Ouch for the Zappiti Media Center lacking customization and continues to dwindle down with the trend. I've never owned a Zappiti/Dune/PCH or the likes before. My first and probably most beloved player is the WD TV Live Hub. I wouldn't have bought a new one except that I have upgraded my TV with an OLED 4K HDR panel that simply deserves the best media I can feed into it.

Don't worry about my nitpick, it's just that what love ES Explorer had in the past is now gone when the devs sold the app to the new owner. There are far better alternatives.

I delved into a couple of Android boxes (SkyStream One and nVidia Shield) before I settled with the Zappiti Mini 4K HDR. I'm happy with it so far besides not being able to take advantage of a beautiful looking library. It plays my videos without my initial problem of having several blackouts throughout the video with the cost of turning off auto framerate change.

Oh I see, the es file manager is just the first that I found searching for an alternative to the zappiti explorer which doesn't allow you to do what need for the mods.

What where your issues with the shield? Did you have blackouts? That's another box I wanted to try...thanks Amazon for your 30 days return period.

Next week if I have some time I will also try to compare the PQ between the Zidoo and Zap, so far I don't see a difference but haven't done a proper comparison. I feel that If the ZAP doesn't have a superior PQ (well at least on my 55") I will return it.

I'll be honest but my 500 movies and 30 TV series are all scraped fine and I did nothing special. All my movies and TV shows are in their own directories with various JPEGs and guff generated by other players. I had to fix maybe 3% of entries which is a good hit rate.

TV Shows are listed in the traditional way: "Name of Show S01E01E02" etc...

Films as "Name of Film.mkv" or "Name of Film (year).mkv".

I used both TVDB and IMDB to fix those few that went wrong.

I probably would have stuck with the Shield if not for the fact that you can't write files to an external USB hard drive connected to it. It's more an Android limitation than anything else, although I don't know why nVidia never opted to do it how Zappiti does and allow writing for external USB hard drives. I guess you could but you would have to work around it, root to gain write access and install ftp. Other than that fact, the Shield is actually pretty fluid with a good PQ.

Lucky you! I might try to install it on the PC and work on the library when I get the time. I still have to figure out what to do with having the same movie/video in different formats (1080p FHD, 4K, 3D).

The request to Zappiti for more customization in their ZMC software never materialized. There were requests to open the DB with SQLite but again no dice. For example the Star trek TV show Enterprise is locked on theTVDB and there is no way of adding the extras that are on the BD discs. That was the reason for me to request customization in 2013.

It also looks like that a few of us here have large collections and try to find an intelligent display of our media. In my experience the ZMC is just barely sufficient for that. You can group movies into collections, but if you have a share called documentaries and under that share you have movies and TV shows, you have to select one category. I selected TV shows so everything under documentaries is interpreted by ZMC as TV shows. If I have movies under that share I have to create a separate folder path for scraping each of them with the category Movie. What that does is it creates a lot of duplicates in the scraper that can't be resolved.

The video wall that I have is 7 across by 3 rows, which is doable but not as good as what I had on my HTPC with EMBY (former Media Browser) and the Throgsoft themes for which you pay. The downside is that at the moment Windows Media center is a requirement until he adopts the themes to the EMBY theater player. Just to give you an idea what I try to achieve I post a few of the screen shots from the past (3 years ago) and since the skins are now working with the latest EMBY clients I am trying to get back to that. If anyone know of similar skins/themes in KODI I would appreciate any feedback. Notice the Graphic Logo and Cleart representation on the screens. You scroll along the video wall and once you hover over the poster on the left all pertinent information pops up, Very quick, smooth and fast to browse your collection with informative feedback. Once you click for playback, EMBY decides what your selected player is. I use Media Player Classic with madVR & LAV filters for all content except BD discs for which I select Power DVD. There is a way with scripts and trickery to start an external player like the Dune but too much of a hassle and definitely no WAF.

Home Screen with newly added releases.


TV Show Video Wall with Downton Abbey


Season, Episode and detail Level:


Movie Wall with hovered movie poster and detail


Grouped Movies

Pretty stuff. Now I weep as I resort to using the Zappiti Explorer instead.

Since I have over 100 TV shows and 1000 Movies an explorer is not a solution. The frontend whose pictures I posted has another excellent feature. If I like a particular actor or director I just click on the name and it shows and displays me what other media I have by this actor or director on my server. Representation is a large part of what I want to have in my home theater.

Yes my media collection is a lot more straightforward than yours, no 3D and only single versions of the same film. Don't really need any degree of customisation at all. Just a film, synopsis and posters, which the Media Center easily provides. You'd be out of luck with the Dune, Popcorn Hour and most media players I've seen. Neither Plex nor Kodi does this very well either.

On the Shield it can now write to external drives from a PC under the latest firmware and android update.

Plex does an excellent job of organizing your content library otherwise they would not have such a large following. What doe you base your statement on that Plex does not do this very well. Haven't tried KODI, so no opinion from me.

The older and the latest Dunes can use the Zappiti Media Center version 2 as has been tested successfully and was reported here in the Dune threads. Have no idea where you get your information from that with the Dune you are out of luck as many here are using the combination of Zappiti media center with Dune players.

Because I've been a Plex user for the last five years. Last time I checked Plex couldn't differentiate between a 2D and 3D version of a movie and they had to go in separate folders. Might have changed now but that was the point.

As it stands the My Collection official Dune Media Center on the Dune Solo cannot scrape TV shows, only movies.

Oh darn. I wish Shield had the latest firmware back when I tried it. I wouldn't have had to import the Zappiti. As it is though, I like Zappiti. I only wish that I could actually tame the Media Center and have a beautiful library like I had with the WDTV Live Hub. Quick question, what do you do to get the Zappiti in standby with the SMB running? Every time I put it on a "supposed" standby (as opposed to how it works with the WD TV Live Hub), the SMB server gets turned off and I can't access the USB external HDD on my network.

I have been trying out my zappiti one & reading the forums. I never owned one of these before so everything is new to me. I have in the past owned 2 argosy media players and the MEDE8ER X10003D player. The mede8er player used YAMJ for its jukebox. That seemed OK but no updates. I don't mind the zappiti jukebox so far, scanned everything correctly for me. Only have movies no TV shows. Only thing i don't like is when i turn it on & go to my movies it takes awhile for the cloud because i have a lot of movies.I have an 8tb internal hard drive installed.Like the previous post said it would b nice to have option for external player using kodi. I don't have any 4k but coming in the future. I did text for some support & they did answer my question within a day.

Don't use standby, mine is either on or off. I've got a mini in the bedroom and that can play files from the drives attached to the Duo in the lounge. But no other device can access those file for playback. Doesn't seem to be a proper server in that way.

Don't know if you tried this but here is a quick quote, posted a year ago, of how others do it when they have the same movie 2D/3D/DC/TC or specials:
No one said anything about using Dune Media Center, did you overlook where I referred to using Zappiti Media Center WITH the Dune.

I never even referred to your post. I was talking to the other guy about scraping on the latest Dune, Popcorn etc.. Not third party alternative solutions.

That was a statement of yours that is incorrect, misleading and based on erroneous information. I presume you are using the Zappiti player with the Zappiti Media center and it works. The same is true for using the Dunes with the Zappiti Media Center since Zappiti sold rebranded Dune players at first before switching to their own custom made Chinese players. Their software was designed for the Dune players so a person that wants a media center for the Dune uses Zappiti version 2. When you make an incorrect statement like You'd be out of luck with the Dune own up to the fact that it is incorrect rather then hiding behind the 3rd part solution phrase.

You seem pretty hard of reading yourself.

The guy said he had problems with naming different versions of the same title and I commented on that. Then you jump up and start spouting about Zappiti on Dune players?

I've made no reference to Zappiti on Dune, or how it works. You've turned off and made that up. I know who Dune and Zappiti are, as I posted above just on the previous page. I also know how the current Dune scraper works, or doesn't, because I owned one.

If you want to tell me that V2 of Zappiti allows different versions of the same file to be recognised and named accordingly then so be it. Version 4 certainly doesn't.

Now go and eat some cookies and drink your milk. Don't waste my time.

hd land who owns zappiti media players Inc zappiti media manager and has their own shop and forum known as hd land.

hd land use to distribute hdi dune media players back in the days and use to have their own variation of the hdi dune media player which they licensed out from hdi.

But when hdi dune decided not to make media players anymore due number reasons inc cineva and concentrate on the stb market hence zappiti media player was born.

now dune is back at making media players and zappiti has established themselves.

I only heard of the other companies until recently except egreat which has been around for a while but never really established themselves well.

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The test for the identification of installed memory and its speed

Install and run 'SD Insight' from Google play and see what internal memory you have installed.

Information about the memory of place here.

My Collection on the new Dunes scrapes TV shows. It just doesn't allow you to differentiate them from Movies. To get round that I open My Movies by folder, one for Movies and one for TV.

Cool, does it show a Series thumbmail and all episodes of a TV series with their own thumbnails, posters and synopsis?

When I was doing this last year it was only good for movies and I didn't bother with TV since that seemed to be the general advice on forums. I was expecting TV scraping development to come later.

That statement clearly indicates you made an assumption that is based on a version that never was created for Dune players. Same movies with different formats can be scraped and grouped under one poster in version 2 with separate posters for each format. Be careful in the future not to make any assumptions because it can lead to a three letter word.

No, its currently designed for movies but will still scrape TV shows. However what you get is the Series poster. Beyond that you get a full page fan art poster with selections for playing, description, trailer (if it finds one), cast and crew. Going into play is where it falls down. There you just get a directory listing split by season and within that episodes. No season posters or summaries of episodes. Its's still beta so hoping for improvement in next release.

Yeah thought it must be like that.

I don't regret leaving the Solo behind for the Zappiti for numerous reasons. The only meaningful advantage of the Solo is the full BD menu support which is irrelevant to me as I'm 99% MKV.

For movies I'm about 90% full BD rip so the Dune is for me - for now. However when 4K HDR disk rips are possible AND I upgrade my AV (only HDMI 1.4) I may look at the Zappiti.

I've been trying the Zappiti software out on my PC to see if it will meet my needs before spending money on the 4K HDR hardware box.

I set up an account, and set the server database location as my local PC ('DESKTOP') rather than cloud. This worked fine during the session when I installed the software, and movies and TV Shows were scraped from my NAS folders on my LAN, etc and it all seemed to be working really well.

However after a reboot the Zappiti Server does not seem to restart, and I only see Cloud as a choice in the servers section (which then asks for a token from the 4K hardware box which I don't have of course). There is no DESKTOP option which was visible before and is where the database was set up.

I also get a repeating UAC popup asking me to allow Windows Command Shell to make changes to this computer (it doesn't matter whether I say yes or no, it just pops back up again in about five seconds). The only way to get rid of the recurring popup is to reboot. It all starts happening again as soon as I try to run the Zappiti software.

Any ideas?

Andre

I'm looking for an alternative to the Popcorn Hour A-500 which I've had to return on two separate occasions because of network issues. From users initial reactions, does the Zappiti 4K HDR One seem reliable?


My initial impressions of the Popcorn Hour were not favourable (jittery playback, long wait times for recognition of internal and external storage, network problems). My main usage will be watching files from internal storage (rather than streaming) so am just looking for FTP transfer, a decent interface and smooth playback. Should I take the plunge?

I recently just bought the zappiti 4k hdr one. I own a mede8er x10003d media player + 3 argosy media players. I too ask multiple questions & just like previous threads say so & so will brag about this one & someone will brag about their certain one. Bottom line is read, read & read. I personally don't stream so i just wanted a media player. Right or wrong when u buy something u are stuck with it for awhile so get use to it. I so far am happy with what I have.Could I have done better? Time will tell.

3.05 firmware upgrade today - anyone know what has changed?