I upgraded from Z1000 Pro to Z30 Pro, but two key features are missing

You know when the screen goes black because it has to switch frame rate and possibly input resolution as well? That's known as the "HDMI bonk" and takes longer on some setups than others.

The Z1000 Pro had an option to pause video after playback was started, so the image had a chance to return. I set it to 10 seconds here, and that worked really well. Sadly, this function is gone on the Z30 Pro, and I don't understand why.

The other "feature" was that the Z1000 Pro didn't do this "HDMI bonk" when autoplaying the next file in a TV series, as long as frame rate and resolution was identical. The Z30 Pro does this, and I don't understand why.

Is there anyone I could e-mail and ask to consider fixing these two things? I didn't think that such great features would be removed in what's supposed to be the superior model.

 

LOL - I think there's a translation error here - it's HDMI sync (bonking is something else entirely ).

But yes, I agree, the pause video option should be returned - I was told the reason it was left out was because the HDMI sync on these boxes is faster, but that's untrue because it depends on the HDMI sinks upstream (note that's "sink" not "sync") - amp/tv/projector etc. My amps and displays take exactly the same amount of time to resync with the AML models as they did with the Realtek ones.

As for resync between episodes - again, if the parameters are the same, I agree, it shouldn't happen.

It's a bit like screensaver on pause - that returns to the UI parameters so you get a resync with that too which is nuts.

@Eki Shaw - can we look at this please (the screen saver issue and frame rate pause option have been in the pdf for a while)

 

+1 for keeping the same output format between consecutive episodes of a TV series when played back to back.

HDMI resync is annoying and so is the audio decoder resync on HDMI. For example, seeking through a file with AC3+ track results in the audio missing for around 1 ~ 2 seconds after every jump. This ought to be fixable, the player just needs to output valid, but silent, audio frames in the right audio codec format to prevent the AVR from losing the audio sync. This is a solution that has been around for a very long time. I've implemented this in the drivers for set top boxes back in 2014 and it wasn't a new thing back then.

 

Yes, I know what bonking is But it is what it's known as, because of the unfortunate nature of the screen going black and such, I figure. Of course there's a proper technical term for it

 

Anyway, the most annoying part here is probably that it resynchronises after every episode, when it's completely unnecessary. I can easily pause an episode if I've just started it and wait for the image to return. It's less important with feature films, of course.

 

Exactly. It takes a while here, too, with both the projector and the scaler needing to find the new video parameters. It used to be much worse with previous projectors and scalers though, as evidenced by the fact that the ten second delay was enough with my Z1000 Pro.

Two episodes of the same anime series are rather likely to have the exact same parameters It also happens on some Apple TV apps when, again, it's completely unnecessary. I don't recall if it's only on apps that use custom players, like Max or Prime.

 

"HDMI - Intercourse"?

 

Credit to you!

I just googled - "What is HDMI-bonk?" Response: -

If you use an external HDMI media player with frame rate matching you may have noticed that your TV goes black for a second or two before and after video playback.

I rather like that over HDMI-Sync

 

If only it was just a second or two

 

When it happens to me it, it usually takes about 3 seconds

 

It's also like one or two seconds, max, on my mom's old Panasonic plasma. The fact that I'm using a projector and a scaler just makes the issue an entirely different beast, and it was one thing I really appreciated about Zidooing, rather than streaming on my Apple TV or watching a disc.

I've just put my Z1000 Pro up for sale, so I'm keeping the new one, but it would be really nice if they could at least make it so that the HDMI doesn't bonk itself between episodes with the exact same refresh rate and resolution.

 

That's why I output everything in LLDV to my projector, I set the Zidoo UI to 4K23 LLDV and I only have match frame rate and not match resolution on.

My new PJ isn't bad at about 5s or so, but my old one was a 15s resync which was crazy.

But with these settings, I only get a resync when frame rate changes from 23.976 and since most of my content is 23.976, I rarely see them.

 

Sure, we are checking this.

 

Unfortunately, SDR BT.2020 4K material is still not recognised properly (yes, this is part of the UHD Blu-ray spec ). It'll even report different types of HDR on the material depending on when you're asking I think it was telling me that Evangelion 3.0+1.11 was HDR10+ before starting the video to check and HLG afterwards. Or maybe it was the other way around. Neither is close to correct

Still a very valuable upgrade for me though. Some of the upgrades for the way it handles subtitles are very welcome, like how it'll remember that I like UTF-8 encoding and other neat changes.

 

Hi Mark. Why not run the Zidoo UI to 4K23.976 LLDV ?

 

That's exactly what I said I do!!

"I set the Zidoo UI to 4K23 LLDV"

4K23 is shorthand for 4K @23.976fps. There is no such frame rate as 23.000fps.

 

My bad