What is the "external player" ? I only use the default player that comes up when I am inside ZDMC. Is that internal or external? I noticed there's a settings inside Playback to use Default Kodi player inside ZDMC but it doesn't support pass through so I never use that.
ZDMC internal player - plays everthing flawless up to 1080p - no issues at all incl. passthrough HD audio. Also liveTV is played with very good pictur quality - however no audio pass through with liveTV :-( 3D-ISO played in 2D mode only - 4K MKV files are stuttering and without HDR - poor picture quality ZDMC with external player - crashes every time. I am wondering whether the XBMCwrapper causes this behaviour... So back to KodiV17.1 with wrapper since there isn't any major difference (my hope was that audio passthrough will also work with liveTV - at least getting 5.1 multi channel output for liveTV)
If you have that option enabled in the Playback menu then you are using the External player i.e. the Zidoo's tweaked version of the Android media player. Both internal and external players support passthrough on 16.4.13 and 17.1 versions of ZDMC. But when using the internal ZDMC player (i.e. External player turned off in Playback) you need to make sure you have Android RAW enabled as the sound device in the Audio options, turn on allow Passthrough and you need to turn on the various Format options too, such as TrueHD and DTS as supported by your AV receiver etc.
I cannot change the sound device, it says smthing like "android audiotrack"... you see something different at your x9s?
In 17.1 it doesn't have another option other than audiotrack, in 16.4.13 you can choose 3 options, PCM, IEC and RAW. To get passthrough working in both decoders you need to select RAW in 16.4.13 I have an X10 but its still the same on here.
Installed 2 days ago, after first uninstalling existing ZDMC, everything is working fine so far. Good job Zidoo Team.
After a couple hours of experimenting, here are my findings: I tested with 3 different 1080p movies, all with different soundtrack types: DTS, Dolby Digital, TrueHD External player 100% rating, clean playback everytime, just like playing a Blu-Ray disc Internal player (ZDMC 17.1) Audio passthrough OFF: 98% rating, almost as good as External player, some motion does not appear fluid, will slow down and then speed up, like playing a movie on an old computer Audio passthrough ON, adjust display refresh rate OFF (60Hz): 90% rating, inconsistent stutter/frame drops, sometimes smooth, sometimes not, can play the same scene twice and get two different results Audio passthrough ON, adjust display refresh rate ON (24Hz): 75% rating, consistent stutter/frame drop at the same timestamp of a movie I'm starting to believe Kodi shouldn't be used to play local media (mkv, mp4, etc) with this box, stick with the External player, Kodi is simply not tuned for this CPU/GPU. For all other streaming media (add-ons), Kodi/ZDMC is fine.
@zone555 Then why does 16.4.13 work perfectly fine for me in the above senario using the internal player with next to no dropped frames with the same media that drops consistently with 17.1? I don't think your hypothesis is true. Even my 4.5ghz PC with a GTX1080 drops frames regularly in 16 and 17, so lack of processing power isn't always the cause. X10.
Is there a way to disable the auto resolution switching ? I can not select 23.976 with the refresh rates, it only offers 24... The system preferences also show 23hz (which is 23.976) It is anyone that the player always switches back-and-forward when playing a file using a projector (no picture for 3s... Is it also possible to disable the "loading Media" screen using the external player ? I use the cinema vision plugin and it destroys the illusion of a full cinema...
16.4.13 had different issues for me. No stutter or frame drops, but audio was out of sync. 17.1 has excellent audio sync, but with stutter and frame drops. Fix one thing, and something else breaks. What I was trying to say is, Kodi in general, is hard to get right on this box. It was not a question of horsepower but tuning. The external player works perfectly, so obviously there's enough CPU. I've used the external player since day one to play movie files. This doesn't bother me, but it would've been nice to use Kodi as an all-in-one player (streaming + files). If the Kodi performance/issues improve with a future update, that's a bonus for me.. for now, I've learned to live with it.
Kodi 17 switched their internal player from DVDPlayer to VideoPlayer. The new playback engine might not have been properly optimized for the x9s's chipset. This will have to be escalated to kodi developers. I recommend using Zidoo's custom external player wrapper instead of the native Kodi engine.
I'm not sure if you all have understood that this ZDMC 17.1 release is a preliminary release. This was already declared times ago by a Zidoo member (don't remember who and when). Any bug report is needed and of course (I think) welcome. I don't speak for Zidoo !!! This is a common sense assertion. Indeed, from my point of view, this release is far better then previous releases. Hope I'll not contraddict myself soon, when I'll receive my brand new 4K TV... P.S. any advice derived from personal experience is warmly welcome!
Thanks. Think it will stop all the whining about this problem and that problem until the final is released. I don't think many people have read the whole thread and realised it's not a final version.
