Feature requests for HT4.0

That's different and you're right. It brings you remembering of special moments at the cinemas, far from normal at these times. This is why I said to keep is as option.

 

I don't know if this will ever make it to firmware as it's just an idea at the moment, but we're talking about creating scripts in much the same way as Kaleidescape, so it would absolutely be optional.

 

Sounds intriguing. I wasn't familiar with what Kaledescape scripts can do - so a quick google found this...

https://www.kaleidescape.com/wp-content/uploads/kaleidescape-qrg-002-scripting-tips.pdf

...which others might find interesting!

 

New here and to Zidoo and the Z9X. I searched and didn’t find this anywhere, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Feature: provide a customize option for the sidebar flyout when NOT in classification mode on the poster wall. This way if you don’t have TV or 3D, etc, you can remove them. You provide it for that mode so why not this one?? Also add a “continue watching” section to show media in progress.

Totally unrelated, but you should really secure the site with an SSL…

 

What is classification mode ? It's when you pick Movies, Series etc. by selecting the round icons in the main page ? Because if I go to "Movies" (blue circle with a reel icon inside), there's no left menu, I can only access it in "All" (green circle with a folder icon).


Also a feature I'd like to see implemented :
While Trakt support could bring it, and since we don't know if trakt will ever be supported, I'd like to have more history (I hope it's the right term haha). Basically if I go in the history section of the "all" category, I only got 9 medias listed, so I can't see what was that movie I watched two weeks ago. I wish Zidoo kept a much longer history. And I think it'd be great, for "watched" movies, to know when was the last time we've watched them (and this could be another sorting option).

 

I like your last suggestion, that could be more convenient for people with a lot of custom categories. I will add it in my list (some of the other ones are already there).

 

I started playing around with soundtrack/theme and I like it. I would like to request these improvements.

1. Add option to display icon on poster wall to indicate which poster has soundtrack. Could just be a yellow clef icon like in Zappiti.
2. Separate soundtrack start playing time from the trailer start time. Currently, if I set trailer to start after 10 seconds then soundtrack will also start playing after 10 seconds when browsing around in poster wall. Ideally, I would like soundtrack to start much quicker, say in 2 seconds.
3. Add support for -theme file name in addition to -soundtrack. Currently, the soundtrack file name must be in the format of MovieName-soundtrack.mp3. I would like to request that Zidoo also support MovieName-theme.mp3. The reason is that both Plex and Jellyfin support -theme for soundtrack so that I can re-use the same soundtrack file in those apps.

 

Can we have an option to not show fanart/backgrounds on detail/preplay, collections, and season screens? I've detailed some of my opinions on how backgrounds can add visual clutter, given the various layout/design choices that Zidoo has made. I know you can't please everyone and realize that I am probably among only a few users that feel similarly.

As an alternative to Zidoo tweaking the designs of those screens, it would be great if they offered a "basic black mode" that simply turned off backgrounds all together. This would provide a clean layout, removing the visual mishmash that can often occur when overlaying posters on top of fan art/backgrounds.

 

Still hoping the team can consider adopting a similar naming convention as Plex. Specifically the "Optional Info" feature of their naming convention. I have Sonarr and Radarr setup to be as detailed as possible about the files I have because it helps me curate my library. This is information that HT shouldnt be concerned about or even looking at...but it does.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-tv-show-files/

So, for example, It could look something like this depending on what info you told Sonarr or Radarr to put in:

The Series Title! (2010) - S01E01 - Episode Title 1 [AMZN WEBDL-1080p Proper][DV HDR10][DTS 5.1][x264]

Basically, everything contained within brackets ([]) is considered "Optional Info" by Plex and will be ignored when scraping the file. Home Theater should be doing this too but this information should not matter to the program.


Most people probably arent going to be using this unless they have followed https://trash-guides.info/ to setup Sonarr and Radarr for tight control over quality. Even still, its a small ask and I don't believe it would take a lot of time for the team to implement this in the naming scheme.



***Lastly, another weird thing I've noticed in HT is that the metadata from TMDB of TVDB will become stale for some series for some reason...for example, I had about 3 episodes of "Bel Air" with no actual TV show information for the episodes, they just showed up as "Episode 4" with generic information about the TV show in the info box. Even when I re-matched the file, it still had this information. The only way to fix it was to re-match the file and switch to a different database to match against, so if I was using TVDB for the show, I would have to switch to TMDB to get the correct information pulled. And this was happening even with .NFO files being generated by Tiny Media Manager.

 

Not sure if it's been requested - but trakt support will go a LONG way to managing watch history across multiple devices

 

I'd like to use HT4, BUT yes there's a BUT I absolutely HATE the way HT4 organize my movies it is all over the place ,unorganized, I like to use the folder >files architecture like in Kodi (ZDMC) ,I know you can in HT4, but in the file system I'd like to have the possibility to change the view of the way to display posters (thumbnails)


For example, in HT4 when you use the "File" option in the settings, you can go into the folder then files. in this example I created the folder "Star Wars" > Sub-folders > The Book of Boba Fett then the files inside the sub-folder, The Clone Wars.... also in the "Star Wars" folder I put the other Star Wars movies . Unfortunately you can only select this kind of view in HT4 when you select the "Files" architecture in HT4 settings. Really only one choice to display the posters!!!!


Why we don't have this type of view also?


Or this one, or any others?

Also, the speed of scrolling through pages in HT4 is soooooooo slow compares to Kodi (ZDMC). Fix these points and I might use HT4, but for now for me HT4 is a big NO. Kodi (ZDMC) is more customizable than HT4 for sure.

 

This is the same reason I use ZDMC and not HT4.0. Video/files in Kodi allows you to go into a folder and see all the information on the movies (and TV episodes) in that folder. This is much simpler to navigate when you have a large collection spread over a network multiple NAS and Cloud drives as well as HDD's (internal and external). It is so much better than lumping them all together in the one collection. I try to separate my different genres in separate folders (in different network locations) to make it easy to find and select. I know HT shows genres as an option but Kodi's system makes it easy.
I do like the extra information provided by HT4.0 but after initially trying, have kept to ZDMC and are quite happy with the way this works. My wife also is happy (very important!) as she's been used to finding movies in Kodi using Videos/files/ for 5 years.

 

Absolutely, the Video/files navigation in ZDMC is great for big collection if you have a NAS attached to your Zidoo, In my case, I have 69.78 TB worth of files on my NAS, but I wish you'd have different view choice of posters in HT4 when you used the same type of Video/files architecture in HT4 you can only use one view to display your posters and that's it, as described above (lame). Also when you have a huge collection of movies, series, anime... scrolling through pages in HT4.0 is so painfully slow, ZDMC in comparison is so fast. They need to implement more customization settings, display settings in HT4.0 to make it more user friendly.

 

I fully agreed with you but I'm affair that Kodi structure of ZDMC makes it impossible to be like HT4 aesthetically. Then I support the idea of promoting/enhancing HT4 by means of improve the functionality/speed/customization.

 

The thing about ZDMC is that you don’t get an info overlay when using the native player. That said I’m thinking of switching to ZDMC again as my collection is starting to grow and the lack of features like Trakt is really pretty annoying. Also NFS isn’t working for me with ZDMC anymore but SMB still does since the last few firmware updates.

With ZDMC now do you change where you store your artwork? I have a separate NVME drive in my NAS and I’d like to store all the artwork there.

 

Maybe hang on for a bit....

 

Would be great if it syncs two ways. This way we can have watched status synced across different devices.

 

That’s the whole point of Trakt isn’t it? While the rating system and sharing features are nice, the ability to sync between devices and keep watched statuses backed up is invaluable for large media libraries. With Trakt it is also possible to sync playback positions but I don’t use that feature as often.

I agree that HT4.0 is really slow to populate artwork- I store my artwork on a separate NVME drive on my NAS and it’s still incredibly slow. It’s frustrating to be browsing my library and to have to wait for HT4.0 to catch up. Kodi/ZDMC on the otherhand is pretty much instantaneous.

It would be great if the way Audio Tracks and Subtitle Tracks were switched was changed, as it is now there are a lot of unnecessary key presses for a common feature. There should be the option to one-press the hot key to switch to the next track. I especially notice this when watching anime with multiple subtitle tracks- the Zidoo video player always defaults to the first subtitle track if you leave subtitles on. If you’re using the third or fourth track you have to always change it when you’re starting a new episode- very annoying.

I appreciate that the Zidoo team is listening to our feedback and is actively developing both the software and the hardware side of things. I am happy with my Z9X so far and it’s great the HT4.0 suite continues to improve.

 

I don't think that two way sync is necessarily that obvious, that's why I wrote it. PCH for example only did scrobble to tract, but this was years ago.

There is:

 

All that does is bring up a track list, you still need to manually select the track you want. I'm talking about one button press to cycle through the tracks. As I said, when I watch anime I still need to manually open up the audio and subtitle track lists and select the tracks I want for each episode. Kodi memorizes the last track used for the previous episode so I don't need to do this.