ArticleManagerIt can be said that from the middle of 2020, buy a 4K player to open your eyes, because with the replacement and upgrading of the chip solution, you can achieve better picture and performance, in fact, logically speaking, the upgrade frequency of the decoding chip of the standard chip source should not be high, after all, the 4K Blu-ray standard will not be changed frequently, but in fact, in addition to MTK’s 8581 chip for Blu-ray disc players, other chips including HiSilicon, Realtek and other brands can not achieve a complete 4K UHD standard, The main thing is that it is due to the certification problem of Dolby Vision, but for the previous HDR station team is divided into two factions, Dolby Vision is not a single company, plus home projection almost does not support Dolby Vision, so it is not a defect.
However, last year’s “Gemini Killer” basically slapped the field of hard disk players, due to the bitrate problem basically killed all hard broadcasters, so the significance of the upgrade of the RTD1619 solution is not only to go further in HDR, but also to be more perfect in the compatibility of film sources.
In fact, I still have a good impression of Realtek, and it is recognized that the current Android platform has the best quality solution brand, but the SDK is a bit of the urine of SIGMA before, so the firmware experience of each brand is quite different.
BEFORE THERE WAS NO DUNE REALBOX, PRO WAS CONSIDERED THE ENTRY MODEL OF THE DUNE HD SERIES FROM THE MODEL ORDER, BUT IN FACT, HIS PRICING WAS MID-RANGE IN THE SAME CLASS, IN OTHER WORDS, THE EARLY DUNE DID NOT HAVE THE CONCEPT OF ENTRY, THE PERFORMANCE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PRO AND PRO PLUS IS FAR LESS THAN HIS REAL SUB-FLAGSHIP MAX, PLUS SEEMS TO BE TO INCREASE THE HARD DISK COMPARTMENT AND ANALOG OUTPUT, SO FOR NAS AND HARD DISK CAGE PLAYERS, PRO is a relatively cost-effective one in the DUNE product series.
The main upgrade of PRO 2 generation is the chip upgraded from RTD1295B to RTD1619, and supports HDR10+, of course, as far as I know, only DUNE has listed the model of RTD1619 solution, and the chip performance of RTD1619 is fully supported by Dolby Vision, but because the replacement cycle of hard disk players is too short, so almost no brands are willing to pay high licensing fees, such as the OPPO series drive that speculates on the price, and the pioneer drive It was all released around 16 years, but the actual performance of HDR10+ is not behind Dolby Vision, so it is mainly considered the output of subsequent content and its own TV support.
Memory is rarely configured with 4G, which is rare in hard disk players, because this type of chip scheme design has a default configuration, mostly 2G, DUNE in order to increase the smoothness of system control and menu calling, increase to 4G, or perhaps in order to prevent the recurrence of the Gemini killer incident, of course, DUNE’s firmware team uses this 4G memory to achieve how much experience increase depends on the subsequent actual experience.
As mentioned earlier, DUNE does not have the concept of entry, which can be seen from the configuration of the power supply and remote control, typical audiophile player pie.
The entire appearance style is still the continuation of the 1st generation PRO, and there is no obvious difference.
USB3.0 has been increased from one to two in the first generation, and two USB3.0 external storage can be connected, and SATA direct connection reading is also very convenient.
Other interfaces are consistent with a generation, Gigabit network port, HDMI output, HDMI input, AV output, optical fiber output, although the RTD1295 era has added HDMI recording function, but it seems that domestic users do not have the habit of admitting programs, and I personally have not used it much.
PRO 2 firmware inherits the consistent style of DUNE, to be honest I personally am a little aesthetic fatigue, after all, from the Linux era DUNE SOLO to Android & Linux PRO2 before and after 5, 6 models, although the function, performance has repeatedly counterattacked, but the UI style still maintains the ancestral taste, but then again, this disc style UI interface is also very kind, if you give me a traditional Android interface, no matter how the picture quality is, The ritual sense of theater fever suddenly disappeared.
However, the firmware of this experience still has a lot of optimizations and upgrades, such as the audio output part can automatically switch the source code and decoding, the power amplifier or the TV can automatically switch the mode, a lot of humanization, and then there is regional positioning, automatic mounting, embedded subtitles Chinese are all set up from the factory, the experience is more convenient.
The mobile phone control is still easy to use, the videos scraped by the poster wall can be on-demand in the mobile APP, and the movie list and settings displayed on the screen will be displayed synchronously on the mobile phone, and this synchronous projection APP is also unique in the hard disk player.
However, as an audiophile, the tolerance for firmware sparseness is high, you don’t see those players who use the jailbreak disc player as a player, the experience of attaching subtitles can compile notes, in the end, enthusiast-level players are still audio and video performance as the first priority, so with PS80 line power as a power supply, make up for the gap between PRO2 and MAX in the power supply, RTD1619 chip to my first impression is that the picture is brighter and cleaner, So there is a saying in AV circles that still makes very sense, the decoding part buys new and does not buy old, and the progress in the digital field is a hard parameter, basically there will be no going back.
1080P film source I like to test the 90s Hong Kong films, to be honest, digital films, most of the differences in player performance will not have a very obvious gap under the premise of comparison, more in the dark details and color reproduction, and the early film restoration film is equivalent to the mirror of the demon, especially the gray color and rough grain smearing when the low-end Android machine plays the film restoration film in the early years, the color block makes you have no desire to watch, and PRO2 is playing “Nine Pins Sesame Officer” The grain of the picture is actually very well controlled, the color performance, sharpness are very outstanding, you can see a very obvious three-dimensional sense of the picture and depth of field, the color is also rich and oily, making people have the feeling of watching the old film and the new.
Purely from the amount of picture information, RTD1619 and RTD1295 are not particularly different, the details are the slightest, so as mentioned earlier, to the 4K level, the digital shooting source only from the amount of picture information, will not produce a earth-shaking difference, but the color of RTD1619 is more oily and natural than RTD1295, less digital sense, will not appear dry, closer to the LINUX era SIGMA feeling, of course, because I am a projection screen photographer, The brightness of the projection itself is limited here, and according to other audiophiles, on LCD TVs, the picture is brighter and the picture details are richer.
However, compared to the previous various types of hard broadcasters, the most important upgrade of PRO2 is that the RTD1619 chip plays the 4K 60P original disk “Gemini Killer”, the whole process is hearty without pause, all out of sync, and the picture is more impactful than RealBox some time ago, the dark details of the sewer scene must appear, and the flashlight in the HDR picture is bright to the eye, in other words, DUNE’s HDR performance is very mature, but I don’t have a TV that supports HDR10+, and I can’t experience the effect of dynamic HDR.
LAST THING WORTH MENTIONING IS THAT DUNE’S MAIN BUSINESS IS ACTUALLY THE SUPPLY OF DIGITAL TV HARDWARE IN EUROPE AND THE UNITED STATES, SO DUNE EQUIPMENT IS PARTICULARLY PROMINENT ON 4K TUBING AND 4K NETFLIX, AND THIS GENERATION OF FOUR KV TUBING ALSO SUPPORTS HDR, NETFLIX STILL SUPPORTS 4K HDR 5.1 CHANNELS, IN ADDITION, YOU CAN ALSO INSTALL GOOGLE TV, SO IF NETWORK CONDITIONS PERMIT, YOU CAN GET MORE ONLINE VIEWING EXPERIENCE.
Personally, I think that in terms of the current personal experience, the biggest upgrade significance of RTD1619 is HDR10+ and the optimization of high-bitrate 4K 60P film sources, followed by more eye-catching color management, and now there is really no need to choose the hard disk player of the old chip solution, because the 4K 60P “Twin Killer” is always an insurmountable threshold, and according to the practice of this industry, at least in the Realtek series, RTD1295 this chip may already belong to the process of elimination and discontinuation, of course, if you are not an enthusiast, do not consider the function of HDR10+, in fact, the picture quality of the RTD1295 chip can still fight another generation, after all, the incompatible film source is also rare, and the picture quality performance is also very good.
But if you are an enthusiast, you have a high-end hard disk player, and the TV also supports HDR10+, personal advice can start to go salted fish out of the old machine, because maybe in another 3-5 months, maybe the models of various brands of RTD1619 will be listed one after another, because the performance upgrade of RTD1619 chip is still more obvious, and it is also the most mature all-round hard broadcaster program, so it is bound to eliminate a large part of the hard broadcaster.