First of all, it’s an absolute World apart from the Egreat A10 I tried (I almost threw the Egreat in the bin, in disgust). The X20 seems very robust all round. Not only physically, but operationally. Playback picture quality is matching my Oppo 203 on a 55” LG UHD, which is what I wanted. As, although the Oppo is excellent, it can’t Shortcut Network Folders to a Fav Screen, only USB Drives. Plus, the Oppo does not play ISOs. Strange that, when it plays real discs. I’ve installed ZDMC 16.1.1 purely for Music Play, as I like the feature of being able to Queue Folders on the fly. The negatives: . I realise I have invalidated the warranty by doing this, but no matter what HDD, formatted as EXT3 or NTFS, the left hand HDD bay, would not mount drives, but they were spinning up, so obviously were powered. Being an Engineer, my brain cannot cope with knowing there’s a fault and need to find out if there’s anything obvious. My gut feeling was that the Data Sata cable was disconnected. I de-powered the player and removed the top cover, to find the Data Sata plug just resting on the Main Board socket and not plugged in. Plugged it in, powered up and perfect. It doesn’t look as though all units are factory tested. So I’m a little disappointed with Zidoo there. . ISO play is good except with a couple I have, that have Forced Subtitles, the Forced Subtitles are not displayed unless I go to the Main Menu first and select Language English (Language, rather than Subs), then it works OK. My old Dune HD Smart D1 always works, without doing that. . No Auto Aspect. Yes, some of us do have some old 4:3 Films of the 50’s and 60’s. So a bit annoying to have to Select Fit every time. The Dune and the Oppo win there. Overall, though, I’m very pleased with the X20 and has become my first 'Port of Call' for Playback.
Just to append to what I said earlier, the Forced Subtitle thing is and always has been a problematic area on any system. Contrary to what another said on the Forum, that Realtek Devices don't have Forced Subtitle function, that is not true or if it is, I must have the only one that does work then. On playing with it all again, I remembered that the Disc ISO I have go to the Disc Main Language Menu and set English first and back to Resume Movie (Language, not Subs) and then it works with Forced Subtitles, has problems on some Disc Players, with the real Disc, as well. Just that the old Dune HD Smart D1, always gets it right. Tried MKV'ing the ISO and setting the Forced Flag on the MKV with MKVToolNix and it works perfectly on the X20. The difference between the Dune and the Ziddoo, is the the Dune states 'Forced' on screen, whereas the Zidoo just selects the Sub, without stating it's 'Forced'. I can live with that, as it's works just fine. Hope this helps others with similar issues.
Yeah, it’s my first choice as well for playback and just like you, i also had the Oppo 203 for a while but sold it after ripping UHDs became possible and i think they are very close in terms of picture quality. Honestly, i can’t see any difference between them but the Zidoo has so many advantages over the Oppo that the choice is simple. There are a couple of small things i wish they can improve but overall, i am super happy with this player and it has the best media center (HomeTheater 2) i’ve tried so far.
I agree, had this box for two weeks now.. it replaced my egreat A11, I need the duel HDMI as my sound bar (ysp 5600) supports atmos & 4k but not HDR.. the a11 didn't play well with it.. always had to reboot the box so the sound bar would receive audio. Also the HDR bug drove me nuts, so after one year of hoping and waiting that android 7 would fix this.. I think that company has given up. The x20 been awesome.. except for TV series scraping issues that the egreat never had, but I'm sure that will get worked out. I have the Oppo 203 also, and would say I can't see any picture difference except of course Dolbyvision titles, but no media player will ever have that. So yes it was expensive like the A11, and I thought that would be the last media player that I would buy for a long time, I was wrong.. but for the first time I'm very content with a media player this early on.
I will admit, that not being someone who's into Libraries or Scraping (I disable all that sort of stuff), my comments are just based on overall quality, functionality and navigation as a basic player. Using a QNAP NAS as Storage, making sure every HDMI in to the TV is set up equally, I've played a high bitrate HD File, from the same start point on the Oppo 203 and the Zidoo X20 at the same time and then just switched the TV HDMI to directly compare in real time and had to hit 'Info' on the TV Remote, to see which player I was viewing. They were that close to each other. My old Dune HD Smart D1 (No 4k though), comes very close. But the Egreat A10, borders on disgusting!, plus the Egreat's inability to get DVD ISO right (it sees PAL 720x576i as 480p and results in very poor quality and frame jumping. It also does this with any MPEG2 based file), plus DVD, whether ISO or Folder Structure, fails in Navigation. None of these problems exist with the Zidoo X20. My personal experience, is the the Egreat's were not fit for public supply. The cardboard box they come in is nice though, LOL. The only real problem I had with the Zidoo X20, was with some 60Hz 120 MB/s 4k, blanking out, but that was totally cured by using the supplied Zidoo ferrite beaded HDMI cable, rather than the apparent 'High speed' Amazon cable I already had connected. There used to be a time, when you could say Digital is Digital and an old bit of wet string will do (Joke), but 4k seems to have changed that and cable quality does matter now. Having many 4:3 old films, I'm glad to see the upcoming Firmware includes proper Aspect Switching. I'm thinking of buying a spare Zidoo Remote for the future. So my brain must be telling me "This is a keeper".
@sussexmat completely agree. Egreat A11 is collecting dust since a long time in my basement. It's an intransparent mess and nobody really knows what are the hard/software mixes between egreat and dvdfab which so called movie server is a disaster since close to beginning. The ghost of vidon server is still haunting.... Anyway no need to discuss other products here. I do really like and enjoy the X20, it's close to becoming my primary playback engine as I agree the picture quality is very close to oppo. But...i'm still holding on to my oppo 205 which still has ...hum...hum...iso playback enabled... I do really hope that Zidoo continues to further refine the X20/X20pro and keeps the "closed ecosystem idea" of this player intact. It's a player and not an android box...so I'm happy that they "keep mostly away" all the fancy stuff (rooting kits, playstores etc...). Let this continue to be the turf of the X (now Z series). This marketing and product strategy of Zidoo will IMHO prove very valid. On my wish list : I do hope that we can continue to make the IP/RS-232 api's evolve for better integration into home automation systems and two-way communication and further polish some details : - certain buttons still are in chinese - playback/settings info overlay halts video playback - more direct settings editing commands for ex. no direct picture settings commands in IP/RS-232...still need to browse through several menues - posterwall editing : when searching idmb and several results are displayed to have a preview window before selecting to match a movie - posterwall editing from webinterface : have a rescan-folder button - bitstreaming DSD over HDMI and multi-channel DSD support In short : keep the good work going.
@myzidoo, Yes and I hope Zidoo keep the Players as Players and not go the way of others and become just another Android Box of Apps and Games. Zidoo have done a good job of hiding the Android OS, so it presents itself as a pretty serious player. Long may it stay that way and doesn't become "A jack of all trades and master of none" in the future. Anyone that wants a Games Machine, fine, get a Games dedicated Machine. But please Zidoo, keep this a a Media Player.
Thanks for your feedback. the next version will be support MKVs forced subtitle, even you turn off the subtitle. It associates default subtitle languages(in quick settings)
Zidoo, what about working Aspect Ratio (or zoom or +/- etc), to get rid of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when watching BD, BD3d and 4K movies? WHEN?!!
I mean function for ability to enlarge the image when watching movies (first of all 4K and 3D movies) on Zidoo X20 / X20 Pro to get rid of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when watching movies. Namely to enlarge proportionally, not to just stretch vertically OR horizontally. Aspect Ratio function, implemented in X20 / X20 Pro not working with Blu-Ray, 4K and 3d movies, there is work 4:3 only. These options work as stretching only, with unnatural proportions in result. The question is – when this function will appear in X20 / X20 Pro? Zidoo team (service@zidoo.tv) promised me in email dd. 16/08/2018 to make it till the end of August 2018. So - when?
Aspect ratios is a difficult topic when the goal is getting rid of Black Bars. It will result in: - Deformation by stretching: very bad in my opinion - Loosing part of the image by zooming to full screen views: Also fairly bad in my opinion. Many TV's will actually do this for you. The second option has the advantage that some may like zooming for specific scenes as a generic feature. It must then be possible also to shift/move the zoomed image. Zooming and Aspect Ratio settings are different features in my perception.
Agree with you. But namely this we have now. Loosing 40% of the screen by black bars is worse. Thank you for your clarification. But the question was not about such difference. And not to you, sorry.
Zidoo, do not hide. I mean function for ability to enlarge the image when watching movies (first of all 4K and 3D movies) on Zidoo X20 / X20 Pro to get rid of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when watching movies. Namely to enlarge proportionally, not to just stretch vertically OR horizontally. Aspect Ratio function, implemented in X20 / X20 Pro not working with Blu-Ray, 4K and 3d movies, there is work 4:3 only. These options work as stretching only, with unnatural proportions in result. The question is – when this function will appear in X20 / X20 Pro? Zidoo team (service@zidoo.tv) promised me in email dd. 16/08/2018 to make it till the end of August 2018. So - when? Answer my question please.
rkann Zoom option(minimized black bar) are on Kodi(ZDMC)/Settings/Player/Video/Minimized black bar when is use internal player. UHD, BD disc are 16:9(1.78) aspect ratio with back bar embedded if video aspect ratio is 2.38/2.40/etc. Changing aspect ratio on Zidoo player will do nothing except switch to 4:3 where will get unnatural proportions. Re-encoded cropped mkv are other story for this fit, full, original, 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio can apply and see differences, but is not equals to zoom for minimize black bar. On top of this 3D, HDR and scale make thinks more complicate then look from outside with keep hardware decoding. But who know maybe Realtek will make some surprise and help Zidoo to get it on they player.
I know this perfectly. See thread here http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/scaling-“aspect-ratio”-or-zoom-or.12710/ With the ZDMC player at the same time (on firmware 1.7.8) microfreezes appear. With firmware 1.2.28, there was no microfreezes when scaling in the ZDMC or they not so strong . 3D movies (Blu-Ray 3D) ZDMC plays as 2D. Scaling 4K movies in ZDMC does not work at all. Exactly. I write namely about it. Yeah. Of course, it is realy complex task in 2018. Which was solved many years ago - for example with my Dune HD Base 3D (2013!!!!!) I watch BD3D movies till now without black bars using zoom (+/- button) easy. Ohhh, of course, I forgot - it is realy complex task for flagman of market for 800 USD. Hope so. But you know, we all bought our X20/X20 Pro not produced by Realtek, but produced by Zidoo. What is why I repeat my question to Zidoo – when in X20/X20 Pro will appear working function which will give possibility to get rid of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when watching BD, BD3d and 4K movies? No matter, which the name of such function will be! Just answer – when?!!
Great news that complete function Forced Subs is going to be implemented. I have put my temporary workaround in another thread though. If I can just interject on the subject of Aspect Ratios. There sometimes is confusion between Aspect and Zoom. Zoom is purely magnification (which I think is what another member is referring to), whereas Aspect Ratio, is the ratio between height and width. There is only one correct ratio ... the ratio it was filmed in. Aspects are mainly used for SD MPG/DVD where for example, PAL 720x576 Pixels would equate to 4:3 on a Widescreen TV and if filmed in Widescreen 16:9, needs to be pulled widthwise to 1024x576. Something that needs to be addressed when converting/editing SD MPG to H264 MP4 as the Pixel Ratio with H264 MP4 is normally Square, 1:1. A film that has been shot in 22:9, for example, will have black areas at the top and bottom of the scan on a 16:9 TV (often called Widescreen). So, it is quite correct to see this, unless you get a 22:9 TV. To Aspect change that picture to fit, will result in the wrong ratio (tall and skinny). Conversely, to Zoom out equally, maintaining aspect, some of the sides will be lopped off. Back in the late 80's, early 90's, when I was an Engineer for an International Electronics and TV Company in the development of 16:9 Widescreen TV, the problem was generally 90 degrees out. Most source material was effectively 4:3 and much of the general public, certainly in the UK, couldn't cope with black bars (on the sides then). So Widescreen died a death for a few years. Digital Media such as DVD, fixed the problem of aspects by containing a Flag to tell the Player/TV to display as 720 or 1024, according to the source material's filmed ratio. Basically, a 22:9 film on a 16:9 TV should have bars at the top and bottom of the scan.
Thank you very much for a truly deep academic study of the differences in terms of "zoom” (magnification, scaling) and "aspect ratio". And it is not a sarcasm. Thanks. But you know, for me, as the user of X20, no matter how exactly the is called function, which allows proportionally enlarge the image and get rid of the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. I just know that this feature works on my 2009 Iconbit (even with BD) and 2013 Dune HD Base 3D (BD, BD3D). And I sincerely do not understand why during MONTHS I have to persuade the manufacturer of X20 to add this ancient and natural function to the media player for $ 800 in 2018. If we are dealing with the X20 now - yes, you are right. But Zidoo must to fix this bug in their firmware and to add the "zoom” (magnification, scaling. aspect zoom - no matter the name) function, which will give possibility to get rid of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when watching BD, BD3d and 4K movies.
Hey, Zidoo, why are you hiding? ... Isn't it enough for you explanations what I meant? Look here - http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/my-findings-with-the-zidoo-x20.43311/#post-80430 And here - http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/my-findings-with-the-zidoo-x20.43311/#post-80437 And here - http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/my-findings-with-the-zidoo-x20.43311/#post-80461 If not enough – look this thread http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/scaling-“aspect-ratio”-or-zoom-or.12710/ and this http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/zoom-of-the-image.10756/#post-45284 If not enough – just ask. I will add explanations, do not doubt please. So, I repeat my question to Zidoo – when in X20/X20 Pro will appear working function which will give possibility to get rid of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when watching BD, BD3d and 4K movies? No matter, which the name of such function will be! I kindly remind - Zidoo team (service@zidoo.tv) promised me in email dd. 16/08/2018 to make it till the end of August 2018. Didn’t you understand my question? OK, I’ll ask by other words – when you will fix bug in firmware of x20/x20 PRO and add the "zoom” function (“magnification” or “scaling” or ”aspect zoom” or “+/-“ - no matter the name of this function), which will give possibility to get rid of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when watching BD, BD3d and 4K movies? Just answer – when?!!
