I was running my Z9X pro with media stored on a local PC (external HD) over LAN. I was getting stuttering issues with 4k UHD content, so figured it was a bandwidth issue. I reconnected the external HD directly to the Z9X over USB, and that fixed the issue. But now when I try to transfer media onto the HD over lan, the speeds are very slow. I'm getting 7-10MB/sec max (~50-80Mbps). My LAN is capable of much more than that. Even my wifi devices routinely measure over 300Mbps down from the internet. The external HD itself was transferring at over 200MB/sec over USB. It seems like the bottleneck is the Zidoo itself. A search online shows others facing the same issue, but I haven't found any solutions. Does anyone have suggestions on what could be the fix? It's painfully slow when trying to transfer files in bulk. Thanks in advance!
I forgot to add my wifi setup. I'm using an Orbi Mesh Wifi 6 system with 5.4Gbps max speed over wifi, and the entire home is completely covered in a excellent wifi signal via the 2 satellites. Basically, my peak wifi speeds are about 3 times the max read/write speed of the USB 3.0 external hard drive, so that's definitely not the bottleneck.
I I look at it this way.. .the Zidoo is designed to be a high performance media player... can you attach storage to it and access and push files to it remotely? Sure. But, that is not its specialty. That is what a NAS is for. If you are serious about having a lot of files that you can easily and speedily transfer to and from, then get yourself a NAS. You will wonder how you functioned without one.
I agree, but interestingly, that's where this all started. I'm using a 4-bay QNAP DAS (with 2, 16TB NAS drives installed) rather than a full blown NAS, but with the DAS connected to a fairly modern Windows 11 PC (10th gen Intel Core i5). At first I thought all was well, but then I noticed when trying to stream 4kUHD movies with Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, I was getting stuttering playback. Investigating further into this, it became apparent that these types of movies just barely exceeded the bandwidth that the Zidoo was able to manage on my wireless network. The only way I was able to solve this issue for UHD Dolby Vision movies was to directly attach my DAS to the Zidoo via USB 3.0. So this solved the streaming bandwidth problem, but brought to light the very slow throughput problem when trying to transfer files to the drives connected to the Zidoo (I suspect this was the same problem that lead to the stuttering I was experiencing). One thing to point out though is that all my devices are connected via wireless network. In theory, my mesh wireless system is capable of 5.4Gbps data transfer, and should be far faster than a wired gigabit LAN connection. I am suspecting that the wifi of the Zidoo may be the limiting factor after hearing people mention similar issues. This really shouldn't be the case, as Zidoo claims they built in wireless adapter is capable of higher than gigabit speeds, but I'm really having my doubts about this. Unfortunately, I cannot run a purely wired network connection to the Zidoo, but I have purchased another Orbi Mesh satellite that has 2 available wired LAN ports. My plan is to use this satellite as a wired LAN access point for the Zidoo and disable the Zidoo's wireless connection. This way I can take the Z9X Pros wireless connection out of the equation and rely on the Orbi which I know is capable of the 5.4Gbps throughput.
Having storage attached to and going through any Windows PC is always going to be problematic... .Windows always finds a way to mess things up. And it doesn't matter how great your wireless specs are... in theory.... it is never as good as what it claims.... wired is always better. Especially with all the interference nowdays with other neighboring wifi networks all infringing on each other. But, with that being said, your idea of a nearby "wireless" bridge to your Zidoo is probably your best bet in lieu of an actual wired ethernet connection. Next would be using that bridge for a NAS as well!
