file1.avi"
- "nfs://host[:/export-path]:/path"
- "host" can be IP-address or DNS-name of NFS server.
- "export-path" is optional; when omitted, the player tries to
automatically deduce it from the specified "path" (by
analyzing all NFS-exports of the NFS-server). For better
performance and correct working, it is recommended to always
explicitly specify "export-path".
- Example (w/o explicitly specified "export-path"):
"nfs://10.0.0.1:/MYSHARE/folder/file1.avi"
- Example (with explicitly specified "export-path"):
"nfs://10.0.0.1:/MYSHARE:/folder/file1.avi"
- "network_folder://network-folder-name/path"
- "network-folder-name" is the name of network folder
econfigured in the player.
- Example: "network_folder://MYSHARE/folder/file1.avi"
- So, it is now possible to use "dune_folder.txt" to organize links
(e.g. Media Collection Indexes) pointing not only to any locally
attached storage devices, but also to any network resources
accessible via NFS or SMB.
- Network URLs are supported for all kinds of content: regular media
files (video, audio, photo), DVD-images (VIDEO_TS, ISO), BD-Images
(BDMV, ISO).
- Such network URLs are also supported in playlist files (M3U, PLS).
- The network shares are automounted by the player on-the-fly as
needed; when using "smb://" and "nfs://" URLs, there is no need to
manually configure the corresponding network folders.
- When playing a playlist consisting of items pointing to different
network shares, the player automatically unmounts/mounts network
shares as needed (in particular, it correctly unmounts a SMB share
before accessing another SMB share pointing to the same SMB server,
in order to avoid the limitation that Linux kernel can not work
with multiple SMB shares of the same SMB server simultanesouly).
- Added the following new "dune_folder.txt" parameters:
- "system_files = {pattern1}[,{pattern2}...]".
- Allows to specify which files should be treated as system and
thus hidden (when "Hide system files = Yes" option is enabled in
Setup).
- Each "pattern" can be the exact name of file/folder, or a
pattern including wildcards ("*" means any sequence of
characters, "?" means any single character).
- "media_url_check = (yes|no)" (default is "no").
- Allows to specify whether the player should try to check if the
"media_url" is valid and points to an existing file when
painting the item corresponding to this media folder, and also
determine a suitable icon to show (e.g. video file, audio file);
if the "media_url" is not valid, the item is painted in the
"dimmed" way. Such a check may reduce browsing performance, so
it is now disabled by default, and this new parameter allows to
reenable it.
- Added support for specifying "dune_folder.txt" parameters which affect
not just the current folder, but also subfolders.
- This allows to provide custom look for the entire folder
hieararchies (e.g. all folders on a HDD) just by creating a single
"dune_folder.txt" file in the root of the folder hierarchy.
- Almost any "dune_folder.txt" parameter can now be prefixed in the
following way:
- "direct_children.{parameter} = {value}"
- "level2_children.{parameter} = {value}"
- "all_children.{parameter} = {value}"
- When "{value}" is a relative path to some file, the following
syntax can be used to specify how the relative path should be
resolved:
- "rel_path://{relative-path}": treat path relatively to each
particular subfolder (default).
- "cur_path://{relative-path}": treat path relatively to the
parent folder (i.e. the folder where "dune_folder.txt" file is
located).
- Other improvements and bugfixes:
- Improvement: Windows 7 Recycle Bin folder is considered to be system
file and is hidden by default.
- Minor improvement for the "Hard Disk" icon.
- Improved progress indication when preparing to play and building large
playlists.
- Bugfix: Audio could be absent when playing specific TS files.
- Bugfix: When accessing Dune from a Windows PC via SMB, "dir" command in
Windows shell could work wrongly (filename case sensitivity problem; now
Dune's SMB server treats all filenames w/o case sensitivity).
- Bugfix: Photo viewer could hang up in specific rare cases.
- Bugfix: Optical disc eject was wrongly allowed when running file read
test on a file located on the optical disc.
- Bugfix: JPEG images (assigned via dune_folder.txt) could be displayed
wrongly in the right panel of the file browser (when using "Extended
List" view mode).
- Bugfix: screensaver could become non-functioning after using photo
viewer.
- Added Thai characters into fonts (adds support for Thai language in
filenames and subtitles).
- Added more menu languages: Greek, Danish, Czech. Some other languages
updated/improved.
Version "091229_1411_beta"
(BETA version, not well tested, may contain critical bugs and broken
functionality; not recommended unless you really want to try)
Changes since 091211_1311_beta:
- Bookmarks improvements:
- File bookmarks are disabled when playing playlists, they are used only
when playing individual files (press ENTER on a file).
- The setting "Miscellaneous / Playback / Autoresume video files" allows
to completely disable bookmarks for video files.
- The setting "Miscellaneous / Playback / Autoresume audio files" allows
to completely disable bookmarks for audio files.
- The setting "Miscellaneous / Playback / Autoresume DVD" allows to
completely disable bookmarks for DVD discs and DVD-folders/ISO-images.
- Added a support for tags in audio files (MP3, FLAC, WMA, M4A).
- When tags are detected, they are automatically shown for the currently
played file during music playback. The supports tags include: title,
artist, album, track, year, comment.
- The setting "Miscellaneous / Playback / Audio file tags" allows to
disable reading and showing the tags (could be helpful e.g. if it does
not work properly for some files).
- Both Unicode and 8-bit tags are supported. The setting "Miscellaneous
/ Encodings / MP3 tag encoding" allows to force the specified encoding
for tags in MP3 files.
- When music playback starts, a hint about INFO and MENU buttons is
displayed (INFO -- show details about the current track, MENU -- show the
playlist).
- Added preliminary (untested) support for USB WiFi adapter D-Link DWA-140
version B2 (previously only version B1 was supported). UPDATE: according
to user's feedback, this firmware version still does not work with
DWA-140 version B2.
- Added full support for discrete power-off and power-on IR commands.
- IR hex codes:
- DISCRETE-POWER-ON: 00 BF 5F A0
- DISCRETE-POWER-OFF: 00 BF 5E A1
- The DISCRETE-POWER-ON IR command is handled exactly as POWER RC button
when the player is in the standby mode, and is ignored when the player
is turned on.
- The DISCRETE-POWER-OFF IR command is handled exactly as POWER RC
button when the player is turned on, and is ignored when the player is
in the standby mode.
- If the player is configured to perform full power-off instead of
entering software standby, the DISCRETE-POWER-OFF and
DISCRETE-POWER-ON commands perform full power-off and power-on.
- Added a possibility to easily format a non-initialized drive (e.g. HDD)
just by pressing ENTER of the drive item on the main screen.
- "dune_folder.txt": "background_order" parameter now supports the
following set of values (instead of "first" and "last" as took place in
the previous firmware version):
- "before_all": the same as "first" in the previous firmware version.
- "before_icons": the same as "last" in the previous firmware version.
- "after_all": a new option, allowing to paint the custom background
after everything else (including file icons).
- "dune_folder.txt": added a possibility to hide file icons (w/o using
dummy fully-transparent icon). Syntax:
- "paint_icons = no" (default is "yes").
- Added more menu languages: Hungarian, Polish. Some other languages
updated/improved.
- The configuration of built-in FTP server adjusted to allow "FXP"
transfers.
- Added support for playback of video files with ".trp" extension (no more
need to rename them).
- Improved the speed of startup of specific MKV files, which previously
could take too long to start (that could even be considered by the user
as hangup in some cases).
- Bugfix: playing a file with an unknown length (such as MP3 with VBR
bitrate) caused playback crash (this bug was introduced in the previous
beta firmware version).
- Bugfix: playing/reading files from SMB share could crash in some cases
(the bug introduced by SMB optimizations in the previous beta firmware
version) (plus some other SMB-related bugs fixed).
- Bugfix: returning to file browser (e.g. after playback) caused crash if
current folder had dune_folder.txt with custom background image.
- Bugfix: specific Blu-ray images could not be played in some cases.
- Bugfix: after switching to TrueHD audiotrack in MKV file, stuttering
could take place in specific cases.
- Bugfix: "dune_folder.txt" / "paint_captions = no" did not work properly
in some cases (when the filename was too long and scrolled, it was shown
despite this setting).
Version "091211_1311_beta"
(BETA version, not well tested, may contain critical bugs and broken
functionality; not recommended unless you really want to try)
Changes since 091023_1444:
- Added more conveniency 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 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 till 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 1920x1080), 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 creen, 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.
- Bugfix: emergency optical disc eject (holding EJECT during player
boot) did not work in some cases.
- Improvement: optical discs never spinned down in some cases. Now, when
not used, they should spin down in all cases (sometimes on some
timeout of up to 2 minutes).
- 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), transparancy 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 (e.g. 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 tranparancy/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 e.g. when loading
FullHD 1920x1080 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". Here:
- "first" means paint custom background before "path_box",
"content_box", and "help_line" (i.e. under these elements).
- "last" (default) means paint custom background after these
elements (i.e. 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 (1920x1080) 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 = {image-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, e.g. to select items for the
playlist) using a user-defined image file. Syntax:
- "mark_path = {image-path}"
- "mark_dx = ..." (-960..960)
- "mark_dy = ..." (-540..540)
Version "091023_1444"
(the latest recommended version)
The first official version ever shipped with production players.
Optical Drive Firmware