You guys have done a real good job with the X20 !! I'm really pleased by the stability and the feature set of it. Whilst I dig deeper I have found out that the music player reads .dsf formats which is great thus not surprising it's not bitstreaming DSD through it's HDMI port (only PCM) which would have been the icing but I was not expecting this). NB: .dsf ie DSD multichannel are funnily also played back but at a wrong very very slow speed...so it seems that it could be corrected by firmware but DSD multichannel is certainly not widely spread. I anyway use a separate DAC for DSD but just wanted to share this finding which really surprised me
I must say .you may be happy with the music side of it, but the hdmi in does not record as it does on the x9s and x10. it has been removed so I am no longer able to record from my camcorder. A real bummer.
I have no inside information or any other things from zidoo but it seems to me that X20 and X20pro are in some kind breaking with the "old" era. What we often tend to forget is that all these android based player functionalities have all been operating in the grey zone area of licencing. Full menu support, HDMI recording abilities, ISO over network with menu support and and and are real licencing bummers if you want to comply with all the, agreed kind of stupid, requirements the industry has. Now depending on your target markets (geographically) you can more or less sit on the requirements and don't give a damn...but the world changes and you start to hear here and there that players where held back by customs because of licencing issues. No need to start a nasty regulatory discussion around kodi and as an example...but this is exactly the kind of add-ons which can make your regulatory compliance life as a manufacturer miserable.... HDMI IN functionality is normally implemented as a signal enhancement function ie you render the HDMI in signal through the internal video section and benefit from the various quality enhancement there might be. The ability to grab the stream and record it is usually not forseen/licenced. Thank you intel and HDCP.... This for you and a camcorder source seems irrelevant but in fact it's the standard catch22 for the manufacturer : Users will mostly want to use the HDMI IN the intended way and hook a bluray player, a HTPC or a less qualitative streamer to it->so to be able that this works you'll need to comply/implement with HDCP on the HDMI IN port->as a consequence the recording on the port is prohibited. What is unfortunate is that there is no clear statement from zidoo regarding what scope the HDMI in port will have. But my best guess is that If they want to make a player in this price league they have to care with licencing compliance. If their strategy is to try to fill the vacuum that the disappearence of oppo has now created, I fear that many of the cool functionalities we were used to in former models might not return. But as said at the beginning...I don't know and I can be very wrong. Only time will tell
for curiosity: Do you know if the X20 processes multichanel DSD files? Or only Stereo?? Marantz and Denon AVRs can play DSD´s through the Heos App but only in Stereo...
At the moment ZidooMusic Player 2.0 only plays SACD in stereo and as such by converting DSD to FLAC at 176.4 Khz. That sounds well in practice when compared to my AMP built-in music player playing in native DSD format. My AMP can output MCH DSD via HDMI RAW input but the built-in music player does not support it. My Pioneer SACD player works in all 3 modes with discs including those (5.1 DSD, Stereo DSD and CD). Support of SACD DSD via HDMI RAW is reported under study by Zidoo but unlikely to be included in the upcoming FW. Also no promise yet that it can be done at all? DSD works via USB with an external DAC (again stereo only). Anyway very few 5.1 SACD's around which is a pity as some really sound awesome. Many more 5.1 DVD-CD's which also can sound great and are supported by Zidoo (inclusive CUE sheets).
