Probably a very stupid question but I would like to order this unit from Amazon but I don't know if this is 220v compatible or not. I live in South Africa. Just want to make sure there aren't any incompatibility issues should I order the unit.
Not a stupid question at all, but just to clarify, 220v is perfectly fine. As @rozel says, they all come with (or are equipped internally with) universal power supplies so they work pretty much anywhere. Not sure what your mains plugs are like physically so you may need an adapter of some sort though.
South African plugs are unique and huge. I think they must be used to the need swapping those. Yes all Zidoo models are 100V-240V (switched mode PSU's) or adopt to 110V and 230V ranges automatically (Linear PSU's).
Hi Mark, thank you for the response and for clarifying. Just one question though - I have a spare 2tb external 2.5 HDD obviously with USB. Let's say, hypothetically, one were to download a bluray rip (not saying where, of course) can one use the USB ports on the Z9x and watch bluray rips that way? Question 2 is : will the Z9x display the content, menu, audio options etc as shown on the physical disc? Thank again!
Yes you can watch BluRay rips from USB attached storage. And yes, the Z9X will display the menu as on the physical disc. There are limitations though - because Zidoo, like all similar media box manufacturers, are not members of the BDA (BluRay Disc Association) they cannot use their IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) so have to reverse engineer the Java code required to run todays menu structures. The BDA are continually updating their IPR with new ways of stopping people doing this (obfuscation techniques) some of which are successful, some of which are not. This means that no media box is 100% compatible and the situation changes as time goes on so you do find that some menu structures misbehave in some way. That said, it's pretty good, particularly for standard BluRay releases, but personally the whole point of having a media player is to get rid of the damn time vampires and just rip the movie to MKV without the 3 dozen languages I don't speak and subtitles and audio tracks I'm not interested in - I prefer to watch movies and not wait for spinners while crap menus appear with inane animations and innocuous music. Just my humble opinion of course I know some people do like to watch menus.
Yes a Zidoo will play any BD or DVD in ISO or Folder format with the DVD/BD Menu for access to all options on an USB attached drive. BD Menu playback is not working 100% though: http://forum.zidoo.tv/index.php?thr...ms-upto-fw-v6-3-40-no-feature-requests.84836/ Read item number 1. @Markswift2003 I mostly watch without menus but occasionally go for them. Having exactly that choice is the really great thing about media players for me. I think the problem processing them is not just about BDA membership but about dedicating programming effort to do it correctly. Some brands do a far better job than Zidoo here. Playlist obfuscation causes problems regularly on standard BD disc players too including my OPPO.
I don't want to get myself into trouble here, but is a remux file just the original blu-ray file minus the menus and other fluff? It's going to have the same bitrate as the original blu-ray film?
Yes, it does. No differences between a full blu-ray and a Remux. A Remux just extracts the video, the audio and the subtitles from the blu-ray structure, without changing anything.
Without BDA membership they are unable to utilise the licenced BD libraries so have to reverse engineer and write their own. I agree, there are other brands that do a better job but still not perfect and there are also brands that use the licenced libraries illegally. Obviously playlist obfuscation etc does not affect licenced products because they have access to the proper libraries.
There are many licenced players having problems with obfuscated playlist including my original OPPO UDP-203 which is regarded a reference for BD-players.
That's quite interesting - since it's no longer in development I wondered how long it would take for the firmware to lag enough for BD menus to suffer with not being in the BDA update loop so to speak. I've never regarded the Oppo as a "reference" player (absolute heresy I know!!) because the chroma alignment isn't really that good - in fact it's well superseded with the performance of the Realtek 1619 players but not really surprising since it's such an old SOC - the Mediatek 8591 is the same age as the now pretty much obsolete (and intrinsically flawed) Realtek 1295.
