Both video and audio freeze in Zidoo NEO X. Is the hard drive to blame? or?..

Good evening, dear forum users. Please excuse me right away for my English - this is Google translator. I bought a Neo X demo model inexpensively in a store, but with a guarantee. I decided not to buy a hard drive yet, since I have one extra one - Seagate Barracuda 3000gb (st3000dm001). It's already quite old and I haven't used it for a long time, it was just lying in the nightstand. I formatted it in Explorer in the player itself without computer formatting. I downloaded music and movies to this disk from another player via NAS, and also downloaded a couple of movies via torrent. As a result, the player often freezes (playback stops) both when playing music and when playing movies. For example, a song plays and then the playback stops. Sometimes it helps to press the Pause button from the remote control and then the Start button (the music starts to continue playing). Sometimes this doesn't help, but rewinding helps. Sometimes after 10-15 seconds the music starts playing on its own. Moreover, the second time the same song can be played without pauses. Same with films. I'm already starting to regret the purchase. My old Egreat A10 still serves me without problems. Maybe someone has encountered a similar situation and can give me some advice? Is it my hard drive that’s causing my problems, or maybe Zidoo’s software is crooked, or did I get a defective player? Thanks in advance for your answers and advice.

 

From what you say it sounds like the hard drive.

Try copying a movie to a USB stick and see if that works. Or over the network from a PC (wired, not WiFi).

 

Those old Barracuda's have a reputation for being unreliable and failing rapidly (check out the web). Your description does not sound good for freezing with both music and movies.
If you can attach it to a computer, I'd suggest running CrystalDiskInfo first (it is available for free) to see what the SMART info shows? Then do a slow (not quick) full NTFS format and see how the drive goes.
As suggested, have you tried playing files directly from your network NAS? Music and older video (not high bitrate 4K) should be fine still with wi-fi.