Beta version v1.0.75 for Z9X Pro/Z20 Pro/Z2000 Pro/Z2600/UHD5000 release

Off the top of my head, Top Gun (original- Paramount), Days of Thunder (Paramount), PIXAR's Wall-E (Criterion), The Fog, Escape from New York, Red Heat, They Live, Prince of Darkness, Cliffhanger, Three Days of the Condor, and The Deer Hunter (all Studio Canal versions); Saving Private Ryan (Paramount), Halloween 2 (Scream), etc.

 

Except for the problematic FEL DV titles where the compression is borked on the HDR10 layer. You definitely need to reproduce the entire 12 bit video stream (which takes dual HEVC decoders) on those titles even with the various "bugs" that Dolby never fixed on 4k Blu-ray. That's why I am considering the Ugoos AM6b+ for FEL Dolby Vision files.

 

Cool - I've got a few of those.

Certainly remember Saving Private Ryan - that's a classic bad early RPU. I'll have a look over the next couple of days.

 

Dune also has the light flashing similar to the flashing in Saving Private Ryan without the Fel layer

 

Isnt this Pro range chipset just an interim range ,before the next chipsets become available which will be more along the lines 8k and natively support dual layer DV
Ie
we had a thread or two showing the next range of chipsets last year ? ,on here (so possibly already being worked on by Zidoo ?

 

Dual layered FEL Dolby Vision would have to be approved by Dolby if the chip manufacturers, Zidoo, Dune, and others want to stay on their good side. The ability of the Ugoos to handle FEL correctly was because of the hard work of consumers and some fancy coding on their part, not Dolby or any of the local streaming box companies. Luckily, at the time, Ugoos' SOC had dual HEVC decoders that could be used together to make it FEL compatible.

 

I used to build my own media centers. But all those install steps, redoing it when there are updates. Or when my wife wanted to play a movie and it became complex or just didnt work.

I am so happy with my Zidoo. Start it...and it plays movies .

 

Getting happier with the Zidoo UHD5000 by the minute. Found a buggy problem for HDMI handshake problem with Marantz A10 and the Zidoo . Put Video/HDMi on By-pass on the AV10, now Zidoo plays perfect on match resolution/framerate.

 

Only one question; should I put hdmi audio on automatic or on raw on the Zidoo UHD5000

 

mine is conected to a Marantz processor so i have it on raw so it's all bit streamed.

 

Auto plays audio according to the EDID.

RAW plays the raw bitstream regardless of EDID.

In most cases both are fine as long as you have an amp that does all audio formats. However, if for example your amp/soundbar etc doesn't support, say DTS, then in RAW, DTS will be output as a bitstream and you get silence. Auto would allow the box to convert to PCM.

To be honest you're better off with Auto (as long as you're on v1.0.70 or above) as that will choose the correct mode.

(There was a bug in firmware prior to v1.0.70 where some codecs were converted to PCM regardless)

 

Ok, I don't have as many of these as I first thought, at least not the Dolby Vision versions.


Wall-E (Criterion, FEL)

Could detect no issues - took a sample every 10 minutes and although difficult to detect like for like due to switching sources, I could see no difference in image quality between the Zidoo and my Sony UHD player. No macro blocking and no RPU issues.

Saving Private Ryan (Paramount, FEL)

Yes - this is one of the original usual suspects and the FEL is badly processed (I won't say faulty - just incorrectly processed) which is compensated for by actual video levels in the FEL - upshot is you see a pumping in luminosity when applying the RPU to the base layer - this one needs to be watched in HDR10.

Prince of Darkness (Studio Canal, FEL)

Odd one - not a great encode - a lot of grain.

Also interesting because someone else had an issue with this release - see link below:

http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?thr...2600-uhd5000-release.97040/page-7#post-206347

At the time, from their description, I thought this was a suspect disc along the lines of the others as you see from my reply, but after getting a copy, I couldn't reproduce the issue and neither could other users (see page after).

In watching on both the Zidoo and the Sony UHD BD player, the artifacts are identical on both - the moon at the beginning, and the horizontal lines in the building on the campus in the opening scenes - with both players, encoding artifacts are present.

The presence of a Full Enhancement Layer doesn't improve anything - I see no subjective difference between the Sony presentation with both layers and the Zidoo in this case.

Dune (Warner, MEL)

Ok, this one is a Minimum Enhancement Layer (MEL) title so the Zidoo essentially processes it the same as any UHD BluRay player - it would be pretty unique if there were any RPU discrepancies because they couldn't be corrected in the enhancement layer - a Minimum Enhancement Layer is just a placeholder - essentially a static mid-grey 1920x1080 field - so it can't modulate the base layer.

I checked anyway, just to see if I could see anything, had a look every 10 minutes and no issues that I could see.

 

Any ideas why I can't manage to play certain video files given the following information? (plays no problem on my laptop via VLC):

Video
Format: Advanced Video Codec
Format profile: High 10@L4.1
Width: 1920 pixels
Height: 1080 pixels
Display aspect ratio: 16:9
Frame rate: 23.976
Bit Depth: 10 bits

Audio
Format: FLAC
Bit rate: ~1 438 kb/s
Channel(s): 2 channels
Sampling rate: 48.0 kHz

 

Format profile: High 10@L4.1 in addition to AVC at 1080p. Probably not supported natively by the chipset?

Normal 4K HDR encode from disc is High10@L5.1@High.

 

Yep - level 4.1 is correct, but not 10-bits. Only standard 8-bit AVC is supported by the SOC.

 

Ahh darn it, assuming it's not possible to be supported in the future via firmware? But thanks for the response to confirm, instead of me playing about all day with settings.

 

No, sorry, it's a restriction in the SOC.

 

I recently noticed after factory reset HDR and DV has sharp and clear playback as soon as i connect z2600 to wifi and scan the movies. It lost the clarity and sharpness. Which is very annoying. i do not know what is causing that.

 

I noticed it previously watching on Z9X, around the 10:49min mark where the scene has the ship and the back drop is bright sky. I would notice the sky flickering. Also scene where they on the planet talking to the lady before they first go out into the fields. Also backdrop is bright sky. Both scene have dark foreground and bright back drop. The bright sky flickered for me.

 

Just had a look at the 10:49 scene - it's actually around 10:39 - but no flickering. As I say, this is a MEL title so there can't be a FEL issue with it.