[rockhard]

Here's my review of Zidoo X8 (v 1.2.7) after using it for two weeks.

My setup
1. Panasonic Full HD Plasma TV(No 4k or HDR)
2. Pioneer VSX 521 (Supports DTS-HD MA and TrueHD but no ATMOS) with Wharfdale 5.1 speakers
3. HDD connected to my TP-Link router using SMB


It's a budget setup as I'm no audio enthusiast. My previous media player was wdtv live hd which I've used for six years until I broke the HDMI port(My fault).

Positives

Didn't have any problem setting this up. Used the recommended settings mentioned in the first post. Boot is fast compared to WDTV. Layout is also nicer. Connected to SMB without any issue. WDTV had a big problem with that. I played different types of movies(using external player). All played without any issues. This includes MKV, MP4, AVI, 1080p, 720p, 25 frames,24 frames, AAC, DTS, DD, DTS HD. DId not notice any judder or dropouts.It also played an 18 gig HEVC 10bit file without any issues. Picture quality is excellent. One of my friend whose kids were watching Secret Life of Pets and he commented that compared to his blu-ray player the picture quality is much better. The remote does everything I need(play, pause, FF,Rewind). It's a bit flimsy though and you need to point it directly to the unit.

Negatives

1. The unit turns on automatically when connected to main. Would've liked this to stay on standby. However I've the same happening with wdtv so this does not bother me much
2. Subtitles with html tags does not work. It shows the full html instead of the rendered text. The issue is only with the external player. Kodi shows the html subtitles perfectly
3. If I'm playing movies with DTS-HD or TrueHD and I pause the movie, it makes an annoying and grating sound. Right now I'm getting around this by muting the sound. This dues not happen with normal DTS or DD or any other formats. only DTS-HS and TrueHD
4. Last one and this is the deal breaker for me. The external player will not remember resume points for multiple files. Only the last file it played. Many times I'll have to stop a movie midway and watch something else because of my wife. Coming back to that movie I had to FF to the scene I last watched. Had I known Zidoo cannot do this, I definitely wouldn't have bought this player. I'm pretty sure many users also feel the same. WDTV got this one right at least.


I'd like to give it a A- based on my experience but for point 3 and specially 4 my rating for the player is B-

1. You can disable CEC control under settings in Zidoo

It is disabled