Other than quicker boot time (which already quite fast even with cold-boot). Why zidoo turned off the network in Standby mode?
Bummer, i was expecting Standby would behave more like AppleTV or Shield, so that it always ready for airplay or Spotify connect, SMB serve to other devices or torrenting.
It's one of the great weaknesses in the Zidoo design philosophy IMO. Nearly all other media boxes including PVR's modeled on the Enigma 2 design standby means video and audio circuitry are off but networking remains on. It's inconvenient to "merely turn on the Zidoo when required" as some have suggested, if you happen to have your home theatre at one end of the house and modem, network and PC's etc upstairs at the front of the house, the only solution is just leave the thing on 24/7
Of course it is inconvenient in the latter post but "a great weakness in the Zidoo design philosophy"? - imho, I don't think so
It ignores the market place and virtually every other box. Still the power consumption is small and in my case with solar and batteries not an issue, so I just leave it on. But in some areas where power cost are rising it could be significant. I just think it was a marketing mistake. I can understand if none of the models had internal storage but!
I don't really understand this. A NAS consumes a lot more than a Zidoo. Also the biggest consume originates from a HDD being attached not the player running idle. Measured all my media boxes on power usage just read my reviews.
I don't really understand this. A NAS consumes a lot more than a Zidoo. Also the biggest consume originates from a HDD being attached not the player running idle. Measured all my media boxes on power usage just read my reviews.
@Nice Monkey Yes that is an entirely logical answer but marketing is also concerned with human rituals. We finish watching TV for the night and turn everything to standby. So sometimes the correct logical and engineering approach doesn’t always equals successful marketing of a product. Anyway access to material that may be located in the Zidoo is a separate issue to power consumption especially for those who happen to live in large houses, that tends to be rule in Australia and others.
As Zidoo can run both as a SMB client as well as a Server access should not be a problem. Use SMB Server all the tim myself. Much better than a NAS for me.
Exactly. By turning off networking during standby, it's kind of limiting its function as SMB server. You have to leave it on 24/7. Lucky i don't use HDMI-CEC, but i can imagine it's going to be a headache to someone that relies on it. Moreover, Sometimes my zidoo failed to (re-)establish connection to my (other) SMB server after waking up. Says "source:invalid". i had to browse the source using Media Center before my library came back.
Whenever I reboot or power off and then back on I lose my SMB shares with a message that they have 'expired' even though I have as @Markswift2003 suggested making sure they are on fixed IP addresses. Everything above 200 is in the reserved grouping. This improved things for awhile. On the QNAP there doesn't appear to be a method to create absolute fixed IP addresses. However like @farhanito a quick trip to the Media Center and all is working again.
A reserved address is an IP address that is assigned by the DHCP server to a specific MAC address. As long as the DHCP server behaves itself, theoretically this should essentially act as a fixed IP, but it's not foolproof whereas a fixed IP is (as long as you don't have clashes). I believe the QNAP does have the ability to set a fixed IP address - you'll need to chose an unused IP address outside the DHCP range, tell it the router address, the subnet mask (invariably 255.255.255.0 on home networks because only the last octet is used) and DNS address (use Google 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 for ease). DHCP, even with MAC assigned IP addresses, should only be used for transient devices - phones, tablets and the like. Anything that relies on anything else knowing where it is on the network at any time should always always have a fixed IP address. Always. (have I emphasised that enough ) Most of the network problems I read about on this forum I guarantee are either caused by DHCP issues or IP address clashes (where the same fixed IP is assigned to more than one device). Using fixed IPs does require a certain amount of housekeeping to be sure - my network has over 100 clients, with a small DHCP range for phones etc and I keep a text file detailing which IP address is assigned to which device to avoid clashes. I have specific IP ranges for specific types of device - home automation, NAS drives, video clients, switches etc etc. Programs like Advanced IP Scanner are extremely handy to query the network and find out what's what.
