Me and my wacky problems!

OK I'm pretty sure nobody here has seen this problem but it's worth a shot. When I'm using the z9x I can run a test on a movie to check my audio settings, but when I exit and go to another movie, not all the time but a lot of the time, I'll lose the audio signal to my Left and Right mains, and my 2 subs. Sometimes it fixes it to pause the movie and start, to exit out of the movie and go back in, and worst case scenario I have to shut down my AVR (Emotiva MR1) while the movie is playing and then turn it back on. I also have a Shield attached to my AVR and it never gives me this problem.

Obviously none of these scenarios is ideal. Has anyone else had this problem, and if so is there a fix? I hope? Please...

Oh yeah, and while I got you by the attentions, everything I read gives the impression that one should choose DV 10 or whatever it's called, and let the tv convert it to HDR10 which produces a better picture than defaulting strictly to HDR10+. True or false?

 

no, but I had that before. Sound kept playing...video frooze. It was with way older firmware.
(if you have the normal z9x...you are in the wrong partt of the forum)

 

Sorry, I'm still getting used to the names. It's a z9x Pro. And that isn't what I'm experiencing. I'm talking about the 9.2.4 audio signal not sending a signal to the two Left and Right main speakers and two subs. They're all on, and then when switching to a different movie they no longer....come on, I explained it above.

 

Just to confirm - do you still have audio from the surrounds or is all HDMI audio lost?

What do you have for Settings/Audio/HDMI Audio ?

 

Mark old buddy! ;-) Yes all of the other speakers have sound. I believe HDMI Audio is set to Enhanced. That's the setting you're talking about right? Enhanced vs. Standard? It's Enhanced.

 

No, in the Zidoo - Settings/Audio/HDMI Audio

If you have it set to Auto, try RAW.

 

Yeah I have it set to RAW.

 

And here's another problem now. Quite a few of my movies don't play. They're the same specs as the movies that play fine. 4K, TrueHD or various DTS's, etc. But I'll click Play and it looks like it's about to load but then it goes back to the movie's synopsis title page. All 4 of my Expendables movies for example.
EDIT: Now it seems to be happening more often than not. Seriously, WTF? It's always something. Still losing audio to my L/F and subs too.

 

Let me guess, those that don't play are *.avi files?

Regarding losing some audio channels while other plays ok... try using a different HDMI port at your Emotiva. Avoid eARC port.

Btw. At which firmware version you are on?

 

No, all mkv files. In fact I only have one .avi file, Jimi Hendrix Band of Gypsys, and it plays fine. I've been deleting the movies that don't play and replacing them with fresh rips and those are playing, in fact I've tested quite a few movies and haven't had a miss yet. Unfortunately I still have about 9 more movies I have to re-rip and replace.
I've used HDMI 2, 4 and 6 and the missing audio still happens. I have my tv plugged into my eARC port anyway. But thanks for trying to help. That's more than I can say for MARK SWIFT!!! J/K

 

it only occurs when you finish playing one movie and go straight to a new one ?

does it matter what audio types each movie are ,ie hd 5.1 7.1 atmos dts-x etc
ie one atmos movie then on to an hd 5.1 say

or something similar
ie maybe try narrow it down more

also are you on latest .75 f/w ?

 

I'm always testing my sound levels to make sure my subs aren't too loud or too quiet, getting a nice balance between speakers, etc. So I will play 5 minutes of Transformers, 5 minutes of a James Bond movie, 5 minutes of Ready Player One...you get the idea. One might have DTS:X, another TrueHD ATMOS, then DTS-HD, etc. No pattern, whatever I choose to test. Sometimes I can go 2 or 3 movies with no problem before the sound cuts out on the 4th movie, sometimes on the very first or second movie. I have a Shield hooked up and it never happens with the Shield. I've plugged the zidoo into the HDMI port the Shield is in but it still does it there, or in any of the 6 HDMI ports.
Now, I had this other problem where quite a few of my movies won't play at all, I'll hit play and it goes black, then reloads back to the synopsis page. I deleted some of the movies that were doing that and started re-ripping them. I noticed that after the first few, all of the movies started playing again. Unfortunately I deleted like 15 movies so I'll be re-ripping until 2 a.m. probably. And another weird thing, all of the movies I tested once I noticed they were all playing again, didn't give me that missing audio problem, even the ones that were not playing that I didn't delete. The same copies were now playing, and with full audio.
I'm quite sure it'll act up again tomorrow but for now I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

 

does it happen when you sit and watch a complete movie,then move on to next and itll happen?

or is just when your chopping and changing between movies fairly fast ? also are these mkvs or complete bdsm / isos ?

if its isos / completes and using menu maybe its just too much happening to the hdmi and glitching it
or does it also happen with mkvs?

do you have frame rate set at recommended 2160p @ 23hz? to stop hdmi handshaking long pauses before starts ?
ie i have mine at 24hz

Do you have edid set
ie do all the setup settings then save that edid on the zidoo and choose it ,this helps reduce the occassional EDID lose where itll change to say 1o80p@60hz , or sometimes to a ress not supported by the tv etc thus you get a black screen till reset
i was finding this happening a lot more if i was jumping back and forward between say tv epis really fast thou various f/w have reduced the occurance now its only couple times a week

but what i was getting at if no set edid maybe your losing that with the fas changes ?

 

have you tried resetting the box back to base f/w then re installing .75 ?

Z9X pro version
How to flash Z9X PRO (zidoo.tv)

i did mine a few weeks back ....id installed alpha 80 to test new mp7 update it had ..which still didnt fix mch plays back as stereo for music sacds and 24 bit flacs .....but it got glitchy after a week so i reset it

IT IS A DO AT OWN RISK thing but plenty use it
only issue i had was in holding down the reset button long enuff to get process to start
5 to 10 tries i got it had no issues

few people have posted their weird glitchy things were fixed after doing it

 

I went one better, I got this from Amazon. I got on chat with customer service and before I could even finish saying it was defective they sent me a replacement for free and told me to keep the first one! So both of these have had the same glitches. I installed 1.075 properly, I did everything the correct way. I'm starting to believe it's the MR1 causing the problem.
Question: I know that if you do anything to the drive your movies are on, i.e. change a file name, delete a file or add a new movie, the zidoo will rescan the entire drive. Will it do all that glitchy stuff like freeze, etc. if you try to watch a movie while it's rescanning? Because that would be the answer to most of my "problems", although I'm pretty sure it's not the cause of my loss of signal to my mains, etc.

 

It doesn't scan the whole drive - it constantly monitors what's on there and only reacts to changes. This shouldn't cause any issues.

If you want to test, you can turn off auto update in HT4 settings, but I've never seen any problems with it.

 

Back from your holiday I see ;-)
Well, I tested this morning and it's behaving spectacularly. The only thing is even though my tv is showing that it's receiving HDR signal the colors seem a bit washed out so I came here to make sure I've got the color settings as recommended. But like I said, so far so good this morning. I'll let you know how the color settings go.

 

Holiday a distant memory

But there'll be another one soon...

 

I believe it tracks the changes in files... but the rescan in TMDB and updating of internal DB and posters is done only when you are not watching anything... So the DB/posters update is paused when watching some movie, IMHO.