The Himedia Q5 that I've had for a few years has just croaked for good, so I began looking for a successor, and my obvious first choice was the Q5 Pro, but now I saw this Zidoo Z9S on Futeko, and I wonder how it compares? It looks very similar on the outside, but that's not unusual with the electronics from Chinese companies (my first thought at seeing it was actually: "is this a rebadged Himedia successor to Q5 Pro?").

Has anyone who knows Himedia's Q5  Pro had a chance to check this Z9S yet? If you did, could you describe them as far as their similarities and differences go? Is the build quality similar? Are their interfaces similar? How is their software and its performance in comparison to the Q5 Pro?

As far as what I'm looking for in a player, I was very happy with my Q5 as a player, I liked its speed, performance, USB connection, subtitle customization, the file browser, the remote - so anything that's just as good as it was in Q5 would be the right choice. The format compatibility is probably my top interest, software-wise - Q5 played practically anything, from old RealMedia files, to DIVX3, to XVID, to any Matroska container, to X265. Probably the only thing I missed in the file browser was the ability to display file sizes and dates, and/or sort by them.

(I've no use for that Kody software and its likes - I uninstalled it to free up space on my Q5, so anything related to it is not an issue. But connecting hard drives and playing their contents just as efficiently as on the Q5 is what I'm looking for).

How is Zidoo in general, quality-wise, compared to Himedia? I don't know Zidoo yet; I've had two Himedia players and liked them - one, the old, pre-Android one, is still alive and working well. As far as other offers, I had an older Egreat player, too, and I thought the quality was far worse than Himedia's, plus I couldn't stand its interface and remote.