Great, @mirror, well done! One of my feature requests is already fulfilled . But please indicate the RGB range for each option, you know: 16-235 / 0-255. Thanks
The main thing is that the developers to fix the CEC wakeup. I think you will find CEC has issues with all boxes made think its to do with the hdmi protocols and its hit or miss if it works etc So you cant blame Zidoo with them issues its a hdmi issue .
freeroc, I will talk to you as a fellow developer that I am doing this for the last 30 years. Quantity is less important that quality. If you like to have frequent updates, please learn what is agile development. You cannot release frequent updates with enormous amounts of fixes. It is impossible to have everything fixed and verified and at the same time, be sure that nothing else was affected. With Zidoo extending their product range with many new boxes, if you don't go Agile you are destined to suffer (both you and your customers) from a neverending cycle of problematic f/w releases. Set priorities, set a logical number of them per release (fix for example 10 things, not 50) and release them tested. It is not the responsibility of your customers to be guinea pigs. The important is to have WORKING updates. Please, make clear your product positioning. Your product range is increasing but frankly, I bought x9s and I can still have no idea what is the product positioning. To clarify, this is mostly a media player, YES/NO? If yes, beside your excellent player, is KODI a major selling point, YES/NO? If yes, why is ZDMC 17 in beta state for so long, shouldn't it be a priority for media player when we are talking about the most popular software app for such hardware (media players), YES/NO? If it is a media player, is Video on Demand (eg Netflix) an important selling point, YES/NO? If yes, should you look after licenses for enabling HD/FHD/4K content in your boxes, YES/NO. I am just mentioning a few things here but honestly, you release new boxes and if you go to their page in your website, hide the CPU and the photograph, everything else seems the same. The above things mentioned are EXTREMELY important to differentiate from competition. Also, keep in mind that it is not the hardware that is the selling point, it is the software. There have been so many excellent machines that failed miserably because of lack of or bad software. And there have been simple ones that succeeded because of the software. I am not blaming you or criticizing you. I am trying to help. I know that the feedback in the forum gets enormous and it is not easy to filter everything but if you see, many people ask for Kodi, many people as for VoD at FHD/4k. There you go, you have two major issues. Your Media Center player works almost 90-95% perfect, try to focus on things that are also selling points for a box and will differentiate you from the competition.
Very well said @nikos_a, I'm glad someone has finally broken the ice about product positioning. I bought this box primarily on the recommendations made on the Kodi hardware forums. Does it support HD audio passthrough? Yes. Does it play 23.976 and 23.970 without stutter? Yes. Does it support HEVC acceleration? Yes. The answers to all these questions are Yes, but there's a catch. None of these are done well through Kodi. All of these requirements are accomplished with the external player. Did I buy a "Kodi box" to play movies with an external/proprietary player? Absolutely not. So is this really a Kodi box? Not exactly. Does it belong on the Kodi forum's recommended hardware list? In my opinion, no. Sure it "runs" Kodi, but it's a terrible experience. To emphasize @nikos_a 's point, I would rather this box do less, but do a few things very well. If this box was meant to be a high-end Kodi player, make it the best darn Kodi experience ever. As the saying goes, it's a Jack of all trades, master of none. I wish the Zidoo team luck in their development, and I've been more than patient waiting over half a year to have a semi-decent Kodi experience, but as it stands today, it's barely acceptable. The external player seems to be the only way to play movies reliably. An S905 box with LibreELEC is looking more and more attractive.
It's certainly not a Kodi box but a zdmc box. Ok sorry ... I'm pretty sure many would not agree (and may be right), but why I bought it is because I saw it as a Freebox (an operator box, full of features, many useless, some half-finished, most of them buggy). Never saw it as a highly stable low end HW... But as something fun to experiment with, still capable to do what I need (sometimes...). Ok it's expensive blablabla, yes, it is. Back to positioning question, very good one. In the end it's better than I expected, and I agree that a few annoying problems prevent it to be the very great-for-all machine that it could be. I suspect that realtek choice may not be helping... Maybe was better for HDMI recording, I don't know. But for sure it's messing with official Kodi. But there's some stuff I use daily with it (openwrt I love you) that I could never do with other boxes, so I still consider it a good buy.
I don't agree. The problem is Kodi's development team, don't blame Realtek. Kodi should support this excellent SoC, as many others (neither HiSilicon SoC's are really supported). Realtek have done an excellent work here with this SoC. Not only for its recording capabilities, picture quality is truly awesome, at the same level if not higher than HiSilicon SoC's. It's very likely only a Sigma Designs chipset is better.
Does "Auto" take into consideration what the source level is or it just sets the range to full when the display reports selectable quantization and limited if it doesn't (the way it is now)?
I actually consider this as a Realtek problem. Kodi team decided to drop support for libstagefright and stick with the more standardized MediaCodec API. Kodi is a open source project and the team members are all working voluntarily. They don't have the resources, time and effort to put in to support the private APIs from the various vendors. Realtek and HiSilicon have chosen to stick with libstagefright. It is true that you may have to go back to libstagefright for certain features that the MediaCodec APIs don't support (e.g. 3D MVC). Unlike the Kodi team members, Realtek and HiSilicon are money making companies. I don't see a reason why they can't put in an effort to fully integrate/implement MediaCodec APIs in their SoCs.
Very good conversation in this thread. Since libstagefright is no longer supported, does that mean there is no hardware acceleration when using Kodi? This possibly explains the poor performance, but ultimately this could mean Kodi will never run properly on this box
There is a new bug introduced in V1.4.6 and not been fixed in V1.4.8 : The box "forgets" a storage connected to USB3.0 after the box is turned off by CEC...
I can. Box ZIDOO X9S and TV Sony KD-43XD8305 via HDMI v2.0 "Monster Cable UltraHD Platinum" 1,5ΠΌ (22.5 Gbit/s, Ethernet). Firmware 1.2.12 - HDMI CEC wakeup works fine! Firmware 1.3.0 (beta) - not tested Firmware 1.4.4 - HDMI CEC wake up function don`t work. IR wake up function don`t work. Firmware 1.4.5 (alpha) - HDMI CEC wake up function sometimes works. IR wake up function sometimes works. Firmware 1.4.6 - HDMI CEC wake up function sometimes works. IR wake up function sometimes works.
CEC is a problem with just about any mfr. The reason being is that a lot of the CEC protocols for HDMI 1.4 / 2 .0 are optional, so the mfr is free to implement what they want, which ultimately results in incompatibilities between the mfrs and sometimes even within the same mfr. Even a simple firmware update or what ever can cause a working CEC setup to start having issues. A lot of us gave up on using CEC a long time ago and went to a programmable remote like a Harmony which doesn't rely on HDMI for functionality. It has improved lately but ......... So that is the reason it works it breaks and so on and so on I dont use it and wont because ill be in the same frustration camp as you . Hence universal remote .
he is right tho, CEC is a mess, a hit and run, a marketing scheme, i never got the damn thing to do more than turn on/of the device, and only work on one of my TV's
Volunteered to assist, but no interesses thus far. HDMI-CEC is supposed to make part of Android which is a crummy implementation. With every generation it improved slightly and Android 7 at least removed (most) nasty side effects. My way suggested is : Disable Android's HDMI-CEC and build an APP that is configurable doing the right job. Have seen it done for Enigma. Using a HDMI-CEC blocker myself.
If you only watch forum on your receiver or tv you would known that CEC is a pain in the ass for every consumer product, work well if all your devices are from the same manufacturer but not compatible between different one no need for developers to answer that!
I'm very happy to see that Zidoo team is now taking into serious considerations the users requests or bug reports. This is the right way to go for a Company that aims to be great and expanding their business. I own 2 Zidoo players (X9s and X8) and am recommending Zidoo to my friends also for the aftersales service. Bravo Zidoo.
