PlexToZidoo : An external player for plex using native Zidoo player

Damn, I could kick myself I looked in Advanced and didn't see it. LOL, Thanks a lot man, I really appreciate your patience.

I just powered everything down and powered it up and it came up as I expected.

 

Thanks for the help. My z9x pro arrived today and I have it all setup. Have the Plex Kodi add on installed, auto start, etc.

But I’m wondering if you can configure the poster size. They’re….uhh….absolutely massive?

I’ve attached screenshots of HT4 (medium poster size) vs Plex. I love Plex and want to go this route, but with the posters this size it makes scrolling/finding movies a less than pleasant experience.

 

There is list mode that you can select at the top of the movie posters(it's the button with two rows of three squares). Otherwise no, there isn't an option for smaller posters. I'm not sure I agree that they're "absolutely massive" though.

 

New version of PlexToZidoo is up on github. I found that with the official plex client if there were multiple versions of the same movie it wasn't selecting the right version.

https://github.com/bowlingbeeg/PlexToZidoo/releases/tag/v2.2

 

Hello I have the Z9X. Is the pro really better ?

 

I recently moved my Plex server and Z10 to a new location and (to make long story short) had to change the IP address of my server as a result. I updated the substitution paths with the new IP in PlexToZidoo, but now when I try to play a video I get an error "unable to resolve host 192-168-0-XXX-[long hexadecimal string].plex.direct"

I've verified that I'm able to play the same file through HT4 with no problem, and in theory nothing has changed except the server IP. Maybe there's something really dumb I'm overlooking but I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong, as it working just fine prior to the move.

 

I only use my zidoo for Plex content that is accessed through smb to my windows server using ZDMC and ZidooPlexMod and I have to say it's been fairly stable. I've had ZDMC crash a few times on me but I bang at it pretty hard while trying to develop PlexToZidoo and ZidooPlexMod so I figure that's pretty good. Fortunately I don't have any of the smb issues that others are having, not sure why but it's rock solid for me. It is definitely faster as you walk through the GUI but if you follow the forums you'll see a number of outstanding issues. So it all depends on if you think the uptick in speed is worth the potential issues you might encounter.

 

Where do you see that error message? Is it in the PlexToZidoo debug screen? It sounds like you might have a networking/firewall issue.

 

Yes, it's in the debug screen. I thought it was a networking issue too, but the fact that HT4 on the same box can locate and play the same file is mystifying to me.

 

HT4 isn't accessing the HTTPS stream that Plex sends, it's accessing the data through SMB directly.

 

So after a lot of looking, it seems the router from the new ISP is doing some DNS shenanigans. For future reference for anyone with a similar problem, I was able to solve it by setting the Zidoo's private DNS to dns.google - it now plays video files from my Plex server (which is on the same LAN!) just fine. On the Z10 Pro this is not easy to find - it's under apps > settings > other > about > advanced settings > network > private DNS.

Thanks for the help in pointing me in the right direction.

 

Updated ZidooPlexMod to version 0.1.5. There were a couple of bug fixes and one new feature. You can now select a smaller poster size. @fnhanks let me know if that's more to your liking. To activate the new smaller posters option click the button with two rows of three squares. It cycles through default poster size, small poster size, and list view.

https://github.com/bowlingbeeg/plex-for-kodi/releases/tag/ZidooPlexMod_v0.1.5

 

I was super skeptical and I held off for a while before biting the bullet. Everyone kept saying it was faster but not really providing some concrete data. It came in yesterday and I have been pretty pleased. There's a few bugs/teething issues, but overall it's about 30% faster. I have 400ish movies in my posterwall in HT4, and scrolling top to bottom with all posters cached on the old device took just under 16 seconds. With the pro, it's just over 9. General navigation finally now feels more snappy, like I've had with the shield. It's a pricey upgrade for not a ton of new hardware functionality, but I really do appreciate the speed boost, as I really hate a UX that is laggy and this solves it for me.

I really apologize if my post came off wrong. I know this is free software that you are putting together, and I meant no disrespect. Was just super excited to get this up and running with the new pro, but then was a bit bummed at the screen real estate being taken up in comparison.

Holy crap. This is amazing! This is exactly what I was after!! This is absolutely perfect. The actual plex app with the Z9X was ok, but a lot of the text labels and such were broken (seemed like scaling issues), but this is so much cleaner / nicer looking. I really appreciate you adding this functionality, in less than 24 hours! Let me know if I can buy you a virtual cup of coffee as a token of my appreciation

 

Haha, glad you like it. It turned out to be easier than I expected.

 

@bowlingbeeg
The github repo mentions being able to play some directplay videos, is there any reason for some to not work?

I'm also looking to create an app that will let me play any mkv file from a https link through the zidoo player, do you have any recommendations or advice for setting something like this up? Or could the plextozidoo potentially work if I configure it without any substitutions?

 

@bowlingbeeg Thanks for all the hard work and extra support with the Z9X Pro early adopters, I've found the combo that works on the pro is ZDMC+ZidooPlexMod+PTZ.

Is there any chance for future playlist and show shuffling support in ZidooPlexMod? Right now in Playlist it will always play the first episode in order, and in shuffle show it will shuffle to a random episode then play the next one in order rather than a true shuffle like the native client.

Appreciate your help and making this process possible!

 

I'm assuming you're talking about the comment related to remote Plex servers. And yes in my experience I'm only able to play DVD rips otherwise the zidoo player just says it can't play the video. I don't know why and I only have one remote Plex server to test with so it could be something on that particular server. However, if you use the ZidooPlexMod, it has the smarts to request a transcoded stream if need be. There are some caveats though. You can't fast forward or rewind and it doesn't remember resume points so I haven't really advertised it. Oh and if it does direct play it then I believe you'll have the issue with subtitles that I mention below. The transcoded streams will burn in the subtitles so at least that should work. But as I've said I haven't played around with it much at this point, I've been focusing on just getting ZidooPlexMod working.

The Plex intent comes into PlexToZidoo as an HTTPS streams and it can pass them off to the zidoo player without any substitution. The problem is that the zidoo player can't seem to find the internal subs when you do that and because it's a stream it won't find the external subs either. If it wasn't for that then we wouldn't need the substitution stuff at all and in fact a lot of users have run into that because their substitutions weren't setup correctly. When that happens PlexToZidoo just passes the stream on to the zidoo player and it appears to work. You get the video and audio but no subtitle. Now what I don't know is if it's something inherent in the Plex streams that makes the zidoo player have problems with subtitles or if it it will fail for any sort of HTTPS stream. Basically all you need to do is build up an intent with the HTTPS stream and send it to the zidoo player so it's pretty easy. You can look at the code in github and get an idea of how PlexToZidoo does it. If you want to discuss further details you can send me a private message so we don't clutter up this thread.

 

I haven't really looked at the playlist stuff much because I don't use it but I thought it was working so I guess I'll have to go back and take a closer look.

 

In order to fast forwards and go forwards/backwards you need to disable direct streaming in the app, and make sure direct play is enabled.
Direct play streams the file over http, while direct stream is m3u, which is a protocol most players dont know how to handle properly

Subtitles are a bit of a weird case.
I have my plex content on stremio with a plex addon someone on discord wrote, and subtitles work through there, but not through zidooplexmod for some reason. It reads them incorrectly, recognizing all of them as PGS for some reason, but it does seem to recognize the existence of the subtitle files.

I cant see a reason for encoded content to not work, but it does seem to be the case, really weird, alongside the subtitle issue

The reason I was wondering about the intent, is that trying to open a video file in HT4 from stremio doesnt work if I don't go through PlexToZidoo, so it seems that the standard android intent doesn't work for whatever reason.
I'll have a look at the code and DM you if I have some issues, feel free to DM me as well if you have any questions regarding my setup or something

 

So are you enhancing the main Kodi Plex mod that this is based on? If so that’s awesome! Well either way it’s awesome. Is the Kodi Plex mod something that is ‘sanctioned’ by the Plex team? Or is it completely community developed?

edit: looked at the github repos, looks like a little of both.