INCLUDES EXPRESS 2-4 DAY DELIVERY 
Show Posts
1
HiMedia Q10 Pro, Q5 Pro / Re: To Upgrade or not ?
« on: August 31, 2025, 02:23:29 PM »
This thread seems to be still active so I'll add my thoughts as I have just bought a second hand Zidoo Z9X Pro having had a Himedia Q10 Pro for many years.
The biggest plus with the Q10 is that it has a separate apk, the "wrapper", that acts as a fork for Kodi, and new versions of Kodi for android work. I had 21.2 Omega working fine.
The biggest minus was that hooking up more than one drive meant you were playing pot luck with what drive got what drive label. Pcristi devised a windows based app that enabled drives to be identified by UUID. So as long as you mounted drives by UUIDs they would always be the same. This tweak worked well and drives could be connected in any order or turned off if not used. Unfortunately my Q10 periodically crashed into factory settings necessitating a reload of Kodi 21.2, the newer scrapers, and my Kodi library containing a very large number of TV shows and movies. The crashes *appeared^ to be something to do with the Pcristi mod, although it was never proven. Only one or two people had the problem.
Backing up the kodi folder to PC was my workaround and the crashes were infrequent enough to put up with it.
However I noticed that the available ram was diminishing as my library grew and I looked around for a replacement. I found a second hand Zidoo Z9X Pro on a well known website.
What I found with the Zidoo player:
The box has twice the ram and twice the user memory compared to the Q10.
There is no tray for internal HDD but there is an external SATA port and a supplied lead which I used to connect my internal drive.
There are three USB sockets, one of which is USB 3, the others USB 2.
There are two wi-fi antennae. Wi-fi reach seems to be good.
The remote control labeling is awful, but somewhat ameliorated by having a backlight. However once I got used to it there were only a few buttons needed to navigate around the system and after a while I didn't need to bother with the backlight.
The O.S. is based on Android 11.
The box supports full 3D. I have a 3D OLED TV so this was desirable if not absolutely necessary as my 3D content is mostly SBS. 3D support just made it easier to play seamlessly.
The default media juke box is called Home Theatre. My s/h box came with HT v5 which is the latest version.
Testing HT scraping with a sample set of movies didn't give a very good success rate, despite using the same scrapers as Kodi.
Searching online, the general consensus appeared to be that the Zidoo port of Kodi was the better way to go for large libraries as HT is slow when the library is large. This Kodi port is called ZDMC. The last version released for the Z9X Pro is 20.2. There is no separate wrapper so future versions of generic Android Kodi will not work.
I didn't waste time on HT5 and installed ZDMC 20.2 and was now on familiar ground as most of the menus are the same as the version of Kodi that I was using on the Q10.
ZDMC uses UUID and drive name IDs to indentify media drives and picks them up immediately they are connected. It was necessary to tell Kodi what content was on each drive. I just set each drive to movies because that option allows recursive searching. I then set separate folders to TV, Movies etc as appropriate with subfolders containing TV series or movies. Building my library required a few media folders to be renamed but it picked up most of them. Populating the libraries was no faster than with the Q10, although I suspect that internet speed is the limiting factor. I left it running while doing other things.
Playback of 4K media is excellent. It recognises HDR, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby HDR. It played every audio format that the Q10 played. I found one movie that I had just downloaded that had a version of e-ac3 that it didn't like so I ran it through Xmedia Recode converting it to ac3. I don't have a big sound system, just a stereo soundbar so that is good enough.
Subtitle customisation in the Zidoo player was disappointing. Subs contained within an MKV file had much fewer customisation options than external ones. To get those options it was necessary to extract the subtitles and store then in the media folder with the content.
It wasn't as big a task as I originally thought as I was able to do some workarounds: If the UHD media was 16x9 I used the free windows program "Subtitle Edit" to extract the subtitle and put it in the movie folder. One or two subs were pgs format so I hunted down srt versions. This meant I was able to use a custom font to make the subtitle clearer when displayed over the image.
If content had greater than 16x9 format the subtitle would display clearly in the black area so I left it untouched.
The Kodi player can play SD and HD content without problem so I decided to use it for all non UHD content. Using the general Kodi subtitle options I set the subtitles to use a box with black background. This option is perfect for supplied srt files with enhanced options such as coloured text.
Once populated, I backed up my library by copying the android kodi folder to PC, the same as with the Q10. The folder path is a little different but I found it easily enough. I tested the backup by wiping the library and restoring from the backup. It took about an hour to restore and there were a couple of hiccups requiring a retry but otherwise the restore was fine. There have been no Q10 style system crashes so far so I don't anticipate doing a restore very often.
For a much later player the Zidoo doesn't come across as much faster, with a noticeable lag when selecting the menu against a movie or tv show, but the extra memory has given me enough headroom to keep the box for many years. The integrated UUID hard drive ID means the Q10 patch is no longer needed.
Out of curiosity I tried installing a basic android version of Kodi which worked fine in the Q10, hooking up with the wrapper to use either the internal or the Kodi player.
It installed and loaded ok but the hard drive content could not be read. Unsurprisingly, the Q10 patch didn't work. Since I couldn't find any media there was no way to play it. This means that Kodi/ZDMC 20.2 is probably the last version that the player will have as the box is no longer updated.
As it stands it appears to be stable, and with my workarounds regarding subtitles it'll do me for now.
The Q10 is packed away for now. I'll keep it for now but I'll probably sell it on.
It is a testament to Himedia that I was able to continue using the Q10 for around 8 years before it began to run out of library space. The UUID mod by Pcristi saved it from Android's haphazard HDD labelling and the use of a separate wrapper apk as a Kodi fork was a master stroke. The latter enabled generic Android Kodi versions to be updated and still use the box's hardware accelerated video decoding long after Himedia officlal support had expired.
The biggest plus with the Q10 is that it has a separate apk, the "wrapper", that acts as a fork for Kodi, and new versions of Kodi for android work. I had 21.2 Omega working fine.
The biggest minus was that hooking up more than one drive meant you were playing pot luck with what drive got what drive label. Pcristi devised a windows based app that enabled drives to be identified by UUID. So as long as you mounted drives by UUIDs they would always be the same. This tweak worked well and drives could be connected in any order or turned off if not used. Unfortunately my Q10 periodically crashed into factory settings necessitating a reload of Kodi 21.2, the newer scrapers, and my Kodi library containing a very large number of TV shows and movies. The crashes *appeared^ to be something to do with the Pcristi mod, although it was never proven. Only one or two people had the problem.
Backing up the kodi folder to PC was my workaround and the crashes were infrequent enough to put up with it.
However I noticed that the available ram was diminishing as my library grew and I looked around for a replacement. I found a second hand Zidoo Z9X Pro on a well known website.
What I found with the Zidoo player:
The box has twice the ram and twice the user memory compared to the Q10.
There is no tray for internal HDD but there is an external SATA port and a supplied lead which I used to connect my internal drive.
There are three USB sockets, one of which is USB 3, the others USB 2.
There are two wi-fi antennae. Wi-fi reach seems to be good.
The remote control labeling is awful, but somewhat ameliorated by having a backlight. However once I got used to it there were only a few buttons needed to navigate around the system and after a while I didn't need to bother with the backlight.
The O.S. is based on Android 11.
The box supports full 3D. I have a 3D OLED TV so this was desirable if not absolutely necessary as my 3D content is mostly SBS. 3D support just made it easier to play seamlessly.
The default media juke box is called Home Theatre. My s/h box came with HT v5 which is the latest version.
Testing HT scraping with a sample set of movies didn't give a very good success rate, despite using the same scrapers as Kodi.
Searching online, the general consensus appeared to be that the Zidoo port of Kodi was the better way to go for large libraries as HT is slow when the library is large. This Kodi port is called ZDMC. The last version released for the Z9X Pro is 20.2. There is no separate wrapper so future versions of generic Android Kodi will not work.
I didn't waste time on HT5 and installed ZDMC 20.2 and was now on familiar ground as most of the menus are the same as the version of Kodi that I was using on the Q10.
ZDMC uses UUID and drive name IDs to indentify media drives and picks them up immediately they are connected. It was necessary to tell Kodi what content was on each drive. I just set each drive to movies because that option allows recursive searching. I then set separate folders to TV, Movies etc as appropriate with subfolders containing TV series or movies. Building my library required a few media folders to be renamed but it picked up most of them. Populating the libraries was no faster than with the Q10, although I suspect that internet speed is the limiting factor. I left it running while doing other things.
Playback of 4K media is excellent. It recognises HDR, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby HDR. It played every audio format that the Q10 played. I found one movie that I had just downloaded that had a version of e-ac3 that it didn't like so I ran it through Xmedia Recode converting it to ac3. I don't have a big sound system, just a stereo soundbar so that is good enough.
Subtitle customisation in the Zidoo player was disappointing. Subs contained within an MKV file had much fewer customisation options than external ones. To get those options it was necessary to extract the subtitles and store then in the media folder with the content.
It wasn't as big a task as I originally thought as I was able to do some workarounds: If the UHD media was 16x9 I used the free windows program "Subtitle Edit" to extract the subtitle and put it in the movie folder. One or two subs were pgs format so I hunted down srt versions. This meant I was able to use a custom font to make the subtitle clearer when displayed over the image.
If content had greater than 16x9 format the subtitle would display clearly in the black area so I left it untouched.
The Kodi player can play SD and HD content without problem so I decided to use it for all non UHD content. Using the general Kodi subtitle options I set the subtitles to use a box with black background. This option is perfect for supplied srt files with enhanced options such as coloured text.
Once populated, I backed up my library by copying the android kodi folder to PC, the same as with the Q10. The folder path is a little different but I found it easily enough. I tested the backup by wiping the library and restoring from the backup. It took about an hour to restore and there were a couple of hiccups requiring a retry but otherwise the restore was fine. There have been no Q10 style system crashes so far so I don't anticipate doing a restore very often.
For a much later player the Zidoo doesn't come across as much faster, with a noticeable lag when selecting the menu against a movie or tv show, but the extra memory has given me enough headroom to keep the box for many years. The integrated UUID hard drive ID means the Q10 patch is no longer needed.
Out of curiosity I tried installing a basic android version of Kodi which worked fine in the Q10, hooking up with the wrapper to use either the internal or the Kodi player.
It installed and loaded ok but the hard drive content could not be read. Unsurprisingly, the Q10 patch didn't work. Since I couldn't find any media there was no way to play it. This means that Kodi/ZDMC 20.2 is probably the last version that the player will have as the box is no longer updated.
As it stands it appears to be stable, and with my workarounds regarding subtitles it'll do me for now.
The Q10 is packed away for now. I'll keep it for now but I'll probably sell it on.
It is a testament to Himedia that I was able to continue using the Q10 for around 8 years before it began to run out of library space. The UUID mod by Pcristi saved it from Android's haphazard HDD labelling and the use of a separate wrapper apk as a Kodi fork was a master stroke. The latter enabled generic Android Kodi versions to be updated and still use the box's hardware accelerated video decoding long after Himedia officlal support had expired.