4K media player

[Pounce]

4 minutes ago, daveva said:

My pockets aren't that deep

About 4k plus 20-40 bucks per movie, right? Seems like their prices on the whole have come down.

[rea]

48 minutes ago, Pounce said:

About 4k plus 20-40 bucks per movie, right? Seems like their prices on the whole have come down.

https://hdgear.highdefdigest.com/52157/kaleidescapestratomovieplayer.html

Looks like at least that much. I'm sure it's  very nice, but I think I'll stick with popping 4k discs into the Oppo for now. 

[Cyknight]

15 hours ago, Jed Peters said:

No, no it's not.

I get full uncompressed 4k HDR video and HD sound through my system. NAS--Nvidia Shield--Plex

No you're not. At least, no more than a Bluray player can output a DVD in 'full 1080p'.

That said, this will turn out into an endless discussion of 'merit' - and I was asked for and gave my OPINION, no more, no less.

[zaphod]

15 hours ago, Jed Peters said:

I get full uncompressed 4k HDR video and HD sound through my system. NAS--Nvidia Shield--Plex

It actually is severely compressed - likely using H.265.  An uncompressed 4K movie would be many TeraBytes in size.  But it likely uses a much higher bitrate than streaming services.

[88Tiger88]

If you want to play multi-Channel FLat or DSD from your NAS drive, and possible down-mix to 2 channel ... OPPO maybe only solution 

[AidenL]

On 6/10/2018 at 7:21 PM, South Africa C4 user said:

I used the Dune Solo 4K for a while and it was very good but I have moved on to using InfusePro on my AppleTV4K to play all my HD and 4K content from my NAS.

I agree with this, using it myself, fantastic solution, with Atmos on the way.

[alanchow]

On 6/20/2018 at 2:40 AM, Cyknight said:

Zappitti won;t work like Dune will - the driver (and/or device) is (or has been, Ill add that I haven't looked at it for a few months) lacking any ability to allow C4 to tell it to grab a certain file - in other words you would be locked to using its own interface to select movies, and cannot see the movie database in Control4 and select from there.

Old topic but this is now solved with our Zappiti driver.

http://chowmainsoft.com/zappiti-control4

[Time2Jet]

Off topic... I’m a Dune guy from way back at the beginning, but got away from all of that for time issues. I ended up a kaleidescape guy, but don’t want to make that investment again. I know there are players, rippers and storage that is just as good. But I’ve been away from it all so long, I’m ignorant to it all.

I’m ready to jump back in. Can anyone offer any suggestions on which players are near perfect C4 integration. Do the latest gen players (any brand) offer streaming services? (what about mini apps).

Higher end recommendations for players and software? What’s the state of the art ripping process? Canned software or individual software? I want the highest quality rips of my BluRays. (HDR/Atmos,etc).


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[alanchow]

Zappiti has a ripper.  I haven't used it myself as they sent me the 4K mini to do the driver but they walked me through the whole process at CEDIA Expo last year and they have end to end solutions if you just want something straight forward.

https://zappiti.com/zappiti-nas-rip-4k-hdr.html

[blub]

Zappiti has a ripper.  I haven't used it myself as they sent me the 4K mini to do the driver but they walked me through the whole process at CEDIA Expo last year and they have end to end solutions if you just want something straight forward.
https://zappiti.com/zappiti-nas-rip-4k-hdr.html

Mhh I wonder how long it takes before they will be in court for that

[alanchow]

5 minutes ago, blub said:

32 minutes ago, alanchow said:

Zappiti has a ripper.  I haven't used it myself as they sent me the 4K mini to do the driver but they walked me through the whole process at CEDIA Expo last year and they have end to end solutions if you just want something straight forward.
https://zappiti.com/zappiti-nas-rip-4k-hdr.html

Mhh I wonder how long it takes before they will be in court for that

They have escaped from it since they’re based out of Europe.

[blub]

They have escaped from it since they’re based out of Europe.

Stupid film industry will find a way sooner or later..

[Time2Jet]

Zappiti has a ripper.  I haven't used it myself as they sent me the 4K mini to do the driver but they walked me through the whole process at CEDIA Expo last year and they have end to end solutions if you just want something straight forward.
https://zappiti.com/zappiti-nas-rip-4k-hdr.html

Thanks. [mention]alanchow [/mention]

How was the 4K Mini (aside from it not having a ripper). Did it play HDR and Atmos for instance? I can get my hands on one at cost from a friend. But I don’t even want to throw money at it if it doesn’t have perfect integration and play HDR and ATMOS tracks. Storage is cheap these days and I’m hoping someone here can point me to the best software type ripper.


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[Cyknight]

4K ripping is still unstable at best, biggest issue is hardware not software.

It's out there, but I would advise you to do some research on what you need to do to get hardware, and firmware, to even begin to make it work.

Setting up your own UHD ripping rig is not for casual users. Assuming you can do it legally of course.

[C4 User]

Maybe this exists, but if so, I am not aware of it.

It would be nice to be able to enter my Blu-Ray library into a C4 menu - and then when movie is selected, it prompts me to manually load the disk into the player.

This way the entire library is available for onscreen searching.

Does this already exist? Or if not, is it possible?

[alanchow]

6 hours ago, time2jet said:

Thanks. [mention]alanchow [/mention]

How was the 4K Mini (aside from it not having a ripper). Did it play HDR and Atmos for instance? I can get my hands on one at cost from a friend. But I don’t even want to throw money at it if it doesn’t have perfect integration and play HDR and ATMOS tracks. Storage is cheap these days and I’m hoping someone here can point me to the best software type ripper.


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Yep does HDR and Atmos. This sucker has played literally everything I’ve thrown at it.

What I do like about this is that it will do TV Shows broken down into Show->Season->Episode as well.

[zaphod]

7 hours ago, Cyknight said:

Setting up your own UHD ripping rig is not for casual users. Assuming you can do it legally of course.

Which eliminates everyone in the US.

[JSTRONG]

Nothing Is as reliable as Kaleidescape. They just do it right. And have been for over 12 years. Start a movie and it just works. Every time. And Alan makes an awesome driver for advanced features over the stock driver. 

[Time2Jet]

Nothing Is as reliable as Kaleidescape. They just do it right. And have been for over 12 years. Start a movie and it just works. Every time. And Alan makes an awesome driver for advanced features over the stock driver. 

Agreed and I’ve been down that path to the tune of $20k+ in equipment I sold off a few years ago. I don’t have the same amount of time I did back then. It was part of my work then, so I could write it off.

In the beginning, I started (and should have stayed with Dune), but for some reason a buddy turned me on to Mede8er. That worked out amazingly for many years until the cost of better chipsets dropped to the point it was a horrible business model. I still have two 2 600 Medx3D’s on my bench and about 2400 rips on a bunch of old NAS. I had some sort of prepackaged rip software back then and would rip everything I could get my hands on. Rumor has it people also “torrented” a bunch of films. (I have no idea what that means) :/. ...but honestly, I didn’t need to torrent. (See below).

What I’m looking for is a cheap techy cult followed player like the Dune was at inception. People I knew had no idea what I was using, but friends were blown away that they could visit and I had a bigger collection on a beautiful GUI that was larger than Blockbuster. Point a remote at cover art and bam... there it was. Best picture and sound quality.

So, I’m looking to take these 2400 legal film files and approx 400 unopened BluRays and rip and play from my C4 remote perfectly. The Zappiti looks like it would work well for what I’m doing (with Alan’s driver). I’m not going to spend 5-$25k again on a player & storage. I also don’t care to or need to torrent. Becauae of my core industry, I get prerelease BluRays all day long for free for personal non-commercial use. So content isn’t an issue. Cataloging, format ability and GUI/control are key.


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[blub]

Agreed and I’ve been down that path to the tune of $20k+ in equipment I sold off a few years ago. I don’t have the same amount of time I did back then. It was part of my work then, so I could write it off.

In the beginning, I started (and should have stayed with Dune), but for some reason a buddy turned me on to Mede8er. That worked out amazingly for many years until the cost of better chipsets dropped to the point it was a horrible business model. I still have two 2 600 Medx3D’s on my bench and about 2400 rips on a bunch of old NAS. I had some sort of prepackaged rip software back then and would rip everything I could get my hands on. Rumor has it people also “torrented” a bunch of films. (I have no idea what that means) :/. ...but honestly, I didn’t need to torrent. (See below).

What I’m looking for is a cheap techy cult followed player like the Dune was at inception. People I knew had no idea what I was using, but friends were blown away that they could visit and I had a bigger collection on a beautiful GUI that was larger than Blockbuster. Point a remote at cover art and bam... there it was. Best picture and sound quality.

So, I’m looking to take these 2400 legal film files and approx 400 unopened BluRays and rip and play from my C4 remote perfectly. The Zappiti looks like it would work well for what I’m doing (with Alan’s driver). I’m not going to spend 5-$25k again on a player & storage. I also don’t care to or need to torrent. Becauae of my core industry, I get prerelease BluRays all day long for free for personal non-commercial use. So content isn’t an issue. Cataloging, format ability and GUI/control are key.


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Wow free all day long content perfect!

Looks like either Zapiti or a Kodi box with manual rip and optional encode - I guess both has its advantages

[JSTRONG]

But what about moving forward into the Near future ? Physical media is quickly going away. Soon the only way your going to get movies are though either steaming or downloads. 
 

[Time2Jet]

But what about moving forward into the Near future ? Physical media is quickly going away. Soon the only way your going to get movies are though either steaming or downloads. 
 

Point. But even then you’d have to assume it’d be in a really compressed format that some of our brilliant hackers will figure out how to fill into playable format and folder so that all of the current boxes can transcode and play.


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[Cyknight]

3 hours ago, JSTRONG said:

But what about moving forward into the Near future ? Physical media is quickly going away.

And has been for 10 years and counting. Not saying it won't, but if you want true, full 4K contant and best audio? Discs are still your only choice.

Also doesn't eliminate any current library.

time2jet, I'm in a similar situation, and while it's a bit involved, for a cheap easy solution, KODI is a good option. Android box, set to autoload KODI and Alan's driver is what I use.

May need to edit some file names and use a program like filetofolder to get the NAS setup right, but for 2k movies that took me about a weekend.

OPtional ty-in to onscreen browsing, one downside there is that it's per box (ie won't auto select the next unused box) - personaly I'm liking the KODI interface enough that I'm barely using the C4 UI (advantages: tv show by series, season,episode selection, movies can have multiple genres, search by more options, auto 'grouping' of movies in a series (ie marvel universe, starwars, james bond)

As I've mentioned in other threads so far, I'm still in the 'try it' phase of KODI myself, but at sub 200 (CAD!) for two players (NAS not included of course, using a self-built FREENAS setup the size of a small portable rack - literally) it's proving to be really good. I'm debating getting a third box to dedicate to my full 4k/3d atmos theatre setup (probably a shield for that) as the current ones are distributed in a mixed TV environment (current climate has put that on hold as a non-essential expense on my personal part).

Unlike the 'standard' setup this actually works out well in some regards, as you would have the local box be the only one seeing the 4k/3d content, and others won't have it accessible at all. Could do the same for content for other rooms with local boxes you don't want everyone to acces such as in rooms kids may frequent. (now get your head out of the gutter - I'm sure my 8 year old can do without seeing even the cover art of many horror movies)

 

Ripping? Well AnyDVD is very much alive and doing full iso .. or so I've heard.

 

Player hardware cost (4k hdr 3d) can be sub 100 per player - want atmos, shield pro at double that

 

NOTE that this is not a dealer to client recommendation. Your C4 dealer CANNOT support your ripping, NAS - nor can he guarantee Android OS or KODI and the two working together.

This puts it on yourself to maintain the equipment, update it and so on. To get, use and know HOW to use the software. Dealer would merely provide the DRIVER for KODI control and integration.

For a dealer sales perspective, K-Skape and perhaps now Zappiti are the only real choices (I suppose there's a third but we've had enough issues I can't even recall the name right now...) that you can truly fully support.

 

 

 

[JSTRONG]

6 minutes ago, Cyknight said:

And has been for 10 years and counting. Not saying it won't, but if you want true, full 4K contant and best audio? Discs are still your only choice.

Hi Cy,

Some Kaleidescape movies will equal the quality of the Disc for both audio and video. 

They put alot of time into getting the original film ready for download.  Unlike the streamers where they are totally butchered to the point where it might look acceptable on your TV. Anyway Im biased, I have been living with Kaleidescape for over 12 years and have over 2000 HD/4K movies on my Terra servers. I got rid of all of my discs and converted everything to digital the last couple of years

 

 

[Cyknight]

25 minutes ago, JSTRONG said:

Hi Cy,

Some Kaleidescape movies will equal the quality of the Disc for both audio and video. 

They put alot of time into getting the original film ready for download.  Unlike the streamers where they are totally butchered to the point where it might look acceptable on your TV. Anyway Im biased, I have been living with Kaleidescape for over 12 years and have over 2000 HD/4K movies on my Terra servers. I got rid of all of my discs and converted everything to digital the last couple of years

 

 

K-Scape IS NOT STREAMING in the sense of Netflix et al. Nor is Zappiti of KODI (server function)

PS pretty sure you're supposed to keep the discs

 

Understand that I'm NOT saying K-Scape is not a great option, but it is a pricey one. I'm just giving a (semi) DIY option as an alternative.

Want full peace of mind, go K-Scape