[ceaca]

Its a shame that users dont invest a little more in the source player with such good hardware like the Denon or the samsung.

Well all the good media players doesn't support Kodi

Why anyone would buy a bad player ? Kodi and low prices might be a choice for some, but for anyone that already spend a good amount in Audio gear for Home Cinema its a drawback in quality using cheap media players.

Right... if I didn't care about being disc-less, I'd go with an Oppo Blu-ray player (likely the upcoming UHD 4K player). If I didn't care about Kodi or true 4K, I'd go back to a Cloud Media Popcorn Hour VTEN or A-500.

Oppo is disk-less, dont have the fancy Kodi Jukebox or 3D, but wins PQ/SQ and bug free playback.

I read somewhere in this forum that Oppo 103 was considerer expensive, well it came out in 2012, thats 4 years ago with PVP of 500$.

Today amazon.com are trading the Oppo 103 for 392$ in the purchase of the new Oppo 203 4K, see here forum blu-ray, very few brands are loyal to the customer at this level... Himedia, or Zidoo will never receive their old boxes in exchange of the new model...

First images of the Oppo udp203 4k menu can be seen in this link

Close to WD Live Hub UI.....

[DaMacFunkin]

Oppo were forced to remove the ISO support by the media industry in 93/95 models.

Until anyone manage to RIP UHD blu-rays the best possible content in 4K HDR are coming from streaming services, like Netflix, Vudu, Amazon with bonus of some supporting Dolby Atmos at same time.
Digital streaming by the end of 2016 should have surpass Hollywood disks...

Until there Himedia & Zidoo are "another extra cheap box" for 3D ISO content, they require some wrapper for playback but they lack the streaming services.

Some sites like Vudu can offer DD+ with Atmos metadata, the claim that this is anywhere near as good as TrueHD with Atmos metadata or that the quality of the highly compressed bt2020 10bit 4K stream is anyway better or even in the same ballpark is absurd.
4K streaming is as good as high quality 1080p at best.
I've seen and heard it with my own eyes and ears.

[hdmkv]

Are you guys having negative experience as described by some here? I haven't, which is why I'm curious.

[sloth]

I am not using my X9S very often so I cannot provide any statistics. I am running version 1.27 and watch 1080p mkv files ripped from my BluRays. Picture quality with the external player is excellent and audio pass-through works very well with Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD Master. I did however notice 2 audio drop-outs during the last movie I watched.
On firmware 1.26 I also noticed 2 audio drop-outs/artifacts when listening to my ripped CD collection (flac files).
My wishlist is the following:

• 3D mkv support
  
• Get rid of any audio issues
  
• better support for universal remotes (Flirc)
  

Generally I have been very happy with kodi, especially for music. I have not found a solution that offers better control via smartphone/tablet to play music.
Let's hope we get the new firmware soon.

[couto27]

Oppo were forced to remove the ISO support by the media industry in 93/95 models.
Until anyone manage to RIP UHD blu-rays the best possible content in 4K HDR are coming from streaming services, like Netflix, Vudu, Amazon with bonus of some supporting Dolby Atmos at same time.
Digital streaming by the end of 2016 should have surpass Hollywood disks...

Until there Himedia & Zidoo are "another extra cheap box" for 3D ISO content, they require some wrapper for playback but they lack the streaming services.

Some sites like Vudu can offer DD+ with Atmos metadata, the claim that this is anywhere near as good as TrueHD with Atmos metadata or that the quality of the highly compressed bt2020 10bit 4K stream is anyway better or even in the same ballpark is absurd.
4K streaming is as good as high quality 1080p at best.
I've seen and heard it with my own eyes and ears.

Its True.. but at the moment digital streaming services provide the best disk-less content in 4K HDR.... avforum made small comparison here Shield streaming netflix VS Panasonic DMP-BDT300 Blu-ray Player.

[wrxtasy]

Some sites like Vudu can offer DD+ with Atmos metadata, the claim that this is anywhere near as good as TrueHD with Atmos metadata or that the quality of the highly compressed bt2020 10bit 4K stream is anyway better or even in the same ballpark is absurd.
4K streaming is as good as high quality 1080p at best.
I've seen and heard it with my own eyes and ears.

Its True.. but at the moment digital streaming services provide the best disk-less content in 4K HDR.... avforum made small comparison here Shield streaming netflix VS Panasonic DMP-BDT300 Blu-ray Player.

I agree with @couto27. The Netflix engineers know their shit and know how to properly encode HEVC video content to a high quality standard.

Its all about 10-15 feet away viewing on the couch, are you going to be able to discern the difference in video quality anyway.

All these 4K HDR boxes you see getting about that are not Widevine Level 1, Microsoft Playready and Netflix approved really are not going to have a long term future as a go to all in one Kodi media player going forward. They will remain in their "Niche" media player market space.

[ppoulos]

Are you guys having negative experience as described by some here? I haven't, which is why I'm curious.

Actually the real question is why this variability. I have been patiently waiting for Zidoo to release a firmware fix for the video stuttering resembling significant buffering issues that a good portion of owners are experiencing. I have posted this problem on this forum and Zidoo's, and the problem seems to be present in a minority of owners, but a significant minority. I have gotten several suggestions on how possibly to fix this problem from other BETA testers, but none of their suggestions work. And Zidoo representatives have been peculiarly quiet about the problem, seemingly not proactively trying to find out what is wrong... unfortunately.

I cannot recommend this machine at all in its current iteration since even a 20% or 10% playback failure rate is way too high for someone to buy this product. But I continue to wait and see if any firmware release will fix the video streaming playback issues that a significant user group sees. Luckily Amazon will accept my return (and bad review) if the product does not improve by the end of January, 2017.

[mirror88]

Are you guys having negative experience as described by some here? I haven't, which is why I'm curious.

Actually the real question is why this variability. I have been patiently waiting for Zidoo to release a firmware fix for the video stuttering resembling significant buffering issues that a good portion of owners are experiencing. I have posted this problem on this forum and Zidoo's, and the problem seems to be present in a minority of owners, but a significant minority. I have gotten several suggestions on how possibly to fix this problem from other BETA testers, but none of their suggestions work. And Zidoo representatives have been peculiarly quiet about the problem, seemingly not proactively trying to find out what is wrong... unfortunately.

I cannot recommend this machine at all in its current iteration since even a 20% or 10% playback failure rate is way too high for someone to buy this product. But I continue to wait and see if any firmware release will fix the video streaming playback issues that a significant user group sees. Luckily Amazon will accept my return (and bad review) if the product does not improve by the end of January, 2017.

We tried many ways to reproduce, but did not get the same results with you, if we are unable to reproduce it, can't do anything about it
We changed another samba scan method in next version, maybe you can try it

[mirror88]

We are checking the pass-through Audio out of sync issue in ZDMC.
And try to optimize the display of external subtitles

[nikos_a]

This would be great mirror88! Just a few questions:

-Do you have a sense as to when you can manage to have proper MVC in x9s with the code rewritten?

-Also, did the logs I sent for NFS issue helped somehow?

-And one last thing I reported here and the official forum is the dropped frames in a 720p@60fps file (posted test file) only in ZDMC. Started happening with 1.2.7.

[OlivierQC]

Are you guys having negative experience as described by some here? I haven't, which is why I'm curious.

Hello hdmkv,

with the FW1.2.7, i have a recurrent issue with External player + ZDMC, it seems to be fairly random too.

i updated my box 3 times and did tests without succes, i don't know where the issue came from.

I will do a video as needed.

ok i will try to explain :
i used ZDMC + external player, i created my files/playlist as usual.
i chose a movie, i watch it and everything is ok, at the end i push 2 times back button and i chose to watched an another movie, when i chose the new movie, i see icon of loading 1 or 2 secondes and i back to ZDMC.

I have to do a reboot of the box but the problem comes back after a while, and sometimes i have an error message that said : Unfortunately, ZDMC has Stopped.

-----------------

i did an new update the last evening.

i do not install any skin or addons.

i used zdmc and i have the same issue + audio dropout with dts hd ma (Independence Day: Resurgence ISO 2D)

i do not understand, members from my thread do not have this problem, but they have Zidoo X9S not X8.

[ppoulos]

We tried many ways to reproduce, but did not get the same results with you, if we are unable to reproduce it, can't do anything about it
We changed another samba scan method in next version, maybe you can try it

So far the current version of SAMBA is not very compatible with MacOS. The MacOS version of SAMBA works with Windows 10 on my Intel NUC without a problem, but does not connect with any Android OS machine. I have tried, though, SMPup using an earlier OS (not the latest MacOS Sierra) and Zidoo X9S was able to connect. But the buffering issues still exist, though not as prominent. Are you implying that the next firmware will fix that issue with SMB connect? The scanning function on the X9S currently sees my MacPro computer without a problem. It just cannot login in, and anonymous login also does not work...

Thus why I switched back to NFS. The stuttering buffer issues are worse with NFS, despite NFS having less overhead than SMB. And Kodi can also find the NFS Shares, but not see their directories (again I think a problem with the Android OS). Are there plans to also fix NFS access?

[KILLERNADS]

We are checking the pass-through Audio out of sync issue in ZDMC.
And try to optimize the display of external subtitles

Please can you tell us roughly when this might be? These are huge issues for me, especially out of sync audio issues in the ZDMC and in built Kodi player!! The subtitles are really off putting aswell, and we need crisper text without the characters overlapping each other, especially when you shrink the size down to say font 12 or somewhere close to that.

I have my box only available until end of Jan (amazon), so if these issues are not fixed by then i would have no choice but to return the box. Im hoping they are fixed and that i can keep the box though

[KILLERNADS]

Using Zidoo Video Player, I've now got the menu which is in bubbles on the Left side of the screen. How do i go back to having the Menu which is at the top of the screen? It had additional buttons like Bookmarks etc to save a film for later use!! Ive tried all the buttons and i can't seem to go back to that menu.

[Skank]

Are you guys having negative experience as described by some here? I haven't, which is why I'm curious.

@hdmkv
@mirror88

Issues i have with last firmware:
Using external player.
-sometimes "cracks and pops " in audio when browsing main menu in kodi. Really need to be fixed cause its harmful for speakers.
- watched a movie with dts-hd , think it was star trek beyond . Everything went fine until the end of the movie. The audio stopped and continued. And video stalled. I think it was the audio track that caused it.