v1.2.05, v1.2.05_G Beta version for Z9X 8K/Z30 PRO/Z3000 PRO/UHD8000

Ah, then maybe you are correct about asking for db test tone files.

 

Ah - MLP is Meridian Lossless Packing to me

 

For me MLP is Meridian Lossless Packing too.

I am currently reviewing a Dune HD Max 8K player which brings me to the support of BD and DVD. The unique part of the player is having a TCXO clock and XMOS used for outputs including HDMI. Actually it is also used for the motherboard clocking.
https://www.avforums.com/threads/dune-hd-max-8k-discussions-plus-coming-review.2523363/
It is intended for digitally coupling with an external DAC or HDMI using an AMP. There is no current or previous model Zidoo equivalent for this.

For Zidoo supporting BD means as is claimed and said the "BD Menu" support. It got better with the latest FW but still work to do to get at Dune level there.
Not ever mentioned is the different Dune approach of Full BD support which is not only processing the BD Menu itself but also implementing specific BD features available during actual playback. Occasionally these can be very nice.
To achieve this Dune uses 2 different Video players: One being a full fledge BD compatible player and the second being a generic video player with identical features as for MKV playback.

 

Does anyone have problems downloading subtitles after the update? It doesn't search for me.

 

I can confirm!
All three Netflix movies stutter only with LLDV.
1.Rebel Moon part 1
2.Rebel Moon part 2
3.The Electric State

What they have in common is that all three are 24hz Dolby Digital Plus

I tested another movie like: All Quiet On The Western Front, which is also 24hz but does not have Dolby Digital Plus and I tested it with Dolby TrueHD and Dilby Digital 5.1, but there was no stuttering.

The Gorge which is also with Dolby Digital Plus, does not stutter but it is 23.976hz.

 

Hi, I have also purchased Dune just to test since latest firmwares have been a dissapointment, I got basic 8k pro plus model

To my surprise and to anyone curiouos I have found that:

1. Dune is so great at indexing your library, out of 220 movies it only needed 7 confirmations
2. Dune is able to play fully my dolby atmos demo discs, including BD menu, which is great, Zidoo can not do this. On other blu rays I have it's similar
3. Dune interface is just absolutely out of 90-s - I can't take it, it's that bad. Navigation in movie library is so much more intuitive and beautiful on Zidoo

Now for interesting parts:

3. I started to compare picture quality and found that Dune was brighter, it led me to look into settings and I realised that dune is using CM 4.o out of the box. Previously I didn't use it on zidoo since it was giving stutters. I have tried to reenable this setting again and, to my surprise, it works now on Zidoo without stutters! Compared both players again and in some scenes picture quality is almost the same, in some Zidoo has an edge in terms of dolby vision and hdr highlights. Tried several scenes and my wife agrees that Zidoo overall gives better picture. Without CM 4.o Zidoo is clearly worse, as if there is a slight green/blue filter applied.
4. I have already mentioned on this forum that there is some problem with how Zidoo plays TV shows with certain DV layers. Example being Andor and Skeleton Crew. Previously I compared playback of those TV shows on Zidoo vs Apple TV (+infuse) and Apple TV was so much brighter and better looking. Now I tested same shows against Dune and again, Zidoo is worse at displaying those shows. Not even mentioning that Zidoo does stutter sometimes with Andor. Something clearly not right here, would be great if Zidoo team look into it.

Overall I think that Dune, currently, appears to be more stable and faster at basic core operations such as playback, scrolling through movie time line, changing subtitles and audiotracks etc.
Zidoo does have better picture quality to my taste (I'd say it reproduces HDR and DV better) and OS that is miles ahead of Dune in UX/UI, but little hiccups here and there, occasional random stutters and all are dissapointing
(oh and zidoo z3000 hardware looks wonderful too)

I hope that core operations will be smoothed in future updates, since I want to be using Zidoo primarily

 

And if you don't like menus and only have MKV, there's no point for me in buying a Dune.
MyCollection is not comparable to Home Theater, it's feature-poor and primitive.
No on the fly movie recognition.
You can't watch movies in VC-1 because Dune hasn't done anything about it, even though the AML players have been on the market for over a year.
Ancient menu navigation is confusing.
No WoL.
Online trailers do not work.
TiViMate app when changing channels on the Dune always showed a black intermediate image, Zidoo does it smoothly and quickly without.

I've already said to myself once - no more Dune, but a year ago I bought another one with AML to tell myself again - now I really won't have a Dune media player in my house.
That's just my opinion, based on my experience and my needs, I don't want to argue with anyone. For me, it's really clear now.

 

It's always interesting comparing Dune and Zidoo since they share a lot of commonality but Zidoo definitely needs some work on stability at the moment.

Just to make a correction on Point 3:

Zidoo supports CMv4.0 in both Player Led and TV Led Dolby Vision. Dune only supports CMv4.0 in TV Led Dolby Vision.

I suspect you're getting mixed up by the settings descriptions in the Zidoo.

TV-Led and TV-Led Passthrough both support CMv4.0, so it is used if both content and display support it.

TV Led Passthrough (CMv4.0 Forced) forces CMv4.0 regardless of the display capabilities - this is only needed, for example, if you are using a Custom EDID and CMv4.0 is not supported in that EDID. This mode should not be used on displays that do not support CMv4.0.

To clarify - CMv4.0 is supported in all DV modes on the Zidoo, whereas the Dune only supports it in TV Led DV.

 

Thanks for clarification!

I was using just "TV-Led" and now "TV Led Passthrough (CMv4.0 Forced)" - which is clearly better to my eyes. Maybe TV-LED Passthrough will give me the same result?
I must say I spent maybe 20 minutes testing, so not all scenarios and files have been tried.

It's a bit strange tho since LG C1 should support CM v4.0 and there sould be no difference then between TV Led and CM v4.0 forced, right?

 

If TV-Led supports CMv4.0 what is the point have having TV Led Passthrough?

 

Read this post, it'll explain everything:

The Curious Case of “Fake” TV Led Dolby Vision and v1.1.60 | Zidoo forum

 

It's all in the post above.

TV Led processes the metadata in the player and Passthrough passes the metadata to the TV.

Quite honestly it makes bugger all difference, but it gives people a choice.

 

Right, thanks, so it should be a preffered mode then

I disagree on that one - I could not see it before, because our visual memory is quite short. But thanks to Dune as another point of refference I can now see that the difference on Zidoo is there and noticeable, like I said - green / blue filter, less highlights.

I will try using TV Led passthrough, in theory it should be better than just TV led and similar to CM4.0 forced

 

Yeah....I just plugged the Zidoo directly into the tv (my amp does not support DV passthrough) as I was considering a 4k hdmi 2.1 splitter with EDID function for DV, but, as it turns out, my Sony seems to only support LLDV (s0 the Zidoo said) anyway as there were no other options in the Zidoo menu for DV apart from LLDV available.

Yeah, I love Dolby Vision...........

 

Yeah - I guess the A85s were on the cusp...

The whole reason we have LLDV is because of Sony - They originally starting marketing Dolby Vision TVs without checking whether it actually worked, and true to Sony's form, they didn't have the grunt required of Dolby Vision (This was back when Dolby Vision was Dolby Vision). So someone at Sony had to phone someone at Dolby and say, "er - we have a bit of a problem here..."

So Dolby repurposed Low Latency Dolby Vision which was designed for gaming into Player Led Dolby Vision whereby the grunt work is done by the player and not the display - all to appease their customer. It would have been a PR disaster for Sony otherwise.

A bit of firmware fiddling and now Sony had "Dolby Vision" TVs again, but it suddenly meant that not all Dolby Vision Sources would work with all Dolby Vision displays because Sony displays only worked with LLDV - exactly the opposite of what Dolby originally promised. And I think that started to change around 2020/2021 when Sony got their act together and used more powerful SOCs.

But I'm extremely glad Sony dropped the ball because it lead to a lot of experimentation with projectors and non Dolby Vision displays which otherwise would have been impossible. I'm sure HDFury are ecstatic about it!!

In fact I have an old 2016 Sony TV here which is not Dolby Vision.

However, if you use a Dolby Vision EDID and squirt LLDV into it, it suddenly becomes a Dolby Vision set - logos and everything - so the firmware is inside its rusty innards but the EDID says otherwise. Naughty.

Always nice to have a little bit of history on a weekend....

 

Hello,

there it is. My Zidoo Z3000 pro just installed in my room.

it's and elegant box. I like the remote !

the UI is snappy. well designed.

i have not played with posterwall yet. Just tried some ISOS from my HDDS plugged to a PC over network. SMB worked immediately. i could access my Hard Drives in a heartbeat.

I Use a DAS enclosure ( Qnap) with 8 baies, plugged with USB to a W11 small NUC like pc on 24/24. Over 1gbps Ethernet. Its a cheap solution ( compared to a nas) , but it works great.

First, the BD menus i tried were really well handled and pretty fast. Even some that were pretty messy with my R_volution (even one that was unusable).

I tried a VC1 movie (Seven) which was buggy with the R_volution ( low pixelation), and the sequences i used to use as reference played fine!

as many people here i do have a sync problem with DTS HD ( 150ms do the trick, but mess up true HD tracks). Could the devs include an offset setting to trigger only with dts hd tracks?

i have not encountered stuttering yet ( only watched small portions of movies. which played fine)

My 2019 Sony XG9505 seems to support only LLDV. No TV LED in the options.

The image quality seems fine. ( though i find it a bit noisy in the highlights)

The navigation with the remote for Blu-ray menus is well made.

EDIT : OH, by the way. Should HDCP be enable on such devices?


my conf :

Zidoo Z3000 pro-> HDMI Audio to AVR Denon X4300 + HDMI video to LED TV Sony.

 

TBH I have tried all DV HDR settings and to me all look identical. Only difference is more stutter on TV Led than LLDV.

 

I believe they are

Here is media info:

Video
ID : 1
Format : HEVC
Format/Info : High Efficiency Video Coding
Format profile : Main 10@L5@High
HDR format : Dolby Vision, Version 1.0, dvhe.08.06, BL+RPU, HDR10 compatible / SMPTE ST 2086, HDR10 compatible
Codec ID : V_MPEGH/ISO/HEVC
Duration : 39 min 10 s
Bit rate : 15.1 Mb/s
Width : 3 840 pixels
Height : 2 160 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 24.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 10 bits
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.076
Stream size : 4.14 GiB (83%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.2020
Transfer characteristics : PQ
Matrix coefficients : BT.2020 non-constant
Mastering display color primar : BT.2020
Mastering display luminance : min: 0.0000 cd/m2, max: 1000 cd/m2

I am using Dolby Digital Plus with Dolby Atmos track

Thing is - sometimes it stutters, sometimes it does not

 

Are Andor and Skeleton Crew 24hz, Dolby Digital plus?
All tv shows that are 24hz with Dilby Plus audio track stutter.

 

Yes
All my movies or tv shows that are 24hz with Dolby Digital Plus Atmos stutter.

The Gorge for example is also with Dolby Digital Plus Atmos but doesn't stutter because it's 23.976hz

All Quiet on the Western Front is also 24hz but is Dolby TrueHD Atmos and doesn't stutter.