zidoo UHD3000 4K Media Player, Smart HDR Android TV Box | Internal DAC and Xmos | MQA Hardware decoding | Dual HDMI Output Ports | Dual Power Supply | USB DAC in and XLR Output

I've been using an Nvidia ShieldTV Pro for around 5 years. First the 2017 model and now the 2019 model. I use it for streaming apps as well as watching my local movies via Plex located on my NAS. For the most part, I have been very, very happy with it. Now that the chip shortage seems to be less of an issue, I decided to give a higher ended streamer a try. And I settled on this one (Zidoo UHD3000). Why did I choose this model? Well, for me, it was simply due to the beefiest power supply of all the Zidoo models. I have a very high end DAC, so that part of my review won't be touched on. I also have a NAS with (10) 18TB HDDs with all of my movies on it. So I didn't need the dual HDD ports at all. I just prefer the highest of quality products that fall within my budget. The UHD3000 seemed to fit the bill. And here is my review for anyone new to Zidoo:The BAD (or not so good):- If you have Plex or another eco system containing all of your movies and metadata, you will have to start over from scratch. Poster Wall is Zidoo's own ecosystem and your catalog will need to be re-built for it. It took a full weekend and some hours here and there to get my collection 'right'. I prefer all 4k movies (I have 4-500 in total) to have the black banner on top of the artwork which showcases it's a 4k movie. The issue with these are they were almost always near the end of the list which takes a ton of time and effort to get to. The graphics load slowly and you have to wait them out to make sure you don't skip by your preferred artwork. I also didn't like many of the default posters, so I browsed for ones that I did like. This takes an enormous amount of time if you have OCD like I. The partly good thing about this is you can pull up your Zidoo 'poster wall' via a web browser. This does speed things up a bit but I seemed to find more poster selection from wihin the Zidoo device which didn't make sense. That may have been my fault though as I could have missed them via the web browser. And this is because it does not fit to the screen and you have to keep moving left and right to see every movie poster while also trying to scroll up/down. So the web browser certainly needs more work from Zidoo. A bit annoying that their 'window' is at a fixed size which you cannot change.- Zidoo's secret sauce of finding matches for your movie and show titles is far, far worse than Plex. I had literally hundreds of titles which got thrown into the 'Unmatched' folder and then you must manually fix every one of them. Many matched exactly as TMDB showed the name to be, so not sure what was up with Zidoo on those. Zidoo also hates, and I mean hates dashes in the title. And this is what seemed to be the issue with matching them. Dashes work perfectly fine in Plex. I used a dash (-) any time there was a colon (:) in the title. This is because I use Windows to name all files and everyone knows that you can't use a colon in ANY file or folder name within Windows. So I had to go into my TrueNAS machine (HDD RAID Array) and change 100-200 titles by deleting the dashes. An example of this: Star Wars- The Last Jedi (2017). Zidoo will NOT find a match for that title. But if you re-label it: Star Wars The Last Jedi (2017) (hint, no dash or any other character), it seems to catalog it properly. I didn't want to go through all of this and fix anything in the future. So with trial and error I was able to fix every single title in my 1100+ movies and 2000+ show episodes. What a pain but my OCD is at bay once again.- Plex via Zidoo is a joke. Really, don't even waste your time with it. Subtitles use the global player settings ONLY and this is huge for me. Plex is very flexible with subs - especially if you have a significant other who likes subtitles and you don't. Just create their own profile under your main login in Plex. Logging her (or him) on and off takes 2 seconds and wham. She has Spanish subs and I have "forced" English subs for foreign parts only. I love Plex for this! Zidoo also circumvents Plex's server. So Plex doesn't even know you're playing a file off your own Plex server! You can confirm this by pulling up the Plex dashboard and you will not see anything playing while watching something. The GUI is more Zidoo than Plex. Another bummer really, as I like Plex's GUI. You can't skip intros and the 'play next episode' never appears within the Zidoo (not just Plex but the Zidoo as a whole does not have those great features). This is another big one when you're binging, say, The Walking Dead. Lots of extra time to find the right places in the show to FF to. Sometimes hitting the chapter up will work on the intro (tested with ST:TNG). But a simple pop-up button would be much preferred and necessary, in my opinion. And finally, there is no remote streaming, period. You can only play files off your own local network. That alone makes this app non-Plex in every way other than the name. Ok enough about Plex.- It doesn't appear easy to add streaming apps to the device. I honestly have not had the time to learn yet, but a few online forums say that Netflix, Prime Video, HBO, etc are very underwhelming and you're better off with a ShieldTV or Apple TV for pure app streaming. A real bummer because this Zidoo for video and sound quality is fantastic.The GOOD/VERY good:- Subtitles with some trial and error work as they should. I have mine setup to show during spoken foreign (non-English) parts. Some of my rips do have Spanish subs labeled as Default, so without the proper setting, these will show before the forced subs will. But once you know what to change, sub settings pretty good. I wish Zidoo would add profiles for their devices! Then you could have one for your kids, wife, friend, whatever. They could choose how they want their subtitles or other settings which suit them.That would make this thing (HT 4.0) as good as Plex as far as the GUI and far, far better for video and sound quality with Zidoo's excellent video player being the icing on the cake.- And to that, Video and Audio quality are amazing. I would say even better than my Oppo 205 spinning the actual discs because things are brighter, more vibrant and blacks aren't crushed. No, they aren't just 1s and 0s. There's much more going on. Like I said earlier, it starts with a good power supply. And I have a full fiber optic LAN feeding my Zidoo. I could not be happier with AQ/VQ.- Tons of settings with the device. You can change/tweak just about anything and I love that. Options are never, ever bad. You can even tailor things for SDR and HDR as well as resolution (1080 vs 4k, etc). Love this!- Zidoo's Poster Wall is very nice. I was worried that nothing could compete with Plex but for layout, I definitely give the edge to Zidoo. Movie series are put into their own folder. So X-Men all go into their own folder and sort chronologically. Which is the way it should be, so great move by Zidoo. You can also create your own. I made one called Marvel's Cinematic Universe and found some custom artwork online with the 4k badge on the top. You then long press each pertinent movie and then move it into the MCU folder. This was definitely easier to perform via the web browser. I also created one called DC Movies and obviously, the same process goes into that one. Some of the built-in series are: Fast & the Furious, James Bond, Jurassic Park, Star Wars, Star Trek (new, old and alternative universe I think is what the newest series is called). All in all, this is very cool. One minor complaint is many movies that I didn't want in folders like Deadpool, I had to disband the folder and then move them to the X-Men folder, since that's where they should be. But it's easy enough to do.- The video player is excellent. Far, far above the Plex video player. It never misses/skips frames, audio dropouts or any other weird bug that plague just about all Plex players. It just works and does so beautifully. The usual options are available within the player like subtitles, audio, etc.- It's very well built, hefty and solid. I have a high-end A/V setup and the Zidoo fits right in, even though all of my other electronics (and speakers) are American-made. Well, all except for my Lyngdorf MP-60 2.1 processor (it's made in Denmark).- The front display is welcomed after not having one with any of my other streamers. I could care less how far into a movie I am, I just want to know how much time is left. I would have to constantly pause a show or find the info button to display the remaining time in the past. And naturally, the Zidoo will display the time remaining and stay this way until you change it manually (no reason to, so it's been this way for a few weeks).- Dual HDMI outputs. Very cool feature and just like Oppo implemented. This is a must have for me. Does it make things look and sound better? No idea but I can circumvent eARC this way and that is always a good thing with how stupid EDID can be.- Will send out your DVD-A and bluray audio surround disc music to your processor. And they do sound great. It's been a long time since I've heard music through more than 2 speakers since the Lyngdorf only accepts digital inputs. I tried DSD (dsf files) surround files but they would not play. DSD stereo is sent out as PCM 24/176.4 (DoP spec). Funny thing is, Lyngdorf told me that the MP-60 would not accept DoP but it does. At least in 2-channel. I will keep toying with my 5.1 DSD rips but they may not be compatible with either the Zidoo or my Lyngdorf.I'm sure I'm leaving out a bunch of more cool things about the Zidoo but mainly, it is about better audio, video and a better experience with streaming my mkv rips. I could not be more pleased. I would recommend this unit and I'm sure the less expensive units would suffice for most anyone as well. But for those who prefer the highest quality for their budget, this would be hard to beat - especially if you'll be using the HDD bays or built-in ESS DAC. No kick-back or affiliation with Zidoo. Just a Home Theater enthusiast.EDIT 10-2-22: Zidoo recently released a beta firmware which will allow for 5.1 channels of DSD (dff or dsf) @176.4kHz. It (DSD playback) is incredibly buggy on my device/system though. If I power the UHD3000 on and head right into the music player, it will play 5.1 dsf files just fine. And they sound fantastic! I sold my Oppo so I cannot compare them but from what I remember (take this with a grain of salt), it sounds just as good. I'm glad I can listen to SACDs in surround now without a spinner and feel like I'm not compromising. I was a very early adopter of SACD but got out of it for 20'ish years. I bought a few titles here and there since but most were in the first few years of SACD's release. Now the bug(s). It doesn't appear many are affected by this, but when/if I leave the music player for ANY reason, like to change a global setting, it borks DSD playback. There is some sort of EDID issue (note my original review on trying my darndest to avoid EDID! It's the devil!). Generally, I'll just get (down-mixed) 2-channel playback even though I choose a 5.1 file. And worse, sometimes it down-samples to 44.1kHz. Why? Because EDID is stupid and somehow 'forgets' the Lyngdorf is plenty capable of 176.4kHz sample input. Settings can confirm 176.4 is missing from the EDID listed supported sample rates. So between these two knuckle-heads (Lyngdorf and Zidoo), they were defiant and quite an annoyance over the weekend. Powering off the Zidoo and then back on 'usually' refreshes EDID and I get [email protected] again. For how long is the billion dollar question. I will keep track of it but I swore it reverted back to stereo after playing a 2-channel DSD file and then back to a 5.1 file. Hopefully Zidoo will find a fix soon. But it's great to have SACD surround when it's working properly.

The best of the best device is here. I bought it because it supports samba network sharing file. Yes you can login using user/pass now. Unlike Dune, no matter what I do, I couldn't get it to work with network sharing. You have to use smb version to 2 to 3, it won't work on version 3.Picture, it is unreal, I can tell, it is better than Nvdia in every way, better than apple 4k 2022 too. It is smart enough to match the frame rate of the content to the tv, it is so great. You don't want to touch or upscale any of that. They make a good movie for this frame for a reason.Streaming content, like netflix or prime, forget it, you want this to watch off line not online.Feature like, file folder to poster, it is great but not really interested in that, some people like it. I am here to watch a movie not poster.Sound, dolby atmos, the best of the best is here.I wish, there is a way to rack this thing to the cabinet

It took me a bit of research to finally settle on this player. I always wanted a primary source to keep and play all my media in one place. This player will play anything I tossed at it, from Ultra 4K full rips, Mkv, M2ts to Mp4. The onboard DAC is next-world quality, my advice is to add an internal SATA SSD ( you can buy a 2.5 to 3.5 converter ) as that is the most silent way to enjoy Hi-Fi audio / no HD noise, etc.The device itself is made out of solid thick aluminum.. love the finish and feel of this device. It will integrate into any Hi Fi system. Well done Zidoo!!!

Awesome Quality build ,Picture quality

This thing preforms beautifully except the picture keeps going in and out. Not to mention the customer service is almost impossible to get help. They don't have an office/ person in the U.S. everything is in China so you're operating on their time difference which is difficult all in itself. Don't get me wrong it's a great unit I just wish they had better customer service in the western time zone.Update! "Please Do Not Buy"! The Manufacturers has the Worst Customer Service in the world. AMAZON gives the wrong police that covers the item. Asurion can't honor the police because of incorrect police thru Amazon. I've been back and forth foe a week now and Amazon "Refuses to Exchange, or Refund or any assistance with the Product & Police they sold me". Since then i was able to work out what the problem was. I had to go through 3 (High End) HDMI cables to get it to work properly. Now it works great! I Still wish they had a U.S. rep.

I really wanted this item to work as advertised, because it would suit my needs well. Unfortunately, every time (and I mean EVERY time) I began moving movies into collections (like grouping all my Three Stooges together) after a while the poster wall would crash and give me the perpetual "Loading posters, please wait" error. Support told me to try loading the most recent firmware (which is still in beta), but that didn't help. I will keep prowling the forums to find out when Zidoo fixes this problem, because I love the features of this machine. I just need it to work.