I am really disappointed with the Z10. I received it on Friday and have been nothing but frustrated ever since! First, the good: Think it is well built, has a good remote and has a nice clean interface which is easy to navigate. Now the bad! The network frequently drops out when connected via LAN (and sometimes over wifi). The only ‘solution’ to this appears to be to go into settings and disconnect the network (which is showing as “connected”) and then reconnect – almost like shocking it back into life again! It is pure luck whether the NAS server will appear as a source on the Z10, even when it is readily detected by Laptops/TVs/AV amps on the same network. 4K and Blu Ray playback from NAS (MKVs) ALWAYS freezes (plays flawlessly on my laptop so I assume the NAS is serving it up quick enough). Even when playing back from the Z10’s internal HDD I have experienced a number of freezes. I got a 6TB HDD for to use internally in the Z10. This proved an absolute nightmare to format as it would only be recognised as a 1.4TB drive (Granted this was a Windows issue rather than a Zidoo issue) but the Z10 offers a pop up recognising the addition of a new USB drive – but offers no recognition of the installation internal HDD other than the symbol on the LED on the front of the box – Is this right? The OpenWRT interface proved to be wholly unresponsive in my attempts to reformat the HDD. Also, despite exploring every setting under the sun in OpenWRT, I cannot get the Z10 drive to appear on the network (SAMBA, FTP and DLNA all show as enabled in OpenWRT settings) but the Z10 does not appear . I have tried accessing it on different Laptops running Win 10; Win 8; Win 7 and Linux Mint (Debian) but it won't appear on any – even after following guides tinkering with every Win 10 network setting imaginable. After a number of days (and lots of frustration) I installed a programme called IP Scanner Pro (Win 10 64bit) which displays the Z10 as an active IP and allows one to ‘explore’ /sataa HDD on the Win 10 network explorer. However, when I try and copy things to the drive it will work for a while, but then just gives up and reports a random error about the file being ‘unavailable’ or something. So this leaves me with no way to connect to the internal HDD to copy files on – again, is this normal? Should also mentation that bizarrely, the Z10/HDD DOES appear on my Android phone using an app called Network Explorer (although this app does not offer the opportunity to edit/write to the drive)! Phew, sorry for such a lengthy first post, but all of this is hugely frustrating as I can see the potential of this player if it just worked, but it doesn't :-( So I guess that in short my question is, is this common experience among all other Z10 owners? Or does it sound like mine is misbehaving/faulty?
The network disconnecting problem sounds like a problem with your router. Like it's security settings are disabling / blocking the Z10. Try disabling security settings (MAC filtering / firewall) on the router and if this solves the problem add the Z10 to a whitelist using it's MAC address. If you had a stable network connection I think this would solve your playback issues. To access the SMB network try entering the Zidoo IP address manually on the PC. Auto search sometimes doesn't work, particularly on recent Windows versions. The HDD should be formatted by a PC, the Zidoo box cannot format hard drives. Format should be GPT partition table (MBR will also work) and NTFS or EXT file system (NTFS more compatible if you're using Windows). A 6TB drive correctly firmatted will work just fine.
I haven't had any of the problems you report, sounds like your home network/router might not be stable. I put a 6tb drive into it that was formatted in my PC and it worked perfectly with the correct size detected. Maybe re your network issue set it to a static IP via the router and then set to that on the Z10 rather than automatic connection (I do that with mine so that it doesn't change IP and my PC cannot see it anymore).
