My 2 Z9X players are unstable as SMB media servers. I can start the movie from Zidoo A using the Media Browser app and select the file from SMB Zidoo B. It plays just fine. Now I go to Zidoo B and select a file from Zidoo A using the same method Media Browser app and pointing to SMB Zidoo A. Zidoo B player goes to the opening screen and locks up for at least 2 minutes trying to access the file. Front display shows 00:00:00. I can stop, cancel and get out of the player screen but the player is still stuck in the background trying to open the file. Front panel showing 00:00:00. For the next 2 minutes or until it times out and the front goes to current time the Zidoo machine is slow, browser locked and would not update posters in HT. It returns to normal when the front reverts to current time. Killing tasks and clearing cache is not helping. The process repeats when trying to start any other movie from Zidoo A. It works as normal from different NAS locations except for Zidoo A. In order to gain access to Zidoo A shares I need to disable Samba in quick setting in Zidoo A for a few seconds or reboot A. The process works in reverse if I start with Zidoo B first. I tested it multiple times and it's repeatable. The issue is not related to the Home Theater app. It's between the SAMBA server and Zidoo player app. Starting the movie blocks Samba server on the same machine. Don't know if anybody else is using multiple Zidoos with local drives and has this issue. I'll probably end up removing drives from one Zidoo to avoid this lockup issue.
I do not have this same problem, but HT4 for a long time, no longer send the waking up of the NAS ....... and after a while it comes !! Besides, access to hard discs in HT4 is very long to come, which is not the case by the media-center !!! I don't know what's going on, but it is very painful! I reset the zidoo to its original state without success?
The Zidoo does not send a WOL to the NAS - it will only wake up when a file is accessed and the speed it wakes up will depend on the NAS. So if the NAS is asleep and a file is played (whether HT4 or Mediacenter) there may be a delay as the NAS wakes up. Media Center behaviour is slightly different because you tend to navigate the file structure before selecting a file, which, depending how the cache works on the NAS, can wake it up before you play a file.
Ok thank you, but yet there are a few firmwares, the latency much less important !! We will do with it.
It is annoying I agree, but once the NAS is awake, access is immediate. I use an automation system so part of my Room On command is to send wakeup commands to my NAS drives so they are ready. They don't support WOL so I have to send an http PUT command. The other option is to disable sleep on the NAS. On mine one option would be to disable automatic sleep and set a time schedule so it stays awake in the evening for example and sleeps the rest of the time so you only get the delay if you watch out of the preset schedule.
Drives sleeping is not the problem in my case. I already tested it. Zidoo option for hard drive sleep mode is probably tied in to Sata connected drive. USB drives are still sleeping or not independent from this Zidoo setting. With sleep disabled I can still hear one of the drives starting up. On the other Zidoo I have a USB drive that is always spinning, not accessing files just quietly spinning without heads moving. Separate NAS devices will spin the drives down and up based on demand and activity. My ancient drive 2TB WD Live will spin down the drive and keep it off even if I access it with Windows PC and open root directory. It wakes up on file or subfolder opening. On the other hand WD Cloud (not Home) probably V1 or V2 keeps constantly waking up for no reason. Zidoo will wait for drives to spin up on any NAS and access files when ready. That is not my case. The Zidoo player app locks up on access of files from second Zidoo if the drive is spinning or not. It will lock up again and again for the same Zidoo access on USB and SATA drive until I reboot server Zidoo or disable and enable SAMBA option.
Painful very long time? How long is it? Can you time it and let us know? Is it painful 30 seconds or 3 minutes?
Now that I got remote screen working using scrcpy and played around a bit more I got both Zidoos locked up for good. The reboot or disable NAS trick is not working anymore. I can't start movies from the other Zidoo drive without waiting for few minutes. It gets going again on one Zidoo if I disable Samba server and reboot. Changing both IP's should work as well from my previous experience. Having drives attached to 2 Zidoos on the same network is probably not very common. I don't know if anybody could confirm the issue. Don't know if Zidoo support or @mirror would look into it. I'm leaning towards removing drives from one Zidoo and setting them up on separate NAS even small RaspberryPi should do. Those drives are not frequently used.
Between 1 and 3 minutes, and sometimes I enter my file and everything disappears and force to wait again for 1/3 min!
If you don't have issue starting movie from Media Center it's probably something in HT itself. Just make sure your posters and movie database are stored on Zidoo. Follow Mark's recommendations from here. Third screenshot for "Poster Folder". My issue is before I even start HT. I can boot Zidoo, give it a minute to settle down, go to Media Center > select NAS on my second Zidoo > browse to share with movies > click on the movie and it gets stuck on black or artwork screen for at least 3 minutes with Zidoo front display showing 00:00:00. Sometime it takes forever and I need to press Stop on remote and escape x2 to get out of stuck screen. It still takes about 3 minutes to recover and get full control of Zidoo with current time on front display. When I wait for the movie to start it plays as normal. I can skip chapter and fast forward. All OK. If I stop the movie and start the same movie again it gets stuck again on opening screen. It will get stuck on all movies and all drives on this second Zidoo.
There is a long thread over 20 pages "Z9X - SMB playback issues while streaming from NAS" here. The issues described in this thread are all somehow related to bandwidth with movies starting OK and stuttering within few minutes. This is opposite to my Zidoo to Zidoo issue. Once the movie starts it works perfect to the end and I can skip forward and back. From my previous setup I had Raspberry Pi 3 with 2 USB 2.0 drives connected to it. Zidoo would read 3D ISO files over 45GB in size from the the Raspberry Pi 3 NAS limited to 20mb/s without any issues whatsoever. It would decode ISO and Blu-Ray menus in a matter of couple of seconds. Over the time I swapped Raspberry Pi to Zidoo X9S. All good. Recently I upgraded to second Z9X for VS10 and this is when it all went down hill
I removed my two 8TB drives from Z9X Zidoo B. I set them up on Raspberry Pi 4. First I tested Open Media Vault on 64bit OS. The configuration for NAS as media server is painful as hell. Avery little step one at the time you "Save" and "Apply" and watch the clock on screen for about 20s. You need to mount and then add folders as shares rather than complete drives. User management is very similar. For local network media server this was overkill. Half way through I gave up and threw it out overriding MicroSD with fresh image of Kodi 20 for RPi4 LibreELEC. Slick and quick. I didn't even bother setting up Kodi and scanning drives to build movie database. Just setup simple SAMBA with username and password. Both drives attached to RPi4 were automatically served on the network. I got very respectful performance over 80 MB/s upload and for some reason only over 50MB/s download. Still plenty of speed for what I need. Drives carry 3D ISO files. Both Zidoo's access and play movies without hesitation from RPi4. Not a one single stutter or a glitch. I had to add a power button to RPi4. Not too complicated but allows me to power down without connecting it the the display. Small RPi4 with 2 drives on USB 3.0 ports and power adapter, no other accessories. Since I removed drives and SAMBA server from one Zidoo a quick test was in order. Zidoo A still had 3 high capacity drives connected to it and active SAMBA. Played movies from Zidoo A using local drives and RPi4 NAS. All OK. Moved to Zidoo B (no SAMBA active). Played movie from RPi4. All good. Zidoo A shares were showing "Invalid" in HT and "Unmounted" in Media Center. Turning SAMBA off and on again on Zidoo A fixed that problem. Shares showed up in Media Center and HT. UHD Blu-Ray file structure movie starts in about 5s! I hope this is the end of my journey with 2 Zidoo's and SAMBA servers. Time will tell. Here is the conclusion for setting up media drives - For single Zidoo player 1. Local drives attached to Zidoo probably USB hub with 5 slots or similar. @Nice Monkey is promoting this option. Easy to manage, all drives are local to Zidoo, no performance issues but could be noisy if open area around the TV. 2. NAS external servers. Cost more and probably a good solution. Some people report issues with Synology and PC as NAS. WD NAS drives and regular Gigabit switches appear to be reliable solution. Don't buy WD MyCloud Home drives. Not recommended for local NAS. - 2 or more Zidoo players 1. Using both Zidoos as NAS is a bad idea. 2. One Zidoo with local drives and external NAS as needed it is probably preffered way.
