I feel like there should be a quick fix to this somewhat annoying issue but can't seem to figure it out. Streaming from my main Windows PC to the Zidoo, whenever I initially select a samba share it takes a long time to connect (up to 30 seconds). Once it does connect everything is fine and there's no slowdown or dropouts with movie streaming. This did not happen connecting to my previous PC (connection was almost instant). Does anyone have any ideas how to solve this? Cheers.
When you say "whenever I initially select a samba share..." do you mean you're selecting from the SMB list in Media Center like this:
Very odd as you can see I have a lot of NAS drives, all of which hibernate, but they all open immediately on the Zidoo. If the drive isn't awake you have to wait a few seconds for the drive to spin up to get to what's beyond the drive's cache, but it is literally a few seconds. I think your issue is what I call the vagaries of Windows networking and it's possibly to do with drives hibernating. Try creating a favourite - click on a share and hit the menu button and add to favourites and see if you get the same delay accessing the drive via favourites.
I think it must be a Windows thing. I created favorites but behavior still the same, although once the Zidoo connects it can go between folders at normal (instant) speeds. BTW, the shared samba folders are on a fast M.2 drive so there's no spindown issues. Like I said, it didn't occur with my old PC (an Intel NUC). New PC is AMD, so maybe related (I don't see how though)? Thanks for your suggestion anyway.