Zidoo Home Theater is looking better and better. It's starting to compete with ZDMC Before I attempt to populate HT with full library few issues need to be resolved. 1. HT works well if the library is no more than 200 titles. Anything in access of 1,000 titles becomes painful. One of the issues is that on occasion you need to line everything up by title and scroll down to letter S or something further down the database. It takes forever and scrolling screen is annoying. Industry standard is to press letter S on the keyboard (Microsoft File Explorer) to get to first occurrence of file or title starting with S. Using Kodi Shift+S will do the same thing and typing few more letters quickly holding shift key will get the right title. Using End and Home key is also very common but not with Zidoo and HT. The same apply to media browser or source media listing where you can delete file. You end up scrolling pages to get to the file and by then you not even sure if this is correct file you want to delete. Delete function should be with movie icon menu beside rematch. 2. Search function is still crippled. HT3 added full onscreen keyboard but again you need to use arrow keys forever. Why can't we use direct key input from keyboard or use remote control numeric keypad (marked T9 in HT3) and type the letters using numbers on remote like in the old days on the flip phone. To type "King" you would push directly 5-5, 4-4-4, 6-6, 4 without using arrows all around and enter in between. 3. Filter function in the poster wall should include sources. With larger collection you probably end up grouping types of movies like for kids in single network drive or share. It would be great to show movies from this location in poster wall rather than listing of files. I know you can work on category but this is longer project for some other time. Filter by source is much easier and practical even for recent additions.
@3DBuff, I'm in complete agreement - received a new version today and it is much improved, but you're absolutely right, the alphabetical search is extremely important - I'm hoping this is next on the agenda - I'm certainly pushing for it. But it's great to see these improvements coming thick and fast - Zidoo are certainly listening to us and making this product better and better...
Got the latest version pushed through - but the change log is in Chinese. Do you know what the changes are?
Not seen the changelog - I get the apk only.. attached are my beta notes - the strikethroughs are what were fixed in this release. Also, genre list is editable now, and there is a territory widget.
I had a quick look at latest update. Few improvements in the right direction. Filter by source actually works well. There is new filter by region. I could use filter by country like Kodi or ZDMC. Badges still need work. Quick fix would be to disable decoder badges update for ISO and File Structures after playback of the movie similar to MKV files. It would allow audio badge to stay on movie page.
I do not agree with you about that : In a family, there are always movies being watched, why do you think plex, infuse, etc ... have this ''5. Watching If you do not have any movies in the "Watching" list, the front screen looks empty, and this may often be the case. So maybe rearrange so that from top to bottom we have: Latest Widgets Genres Watching Recommended This way, regardless of how many movies are in "Watching", we always see a nice populated screen'' Zidoo Team copied the best from competitors, it's a BETA but about their GUI i think they hit the nail on the head. About Media Labels, it never worked and since time you can light a candle and pray. Congratulations for your implication and Keep up the great work
Well, We will do alphabetic navigation, similar to the implementation of collections. And about the search function. in the search screen.press "up" key, move the cursor to the input box, then you can type anything you want on your keyboard. Enjoy!
Possibly in the scenario of a living room, but in a dedicated theatre it's more likely that you'll watch full movies and not walk away halfway through, so there will always be a point where there are no movies currently being watched. I'm not saying remove "Watching", just move it from the top slot. This is what it looks like if there are no movies in progress - looks a bit sad and empty: If you shift things around a bit you're never met with an empty screen, you get something like this: Of course another alternative would be to move the whole lot up if there are no "Watching" movies:
The best thing would be to add an option to be able to move the rows (watching / recommended /latest/ etc ...) as needed, ask Mirror if its team can add this possibility.
Yes - that's the best idea - not that easy to implement in terms of controls, but it would give the best flexibility.
this is only my opinion, But the Source icon should not be visible in this row , we rarely use it and just to show the path of our video library (NAS / external HDD / etc ...) or we should be able to select it or not as for the other icons (movie/tv show/etc...) see you
Ladies and Gentlemen! The search function is working now Yes, the "UP" arrow. How could I not see it Great Zidoo. Serach works with any keyboard or wireless device with alphanumeric keys. UP key takes you to text string window where you can type and use arrow key to move between letters to correct something when misspelled. @mirror while I have your attention. How difficult would be to implement this swipe off movie info overlay screen with movie poster off the backdrop artwork? UP key would work great. If the focus is on the top row icons on movie page like Play, BD Menu, Trailers using up could slide overlay down exposing full screen artwork. Down key would bring it back up. Similar concept is shown here with Kodi skin in ZDMC. It's all about graphics and looks
@OlivierQC, yes you are right it never worked but it's about time to fix it. HT is on the right path. A lot of good tags are implemented. It just needs a bit of fixing in order to work. Wouldn't you like to see audio tags with type and number of channels like DTS-X 7.1 or Dolby Atmos 7.1 on your movie page? We just need to make sure important once like audio are there. That's all.
100% with Mark on this. For me its a dedicated movie wall. It looks cool if I stop half way through something and go back - but most times its just an empty space. Agree its good to have but put it in a slightly different place
There is great progress being made on HT3 - it has once gain made the Z9S my go to box. I just hope we see as much progress on firmware.
Don't forget there's not really such a thing as DTX-X 7.1 or Atmos 7.1 since they're both object based... (I know they can be discretely encoded to save bit-rate for broadcast, but 5.1/7.1 etc, is still not applicable)
