I have just made an interesting observation that might help the engineers figure out the pause/dropped audio problem that a lot of people still have. When I used to watch Transformers Age of Extinction with Plex on my Shield, at the very beginning when the ships are coming into view, with the Dolby TrueHD Atmos track on, it makes this horrendous popping sound like my speakers are gonna blow. When I switched to the DTS-HD track, it plays perfectly. On the zidoo z9x, I just noticed that when I play the Dolby TrueHD Atmos track, it doesn't make that popping sound but it freezes and pauses and the audio drops out, but when I switch to the DTS-HD track, it plays perfectly. Maybe Mark Swift can bring this to the attention of the engineers. Sorry if this is an already known cause. I'm new here.
There isn't any known pause/freeze frame/audio dropout issue. Invariably, playback issues are down to file or environment problems and not the player. What you describe simply sounds like a dodgy soundtrack with different players displaying different symptoms of the same file issue. The only known current playback issue is the occasional "choppy playback" which happens once in a blue moon and is described here (although I've now taken it off sticky because the thread went way off topic. Again). http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?threads/occasional-jerky-choppy-playback.97341/ Although I have to say I haven't seen that issue in months.
Well you'd better make it known because it's happening constantly. I "tried" to watch Chappie tonight, it paused, blacked out, dropped audio 9 times, and it froze completely once. Whenever it paused I noticed that the time left on the display also stopped, so it was the z9x causing it, not the MR1. I just purchased the Dune 8k Pro. If that runs smoothly I'm going to make it known here, in no uncertain terms.
then obviously you have not been paying attention to all the people on the release thread that have issues... if I try to watch two tv shows in a row, it will always freeze at the beginning of the second show. I am watching 10 shows right now and it does this for all of them. It will always freeze no matter what I play, movie, or TV show. even a Zidoo technician told me to wait till the next update for a fix after he sent me the app to install to gather info on what was wrong.
Hmm. That's a good info. However we are all apparently walking in the dark if we are comparing each other problems as having the same origin. They might look like, but they are most probably not. There must be much more then one single factor causing this and when we all are posting the problems, we just report the final symptoms not giving in detail info about all possible factors, which could be anything or all (used media and encoding settings, box software settings, decoding settings, cables, surrounding devices, specific HDMI ports the set up is connected to, so impacting the HDMI chain, defected hardware, external devices software, even if one has CEC enabled and the other not, etc.). So it is not a trivial task to diagnose all the potential root causes and later to separate (or group) each other problems correctly. In short - I personally do not have any problems with TV shows as was reported above. E.g. I could watch almost entire Foundation season with no issues - almost entire since not possible for me to spent 8+ hours on the couch watching shows without having breaks. And I really do not know why it works ok for me, but not for you. Since to diagnose it we would have to compare all the factors starting with the very same media file. However, yes, I experience once per week, so very seldom, the choppy playback. Which is instantly fixed after pausing and un-pausing the playback - so exactly as described by @Markswift2003.
I saw a comment on a z9x youtube video from a guy who had these similar problems. He said he fixed it buy using an "active" HDMI cable from Monoprice. I bought one last night, it comes Tuesday. That will give me 3 days to test if it really fixes things before the Dune gets here. I'll report back, unless those of you here have already tried this with no good result. Please let me know.
We shouldn't have to deal with bugs at all, really. I mean, Plex consists of software. It runs as a server on a PC, and the client software runs on a Shield, or your tv if you don't care about good audio, and it plays perfectly. Zidoo is a piece of hardware with it's own RAM, processor, etc. Plus I've seen threads here from 7 years ago complaining of the same bugs, and yet Zidoo is hailed as the best media player. Anyway, I may be more sensitive to these things seeing as how I'm 69 and in poor health. My only enjoyment in life is my home theater, and I want it to run as perfectly as possible.
I perfectly understand and agree with you. If I have the same problems as you, I would be ranting as hell. Actually my previous ancient box (Popcornhour c-200) was the very reason I had decided to finally buy Zidoo Z9x Pro. And it's a huge improvement in my case in terms of general stability of video playback. So I am happy and fortunately I can turn a blind eye to the minor problems I have.
