Anyone compare DV Zidoo vs. Bluray player?

Just received my Z9X a few days ago, and have been playing around with it. Overall I'm pretty satisfied, although I do wish they just used Kodi as the front end.

It replaced a Windows-based HTPC as my media player. Neither that, nor my current Bluray player (Sony X800) handles Dolby Vision, which is the main reason I decided to go for the Zidoo. I first thought about upgrading the bluray player, but I ripped all my UHD discs to my NAS and prefer watching them through a media player.

Now that I have the Zidoo, I must say that I'm pretty underwhelmed at the difference between HDR10 and DV. This is being displayed on an 83" LG C2 OLED. However, it hasn't been calibrated. I've tried watching different scenes of movies that I know well and that are encoded with DV, and switching between DV and HDR mapping on the Zidoo. Yeah, there is some difference if you look carefully, but the difference is hardly night and day.

I'm wondering if this is because the Zidoo can't play full DV, or if it is just that there is really little difference between DV and HDR10. I wish I had a DV bluray player to really compare, but I'm not ready to shell out hundreds of dollars on a new player. So, does anyone out there have a bluray player that handles DV, and can comment on the difference between that and the Zidoo in terms of playing DV? Because right now, I'm almost tempted to return the Zidoo and just stick with my HTPC and regular HDR.

 

See this thread http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/pls-help-test-z9x-with-oppo-203.95534

 

I have a Sony TV which allows some adjusting of Dolby Vision settings and was very impressed with Dolby Vision via MKV on the Z9X vs. HDR10 on the Sony X800.

I'm not sure of your LG TV's settings with a Dolby Vision signal but if you're able to monkey with the black levels/brightness, that might help get things looking how you want them.

 

I would strongly suggest installing ZDMC (a Kodi fork that uses the Zidoo's hardware and Settings) as you will pick it up easily and it just works (including with multiple NAS', full audio passthrough and Dolby Vision)
You can have it working at the same time as the included HT4, so you can swap and choose between them at any time.

 

@Charles Lee which dolby vision picture mode are you using on your C2? Are you using the normal "Cinema" mode with all the AI crap turned off?

 

Yes. I was annoyed to learn that DV doesn't work with Filmmaker mode on the C2. So I set DV to use Home Cinema mode, I believe, and adjusted it to look as close to Filmmaker mode as I could.

 

Just to stick my oar in, I've compared the Zidoo many times to my Sony UHD BluRay player and Dolby Vision looks subjectively, to me, exactly the same between the two.

If you see any great difference between Dolby Vision and HDR10 then there would be something wrong somewhere.

Don't believe the hype.

 

Do not use Cinema HOME mode. That mode is wildly innacurate (for the same reason DV gaming mode on LG's look like crap). Normal "Cinema" mode is the most accurate picture mode that comes out of the box on LG TVs for Dolby Vision. Apparently in the near future manufacturers are going to add a "DV Filmmaker" mode but we'll see if/when that actually happens...

 

How tired are you at this point of threads saying "why does DV/HDR10 look better on ____ device vs. Zidoo? lol. That being said, I'm hoping someone finally figures out why everyone thinks the Oppo looks so good.

 

No, that was my point. DV and HDR10 basically looks the same. Maybe if I had two TVs side by side and I played them both together, I might be able to spot the difference. But right now, DV seems to be way over-hyped.

So either DV is actually not much better than HDR10 and is just a very successful marketing job, or the Z9X isn't properly outputting DV. It seems that it is the former.

 

I do roll my eyes a lot...

 

It could be that DV defaulted to Cinema home and I switched to the other. I know that there are two Cinema modes, and one is noticeably brighter and cooler than Filmmaker Mode, while the other is similar to Filmmaker but still a touch brighter.

 

They have a very good marketing department...

 

I am fully convinced that the Oppo "placebo" effect is an extremely powerful entity! Lol... when you pay as much as people do for those Oppos, and you read from everyone how amazing they must be, then owners just go into it "knowing" that any video output from it has to look more correct and more perfect than what is output from anything else....

 

For me the PQ of Zidoo, Dune and OPPO are very close with marginal differences for some HDR modes with some scenes. Use Zidoo as my daily player mostly because of its flexibility and many useful options.

For me not a difference in any way and I have all of them myself. So not all say the same.

 

Yea try out the normal "Cinema" mode for Dolby Vision.

Also, I think the differences between Dolby Vision & HDR10 are more suble than marketing will have you believe. Dolby Vision should dynamically adjust metadata on a frame per frame or scene by scene basis, whereas HDR10 just applies the same metadata for the entire video. I've never actually done a direct comparison between HDR10 and DV but my guess is that DV isn't like MINDBLOWINGLY DIFFERENT, but rather it has subtle improvements.

 

They were quite good in the past when they used Qdeo and VRS chips. It all went downhill when they used MediaTek.

 

Can you explain this more? What do you mean it went downhill when "they" used mediatek? You mean dolby vision themselves? Sorry, just trying to learn more! Can you explain this further?

 

I meant Oppo. Some manufacturers didnt produce SoCs anymore so they had limited options.

 

I remember your review back in the day - I could never understand why Oppo got elevated to almost cult status - flexibility compared to the big names I guess.