Yes it is perhaps strange a post about a Zidoo competitie however I am posting this due to the or one of the reason(s) Zappiti is RIP. Ongoing legal issues due to copyright. https://www.audioholics.com/av-news...PdNj3fV5ngJlzpqBRSqRjqiU_k_E_dvJEOm0IsU-zzxs8
I think they should not have marketed the NAS as a ripper. They should have sold it as a NAS only without the Optical drive and let people add the optical drive afterwards. Or not sell the product directly in the USA. Maybe sell it via Futeko or some other UK based retailer with cheap shipping.
I am new here, having just moved to Zidoo from Zappiti. Unfortunately, this is a lot of misinformation about there about why Zappiti closed shop. I have it on good authority, from two different dealers that worked extremely close with Zappiti over the years, that it had nothing to do with copyright issues. The company has been in France's version of bankruptcy since January 2023 and apparently it was caused by internal changes to the ownership. It had nothing to do with copyright problems. Although Zappiti stopped selling their NAS in the US, it was still available in most of the world. Most other countries, where Zappiti was more popular, have much looser copyright laws. In short, they did go out of business due to copyright issues from the US or anywhere else. The legal issues mentioned in Zappiti's letter to its dealers, as quoted in part in the post above, were related to the bankruptcy and not copyright problems.
There were other problems: http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?thr...n-or-licensed-the-bluray-menu-playback.93784/
Don't say Zappiti anymore, say R_volution. https://www.rvolution.com/ And it looks that you will be able to use their app in a next future on the Dune HD and Zidoo players, if you're ok to pay a subscription. (Start at 2min)
It's a classic restructure - get into financial trouble, liquidate the company, meanwhile set up a phoenix company, tupe the employees you want to keep, maintain relationships with suppliers/customers you want to keep and stuff the rest. They've obviously spent a bit of time reskinning Zappiti Video - it'll be interesting to see the application layer - looking at the new box, it's the same supplier, so the OS and application layers will presumably be the same under the hood. They're also going back to their roots by supplying applications to third parties which is how they started albeit under different management.
My uninformed opinion is that if R-volution wants to succeed, they need to quickly offer player options that are less than $900. Zidoo has stair-step options, while Zappiti's NEO started their line-up at $900. Now, the new company is only releasing one player up front, which is again, $900. There is clearly a market for players in the $1000 range (I had a NEO and now a UHD5000), but for people who have full NAS systems or other external options, they can get an excellent Zidoo for under $300. If R-volution continues to only target the higher end range, I think I will end up being even more glad I switched to Zidoo...
What most Zappiti users fail to realise is that their boxes are exactly the same specification as the Zidoos and Dunes of the same SOC. Their boxes, OS and application layer come from the same contractor that Dune uses and are pretty much identical to Dune except for the faceplates, the only real difference being the applications, and being reliant on cloud services are apt to fall over. And they cost a fortune. These new boxes use the 1619DR so they're not even the current chipset over which Zidoo have exclusivity at the moment. And I know Zidoo are being uncharacteristically slow at rolling out firmware at the moment due to the success of Eversolo, but at least they're using the latest SOC. But I for one am very happy Zappiti have risen from the ashes because one thing we didn't need to happen was to lose competition - that's what makes any market thrive.
