Brand new to the forum and Zidoo. I have been on and off reading those these products for a few months and I’m close to pulling the trigger on either the Z9x or Z10 pro. I use Plex currently on my Xbox series x and overall I’m happy with it, but having a fairly high end (at least to me it is) home theater set up and being a huge A/V nerd I want to watch my movies in the highest quality possible. Since Plex doesn’t support bdmv or blu ray raw formats I started to see what other options were out there and I discovered Zidoo. I’m sure these have been discussed before so my apologies for any repeats. Brief overview of my set up 77” LG C9 (may upgrade to 77 or 83 G2. Denon 4500, SVS ultra towers and center, SVS pb4000, SVS prime satellite (x4) and 4 Polk audio ceiling speakers for Atmos. 2 of the Polk audio are pre amped and my LCR are pre amped with an Emotiva xpa 3 gen 3 My question starts with 1. is the Z10 pro that much of a better device? I saw some conflicting info regarding RAM some said the z10 pro has 4gb is that accurate? 2. I would like to attach a hard drive preferably internal(less clutter) if my unit is connected via Ethernet can I tell my iMac to download files to that drive? 3. I won’t be having a huge library but is it more beneficial to use SSD vs HDD? My plan is any movie I download I want to be in blu ray raw or bdmv 4. Will these bdmv files be as comparable to an actual 4K blu ray disc? I’d like to avoid and compressed audio or downgrades in picture/audio quality. 5. I see all devices are HDMI 2.0 will that hinder my in the future knowing all the benefits of HDMI 2.1 I think thats everything for now..thanks in advance for any and all advice
1. Z10 Pro has 2GB of DDR4 3. HDD is more than enough vs the speed and more important, you will have more space for your collection (up to 16TB for an internal HDD), especially for the movies in 4K that take a lot of space. 4. For now, the support of the blu-ray menus is not very good with Zidoo, if you want to access to the bonus and stuffs like that. I prefer to remux my blu-rays in MKV: same PQ and no issue. No downgrade for the audio as long as your receiver can handle it. Same for the video vs your TV. 5. HDMI 2.0 is more than enough for the actual capabilities of the media players and you can run a 4k movie in DV @60Hz without any problem. I suppose that HDMI 2.1 will come with the next generation.
On the HDD question. any specific HDD brand you recommend? or is there a performance difference going with 7200 vs 5400?
Transfer speed will be bottlenecked by the gigabit port anyway. So only about 120 MB/s max if all the stars are aligned. I have found WD drives to be more quiet than Seagate. I don't think that there is any 5,400 RPM 14TB+ bare drive. You could try shucking one of the WD Easy Store USB external drives as it is firmware limited to 5,400 RPM.
I use a WD Red Plus 14TB in the zidoo and the same in my DAC (4 HDD). A good capacity and quiet in use. If you can find a good price for the WD Red Pro 16TB, this is also a good option.
Currently with Plex I use QBittorrent to Download my files and they go to an external HDD attached to my iMAC. Will there be a way to get my iMac to see the HDD in the Zidoo so I can tell QBittorrent to download files to that HD?
