If you are the kind of person who mostly likes to watch online videos, Zappiti’s media players won’t have much to offer over cheaper alternatives, but if you have a large library of videos, either downloads or your own Blu-Ray rips, and would like to watch your movies both at home or on the go, Zappiti Player 4K Duo media player may fulfill your needs thanks to its two 3.5″ SATA bays providing up to 16TB storage, and a RealTek RTD1195 dual core processor supporting 1080p60 and 4K30 video playback.
Zappiti Player 4K Duo specifications:
- SoC – Realtek RTD1195 dual core ARM Cortex A7 processor @ 1.1 GHz with Mali-400MP2 GPU
- System Memory – N/A
- Storage
- 5 GB internal memory (I assume available space out of a 8GB NAND flash)
- 2x SATA Bay with 3.5″ hard drive up to 8TB each formatted with FAT16/FAT32, EXT2/EXT3, NTFS, or Mac OS enhanced (HFS+) file system.
- SD card reader
- Video Output – HDMI 1.4 with CEC support up to 1080p60 / 3840x2160p30 / 4096x2160p24, and AV port
- Video Input – HDMI port
- Video codecs – HEVC/H.265, MVC, AVC, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, XVID, DIVX, WMV9, FLV, VC-1, H.264/x.264, CVD 1.0/2.0, SVCD, AVS, Sorenson Spark L70, VP8 ; Very High Speed video bitrates supported up to 120Mbit/s.
- Video file formats – BD ISO, BDMV, MKV, MPEG-TS, MPEG-PS, M2TS, VOB, AVI, MOV, MP4, QT, WMV, DVD-ISO, VIDEO_TS, AVCHD 2.0 (AVCHD 3D, AVHD Progressive, and AVCHD 3D / Progressive).
- Audio Output – HDMI, AV and optical S/PDIF
- Audio Codecs – AC-3, DTS, MPEG, AAC, LPCM, ALAC, AIFF, WAV, VSELP, FLAC, Ogg/Vorbis; lossless and audiophiles formats support (up to 192 kHz / 24-bit).
- Multichannel Audio HD – DTS, DTS-HD, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Atmos – Bitstream (RAW) and downmix 2.0.
- Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi with 2 antennas
- USB – 4x USB 2.0 host ports, 1x USB 3.0 port (side)
- Misc – AC button On/Off (at the back), recovery button, LED display on front switchable with RC.
- Power Supply – 12V
- Dimensions – N/A
The device runs Android 4.4 with Zappiti Media Center interface, which can play videos from the internal drives, but also external USB drives, the built-in SD card reader, but also via the network through SAMBA, UPnP, DLNA 1.5/2.0, or HTTP, as well as Internet. PlayReady, Widevine, HDCP, and DTCP-IP DRM solutions are also said to be implemented. The media player also supports true 24p (1080p @ 23.976 Hz) for a smooth viewing experience. I’m not quite support whether the HDMI input is support, and when I reviewed another Realtek RTD1195 device (M-195), it was not really working. They also have not reported the memory installed, but hopefully they went with 2GB, or did some software optimization, as on M-195 I often had issues due to the low memory, as some memory out of the 1GB installed was reversed for the GPU and VPU. That was in 2014, so it’s quite possible those issues have been resolved.
Zappiti Player 4K Duo ships with an IR remote control, a 2.4GHz air mouse, HDMI & AV cables, a power adapter, and a quick installation guide. They showcased the player, as well as their lower end Zappiti Player 4K (1 hard drive bay), and Zappiti 4K mini at CES 2016, where Charbax interviewed the French start-up’s owners.
They also covered Zappiti Media Center V4, the app that runs on their players, and that is also available for Windows, Mac OS, and Synology NAS for free. All devices that runs the media center app share the videos, so I understand you can play a video from any device in your home network, and on Windows and Mac OS, the server can also perform on the fly transcoding to let you watch videos on the go on your mobile device.
Zappiti Player 4K Duo sells for 290.83 Euros (inc VAT) without hard drive on the company’s e-Store, and but you also select various storage options up to 2x 8TB drives which brings the price to 889.17 Euros. More details can be found on Zappiti Player 4K Duo product page, including the user’s guide in English and French.
Via ARMDevices.net
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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RealTek? NO GO! I still remember painfully the A.C.Ryan DVB-T DVR/SetTopBox, that I had. Yes, it did, what it was being advertised as, but only basically. No joy to use. Buggy as well. The company could not heal it, because RealTek would only sell their SoC with ready-made software, it was a big binary blob, that contained all the functionality, most probably even the drivers. No access by the community, even A.C.Ryan had problems accessing its inner core. Now, this software here may be better, but why #@?! around with it, if there is so many good open-source solutions?
Price is really so huge 🙁
I never worked or saw RTD1195 in action but I heard it does have good VPU capabilities. On the other hand, dual core, HDMI 1.4, no native SATA support (based on specs I could find)… overpriced.