Since the Dune Max Vision HD has been available with AKM and ESS chips was anybody able to do a sound comparison?

This is a full review for the new "Dune HD Real/Pro/Max Vision 4K" players. Dune clearly made a huge marketing mistake not including DV with their earlier RTD1619DD models which they quickly corrected launching the Vision Series players. I don't expect new models to replace these again any soon.
 
Most of the review in fact applies to the full Dune HD Vision family series including: Real, Pro, Max and Ultra models. My review includes hands on experiences with both the Real and Pro models. I own a Real myself and a friend just got himself the Pro model. Got my hands on a Max during a couple of days. Where other differences apply for Max and Ultra versions this is indicated.

My personal use of colors:
- Action Points (my to do list together with Dune)
- Positive market differentiators
- Inconveniences open for improvement
- Caveats or serious shortcomings to be fixed
Obviously my marking is somewhat subjective.

Be aware I am a purist and use only 1:1 backup copies for movie playback being DVD, BD, BD-3D or UHD/HDR BD in ISO's or folders. Music files are SACD ISO, DVD-Audio ISO, DTS-CD and FLAC/MP3 only. Don't ask me questions about other formats/containers.

I am using a Philips 55OLED805 TV plus an Onkyo RZ720 AMP during my review and an OPPO UDP-203 as reference for Video / Music playback functionality and quality.

At the moment I am still in close dialog with Dune for several findings with initially good and quick responses but it varies depending how busy they seem to be. I am pleasantly surprised overall on the problems solved and how stable it got since the first communication.

For the new GUI/Launcher and My Collection under development: "dune_firmware_tv175u_220630_0727_r20.dff" has just been installed and is under test.
See Appendix-A for my current findings. The "NewGUI" experience will be integrated into the review when a final version is released.
This FW in fact synchronized again all feature for the last 3 generations Dune players (since 2018) which I regard as excellent support.

Intro:

The player seems to be a replacement for both the Dune HD Realbox 4K and the Dune HD Pro 4K II player clearly meant to be competitive on price with the Zidoo Z9X. I must say that target seems to be hit. It is close enough on price with the Realbox 4K but almost a RTD1619DR + BT5 upgraded Pro 4K II on specifications. Even the physical size measuring 160x115x26mm is midway achieved by stripping all non-essential ports.

What makes the Dune Vision series unique is the OS. Dune is using since many years their own Linux based Dune OS. Next to that they integrate the Google Android TV 9 OS as found on many Smart TV's today. This way additional APP's can be installed using either OS. Dune claims to be able to totally control the resource utilization of Android TV avoiding potential negative impact on Dune OS integrated media players.
For Dune OS this is limited and above all supported by a Russian community. For the strict Google controlled Android TV this is different as it offers the same as found on Powered by Android Smart TV's. Multiple TV manufacturers similar to Panasonic, Philips and Sony ditched their own OS versions in favor of Android TV. This makes it only more attractive regarding APP variety, updates, stability and quality.

Chapter-1: The HW of Real and Pro Vision
The specifications and some pictures can be found at Dune directly:
https://www.dune-hd.com/products/dune-hd-real-vision-4k
The Dune site also includes a nice comparison table of FW features and HW provisions for the 4 Vision models.
For a lot more pictures and peeps at the menus see this French review which reads nicely with Google Translate:
https://cod-box.net/dune-hd-real-vision-4k-test/
My review is very much complimentary being mine a lot more technical and detailed but far less fancy.

The first thing worth to mention is that all Dune Vision players seem to be using almost the same FW just changed for HW specifics. That makes Dune support a lot easier but also makes this review apply for most part to the bigger models too. See the Dune site for all details but in a nutshell here are the characteristics:

Unboxing
The player actually comes in a very good looking box and is very well packed.
It contains: The player, the brick type PSU including 4 plug adapters for global deployment, 2 external antennas, HDMI cable, BT remote and even an IR extender plus a 3.5mm A/V cable with 3x RCA plugs. This is very convenient and complete above all for an entry level model.
There is only a leaflet included but on the Dune site an online manual can be found. 

I do like the new Dune HD Real Vision Duo model. =Real Vision with 4 Gbyte RAM, 32 Gbyte flash and 2 Quick Loading bays at the front. All this for just $ 100 extra (OK offered only in the US).:
The Pro unit has a bit simpler but still nice box but surprisingly comes without the IR extender and RCA cables being bundled. Other items are similar just being a bigger PSU.


The Unit itself
The Real player comes with 2 GByte RAM and 16 GByte Flash memory residing on a dedicated motherboard for this model. I expect this to do just fine. The Pro comes with 4 GByte RAM and 32 GByte Flash memory.

For Android applications the Internal storage of Real can be expanded by inserting an SD-Card into the slot (low Read/Write speed). Within Android setup => Storage the SD- card can be found and be formatted for Internal Storage or Portable Storage. Internal Storage formatting works and some Android Data can be moved to it. That process can conveniently be undone too.
If you do so the storage will still be seen by the Dune OS as portable and offers to format it which obviously never should be done. The card may neither be removed as it will make Android unstable for sure. Dune promised to solve this in a coming FW update.

Dune next decided to bundle the Real Vision with a brand new little BT Remote Control. In practice this small remote works well with the advantage of BT, but is missing some direct action buttons. If you also use the excellent Dune Control app then this is less of an inconvenience. Buttons for TV Power, V+, V- and Mute may be programmed to IR which is very pleasant (see the leaflet included for instructions).
When doing a factory Reset the default pairing is lost and must be done when initializing the player again (V+ & Enter kept pressed for 3 seconds). A warning about that Factory Reset as it will reduce the Audio Output level again to the reduced factory default. Dune promised to change that too.

This brings me to the antenna's. The Real Vision is a nice small box but got the same huge antennas from the other big(ger) vision models. Not really good looking for some of us. What is the problem as these are made removable even for the entry model? Dune decided to combine BT and WiFi antennas for the Real Vision model to reduce some costs but bundling a BT remote these antennas can't be removed in practice as a consequence. You might get the Dune HD Premium IR remote for it to remove those as  the box comes even bundled with an IR extender. For me a bit strange overall move and HW bundling. Got myself that backlit Premium IR in the end.

Regarding ports there is only one HDMI-Output, no HDMI-Input, no SATA connector, no USB2 and no USB3c (just 2x USB3) with Real. For me personally the absence of a SATA connector is the most relevant. I you need any of these extra ports get the Pro Vision instead. That model also has a  bigger front display of 6 position HH:MM:SS instead of just the 4 position HH:MM of Real Vision and a HDD bay. Frankly the display of Real Vision is just too small for me as I can't read it from a typical viewing distance. The Pro on the other hand comes with a real nice bigger than average front display. The clock on the Pro is configurable for displaying seconds or not (4-pos).

All models above Real come with 4 GByte RAM,32 GByte Flash and a second HDMI Audio output only port. Dune offers no choice for Audio on Main + on that 2nd Audio only port concurrently. Both my Egreat A11 and Zidoo UHD3000 do enable to choose dual audio output or on 2nd HDMI only (Auto is the default). This may be relevant with some setups.

The Max Vision and Ultra Vision expand further with dual HDD bays and a graphical front display plus an Analog Stereo DAC with XLR outputs. The Ultra with top of the line DAC and PSU components, additional DAC inputs and a lot bigger front display. According information I got the info displayed on the Front panel is actually the same for Max and Ultra models.
Player functionality on all Vision players remain almost the same regarding software features. 

Power provision
In contrary to the old Realbox the new Real Vision comes with an adequate 12V 2A PSU and supplying power to the 2x USB3.1 ports (800mA) should not cause any problems.

Real Vision Power consumption measurements:
Idle:           1.5 W
Play:           2.8 W
Sleep:         1.2 W
Standby:   <0.1 W
It has no fan and only some vent openings at the bottom which is very adequate.

Never seen such low values before. If you are a really green person this is the box to get.
It takes about 50 seconds to boot which is somewhat longer than usual but it clearly does HDD startup in parallel. If you like the clock during sleep it is probably more convenient just to leave the player always on for better display visibility.

The box will always boot up when powered on, has no battery backup cell for the clock and does not support WOL (Wake On LAN). By default power off will result in a sleep mode but this can be changed to a real standby mode by a power setup APP setting.

Chapter-2: Menu, Setup and Bundled App's
Menu's
Getting familiar with the Dune menu structure takes some getting used to despite being intuitive enough. There are more Icons than on most players and not all really useful for all. Fortunately many items can be expanded or suppressed. The level of optional customization inclusive using custom skins and custom language packs is fairly high. One needs to consult the Dune online manual for using these.
https://dune-hd.com/eng/support/online_manual/getting_started
It is good to see such a manual with essential information for the various players.

Setup
The Dune setup uses the same icon structure as the main view. Going over settings is easy enough. Strange is that for a player running its own Dune OS that it has multiple essential settings (hidden) within Android setup. Good examples are BT pairing, HDMI Range and drive "Eject". Various Android settings for Audio and Video are under investigation on its functionality and usefulness. Most are very likely not used at all, but that makes it even more confusing.

Worth mentioning is that Dune has proven that HDMI-CEC can work well with both TV and TV+AMP setups:
- Switching to the designated HDMI port on my AMP automatically when powered on.
- Volume control of the AMP via HDMI-CEC using the volume control of the player.
Auto power-on or power-off in any combination with TV and/or AMP is not used by me but is configurable.

Bundled APP's and Android TV compatibility
Standard facilities and players for Pictures, Music and Movies are to be found on the main page. Bundled APP's can be found under Android Applications respectively Dune HD Applications.
The Dune HD APP "DUNE-HD.TV" requires an account and was removed by me. Radio Time is very nice on the other hand.

It is possible to get a lot more Dune HD APPs using patch "dune_service_install_dunestor_extension_v3.1" but these come from Russian users. The courageous can give it a try. A lot is actually also in English and usable. It is a lot for sure but potentially some may be highly illegal too? No guarantees or support by Dune here.

Under Android Applications come several more popular app's. One needs to be aware that these need to be installed first. It includes amongst others the famous Android TV Launcher, Google Play Store, Netflix, Youtube, HibyMusic and SBMC. App's can be added using Aptoide or the Google Play Store. In that sense it is even more flexible than Android TV coming with Smart TV's.
I found the Android TV compatibility to be excellent but keep in mind that only App's designed specifically for Android TV will be found on the Play Store and not those for Smart Phones! Some will exist in both versions but many won't.

NAS Support & SMB Server
Standard provisions for NAS access via NFS, SMB and UPnP/DLNA are included. The player can also act as a SMB Server which APP is to be found under Dune APP's. Unfortunately this APP does not allow full device access for all HDD's via a single share "\share" or "\public" is commonly used for that. Instead a HDD must be found with its HW ID as an unique share name which makes HDD dynamic swapping impossible. Just use Internet Explorer with the matching IP-Address e.g. \\192.168.2.1\ to find those share names.
Using W10 SMB Client I needed to use the Server Name in front to connect as using the IP-Address did not work there for me. Strange!
Neither setting an UID/PWD or Read/Write for access is possible. Positive to mention is that it puts the Volume Label in front of the HW ID for ease of  identification and that the Read/Write performance is good.

File Browser:
The File Browser is called "Sources" here. The APP works fine with all common file handling features available via pressing Menu and including several options for changing the actual view.
Missed just an "Eject" facility to swap files. That Eject actually exists but is deeply buried under Android Setup. Dune promised to add it in a future FW. They included a "Watched" feature with the recent FW update and is now included.
I am also missing the option which I always use myself which is "parking HDD" when not active for a set time interval. That reduces power/heat and next above all the noise produced by them. 

Chapter-3: Movie/Video playback

Videos can be started using the File Browser directly or using a Poster Wall.

The Video Player
Warning: Video setup parameters are used a bit different on this player than on most other players I used.
It starts with the Video Mode which is here not the "default video mode" but "maximum video mode" which is to be taken literally. It should be left on Auto (EDID) in almost all cases avoiding limiting TV capabilities. An exception may be using a HDMI 1.4 restricted AMP in between. As a consequence all menus and music playback will happen with the highest definition supported which may have you straight away running into HDMI cable limits.
Warning: The Dune showed to be extremely critical on cables. Swapped myself to the cable it came with in the box. In combination with UHD HDR video plus HD sound it may disappear and sound with side effects or drops. The sound will suffer first not the video strange enough. My Zidoo players all work under those same conditions with my old cable.

Enabling Auto Frame-rate and Auto Resolution will downscale actual movie playback output to the format of the source. Also set Preferred HDMI color depth then to: As in content. The TV will next do all the resolution upscaling which it mostly does excellent. If you want the player to do the upscaling then disable Auto Resolution.
It is the first implementation I have come across which works as designed with no flickering or other visible adoptions as claimed by Dune The time to get a first display after hitting play with BD-lite varies with the complexity of the source. UHD with DV and Atmost taking the most and a regular BD being very fast.

The picture quality for SD, HD and UHD is on par with other players I own including my OPPO UHD-203 which is my reference for this. Handling UHD/HDR movies with HDR10, HDR10+ and DV neither resulted in observations other than that these are reproduced as they should be. I am not the guy which compares paused pictures, uses test discs or other fancy analysis. So very minor differences and glitches may escape me. For daily viewing I found no problems with any standard video or audio format used by me. I am happy with the PQ, formats supported and far from trivial playback stability.
I am just missing an HDR mode option to toggle DV and HDR10/HDR10+ output for TV's supporting both (setup option coming according Dune).

The player seems to have no problems with my movie collection playing all formats inclusive the DVD/BD menu. Different sound formats including DD Atmos and DTS-X work just fine via my AMP and the BD Full Menu support seems to be better than found on most media players as claimed by Dune. I did not run into any Menu problematic BD discs yet this including UHD and 3D discs.

When playing BD's with menus (Full Menu) the player in fact acts as an equivalent disc player with all interaction going via the BD menu or dedicated remote control buttons. There are then no additional features or options for playback not foreseen by the actual disc being played. This includes external subtitles which are then not supported in any form. You may like it or miss features playing that way but it is not a bad concept keeping it pure. It is the real "just pop-in a disc feeling" that you get playing this way. Coming from a disc player you will feel familiar straight away.

When playing Full Menu BD then the colored buttons on the BT remote get assigned and e.g. Subtitle and Audio can be selected directly that way. Just press Info for instructions which key does what This for BD's which enable the pop-up menu. If they don't you can press Info which will enable the keys while info is displayed temporarily.

Playing BD's without menus (Lite Menu) with either ISO or BDMV Folder offers several more features and configurable options. This is much closer to the experience playing on other brand media players. There is also a real time subtitle download option for the default system language set. The essential subtitle options are there too: Time-shift, vertical shift, color and size.
Correctly named subtitle.srt files can be put into the BDMV folder as common practice for other brands and will show the matching language when tagged/named properly. Manually pointing to a file via the filebrowser to an arbitrary file and location is not supported.

The on-demand Internet download command will download subtitles for the system set language plus the subtitle set preference and also English if different. This allows searching for 3 languages which will be adequate for most.
Used subtitle downloads ought to be put automatically in the folder of the matching movie for future automatic reuse which it unfortunately does not.

DVD's are always played with DVD Menus and fortunately include external subtitle support with that. The DVD menu processing seems to work well, but frankly hardly tried it thus far.
   
For sure it does not include many blows and whistles as included by some other brands. I would conclude saying about it "the essential set of features is available".

This actually is a nice portable player.

I think there is a mistake in the specifications on some sites:
It says then 2x USB3.1 plus 1x USB2. I can't find that USB2 port but yes an SD-Card slot which is not mentioned. Probably they got that mixed up? It is correct here now.
With just 16 Gbyte flash that Micro SD-Card slot is actually a lot more useful than such an USB2 port.

The player seems to be a replacement for both the Dune HD Realbox 4K and the Dune HD Pro 4K II player clearly meant to be competitive on price with the Zidoo Z9X. I must say that target seems to be hit. It is close enough on price with the Realbox 4K but almost an RTD1619DR + BT5 upgraded Pro 4K II on specifications. Even the physical size is midway by stripping all non-essential ports.

What I am personally really missing is that External SATA connector but don't care about HDMI-IN being dropped. In contrary to the Realbox 4K the power provision (12v 2A) seems to be adequate here for feeding those USB3.1 ports.
Having only 2 Gbyte RAM and 16 Gbyte Flash should not impose practical limitations. It has an SD-Card slot which I tried with a 32 Gbyte SDHC card. It can be formatted as Internal Storage for Android or as general Portable Storage via Android Setup => Storage. Be aware that once formatted as Internal Storage that card may never be removed again till you do a Full Reset! 

They are a bit later than originally said but here it is "HD Pro 4K Plus II"
https://www.dune-hd.com/products/dune-hd-pro-4k-plus-II
Frankly always liked the Plus version a lot more and this is no exception.

The improvements are well specified compared with the previous Plus model. Not mentioned is that also 1x USB2 port and the SD-Card slot were actually dropped too.

Interesting unexpected specification (asked Dune for it myself):
Stereo and multichannel SACD playback
You can play top quality Super Audio CD (DSD) music files in all any popular formats  (ISO, DFF, DSF), including both stereo and multichannel files (with even DST decompression). Multichannel SACD files will be output as multichannel PCM to HDMI. The next and final step would be optional DSD native output.

Hardly can imagine MCH SACD via HDMI is only for this model?
Even stranger the bundled remotes are now labeled "discontinued" as accessories. Or is this to make them exclusive for this model?
The Dune strategy occasionally escapes me but coming with Dual HDMI Output does make a lot of sense with many (even recent) AMP's not passing HDR10+.

Missing on the audio front is support for DVD-Audio with playback of the high resolution MLP audio tracks.
For now only the DVD-Video compatible audio tracks can be played (if present). Also applies to Zidoo equivalent players by the way.

Asked Dune these 3 questions and will share their answers here:
Hello,
We will be able to answer your questions about Pro 4K Plus II after production is completed and when they go on sale.

The first test results of the new Dune HD Realbox 4K are already showing up.
https://www.avsforum.com/forum/39-networking-media-servers-content-streaming/3142112-dune-hd-realbox-4k-rtd1395-thread.html
What is really good news that nobody reported any kind of instabilities even giving the box a hard time. This is amazing for a new SOC. So porting FW the Dune way using its own GUI/OS seems to work out very well here.

It has above all a few quirks you need to know but then does more or less everything promised on its initial factory FW release including exact frame-rates, HDR10+ new SOC related goodies. Good expectation for HD Pro 4K II (Plus) which should be blazing fast compared.

What to expect from the new "Zidoo X"?
http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/updated-preview-zidoo-x-4k-uhd-hi-end-media-player.50617/
The facts and some speculation which I doubt I will be far off.

The Hisillicon SDK still uses SMBv1 only for SMB Client support on all platforms using it. I think that should be upgraded ASAP. Also the Android v7 implementations only include SMBv1 clients. 
Realtek OpenWRT will not only talk to W10 clients but also to an old Eminent media player running SMBv1 Client, but that is an old Realtek based SOC.
Media players make excellent NAS servers today. They handle multiple streams very well and can fill a Gigabit Ethernet using SMB or FTP in practice. I really prefer a NAS with multiple plug&Play HDD's rather than a RAID setup (lot more flexible).   

I know how to enable insecure SMBv1 Server on my W10 PC and that talks then to my Egreat A10/A11 but not to my Zidoo OpenWRT running SMBv1/v2/v3 Server.

So difficult who to blame here. OpenWrt behaving somewhere different than W10 or Egreat SMBv1.5 being picky.
The client will find the SMB Server, get access and next will show the corrects mounts on it. The problem is it sees only root (..) and won't find resources on these mounts. An exception is the system drive which works fine.

Fist step provided to me by friend @E_CS
On HiSilicon SDK SMB
-- support up to dialect 1.5 for server/client and Android 5.1.1
-- support up to dialect 3.1.1 for server on Android 7.0 and client same as Android 5.1.1


A7 based SMB Server  also still reports the wrong free space as in the past under A5.
What I get reported is -1K of -1K free free. This is the wrong/no HDD size and wrong/no free space reporting. That is very bad as many W10 applications will then refuse to write to it. As far as I remember the old version under A5 reported a fixed positive value. So maybe it still does so when connecting via a SMBv1 client (did not try that)?

HiSilicon SMB Server <==> W10 SMB Client
Realtek SMB Server <==> W10 SMB Client
W10 SMB Server <==> Realtek SMB Client
W10 SMB Server <==> HiSillicon SMB Client
HiSilicon SMB Server <===> Realtek SMB Client
Realtek SMB Server <=X=> HiSillicon SMB Client
So the SMB implementations are not 100% Windows compliant/identical!

Fact: Hisillicon SDK based SMB client implementations will not talk to Realtek SMB Server implementations on any brand/product/FW.
This for all brand media players using these: Hisillicon(Himedia/Dinobot/Dune), Realtek (Zidoo, Xtreamer) using OpenWRT SMB Server
As all mentioned products are or have been sold recently by Futeko this looks like a good place to analyse/remedy this nasty fact. 
The crazy thing all Servers/Clients from both Hisillicon and Realtek do talk correctly in any direction with Windows10 using SMB. Apparently that was made to work as the basis.