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Zensonic Z400 Media Player |
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General Usage, Suggested Improvements, Conclusions
General usage comments:
Unfortunately, whether playing music or movies, I found that the Z400 would freeze up at times, as if the connection to the media server had been lost. The on-screen display froze, but the Z400 didn’t actually lock up, as I could still navigate back through the menus. As a bit of a test, I shut down Zensonic Media Server while the Z400 was playing a movie, and saw exactly the same thing.
This didn’t happen very often – the Z400 was playing some kind of media pretty much 24/7 for a couple of weeks for this review, and it froze up perhaps once or twice a day. Sometimes it seemed to fix itself, sometimes the media server software had to be restarted, and once or twice it required the Z400 to be powered off and back on. I don’t believe this was caused by network issues. Hopefully this too will be rectified with a future firmware and/or media server release.
Using other media servers and other operating systems:
As the Z400 is based on UPnP architecture, it should be able to use any UPnP media server software, and there are quite a few alternatives to Zensonic Media Server available. Wondering whether different media server software might solve some of the apparent issues, I downloaded and installed Nero’s new media server, called Nero Mediahome, which is part of Nero 6 “Reloaded”.
Similar to Zensonic Media Server, Mediahome also allows directories of media to be shared with the Z400, and can filter which types of files to share. The interface is also similar, though a little more polished. There is one significant difference between Mediahome and ZMS though – realtime transcoding.
From the Nero Mediahome webpage: "Real-Time transcoding of your media ... ensures upward compatibility of your UPnP™ media renderers. So you will always be able to playback the newest and most efficient audio and video formats even if the renderer does not support it by native."
What this means is that Mediahome will convert (transcode) one file format into another on the fly, and stream the transcoded file to the Z400. This has the distinct advantage of enabling the Z400 to play any file as transcoded by Mediahome, including DivX3, as well as future codecs.
Transcoding options are set by a tab in the Mediahome configuration. The output format can be set to low-bitrate MPEG2 amongst others, so I chose that for a test run.
The Z400 had no problem finding the Mediahome server, and an interesting point to note is that the menus and the way the files are displayed for browsing on the Z400 must be determined by the media server software, as Mediahome showed a different menu structure to the Zensonic media server software.
After confirming that MP3s played fine, I moved on to some movies to see if Mediahome could play some files that Zensonic Media Server had problems with.
Having set transcoding to output low bitrate MPEG2, I was now able to play DivX3-encoded source files, letting Mediahome convert them to MPEG2 on the fly. This sort of worked, but had significant stuttering, and while the Z400 was playing the movies, CPU usage on the Media Server PC went straight to 100% and stayed there, so I suspect the Media Server PC needed a bit more power to be able to transcode on the fly successfully.
Going back to the Mediahome configuration, I changed the transcoding setting to “Keep original format”. I was expecting this to drop the CPU usage on the Media Server PC significantly, but CPU usage on the Media Server PC still sat at 100% when playing a movie on the Z400, and the movies were still stuttering. In comparison, Zensonic’s media Server software used almost no CPU time when streaming a movie (as you’d expect).
Perhaps more success could be had with a more powerful Media Server PC – indeed there have recently been some good reports in the Zensonic support forums from people using Nero Mediahome, indicating that some (or even most) of the issues I encountered are likely to be in the Zensonic media server software rather than the Z400 itself. Results are still a little sketchy, but it does demonstrate the flexibility of the Z400 to use a range of different media servers.
Using other media server software is also an avenue to allow the Z400 to use media servers running operating systems other than Windows, as Zensonic have only included Windows support for their media server software (and have stated that no other operating systems will be supported). A quick search on Google finds a number of references to UPnP media server software for other operating systems.
Suggested improvements:
Listed below are a few suggested improvements for the Z400 (other than fixes for the current issues). Some of these are nitpicking, and some are personal preference, but such is the luxury afforded a reviewer ...- It would be useful to have a specific on-screen error message when the Z400 loses its media server, rather than just freezing playback.
- A different error message when no internet connection is available for the firmware upgrade routine would be a good idea, rather than assuming that no newer firmware is available as reported.
- Some diagnostics for the wireless connection between the Z400 and a wireless access point would help to diagnose any problems. Currently, if the Z400 can’t find a Media Server, it’s difficult to determine why. Perhaps an onscreen signal strength/quality indicator option could be included.
- An option for Zensonic Media Server software to transcode files to formats supported by the Z400, as with Nero Mediahome, would allow more file formats to be indirectly supported.
- Options to sort tracks other than alphabetically (by track number for example for music) would be much appreciated by this reviewer at least.
- An in-line transformer is a better option than a plugpack (plugpacks are a personal pet hate of mine!)
- Inclusion of s-video and digital audio cables (albeit at extra cost) could be an option, though they’re not difficult to source separately, and may push the required price too high.
- The Z400 could be the same size as a standard HiFi component (435mm wide) to look a bit more at home in a HiFi/home theatre rack. Yes, I know I’m scraping the barrel now!
Conclusions:
I really want to like the Zensonic Z400, and for the most part I do. There are a few unresolved issues that will hopefully be addressed as the technology matures, but the concept is fantastic, and I’ve found it to be a very useful and entertaining addition to my system.
Would I recommend the Z400? Right now, it depends whether you’d expect to plug it in and have everything working 100% straight out of the box. If that sounds like you, then it may be worth waiting for the creases to be ironed out. If you’re an early adopter, want cutting edge and are prepared to accept a few issues for the time being, then yes, I’d recommend the Z400.
The current significant issues (jittering in some Xvid movies, occasional freezing up and the inability to play DTV-recorded MPEG2 files over 1.5GB in size) need to be addressed as soon as possible. Hopefully this can happen in the short term.
The Zensonic Z400 media player has a recommended retail price of $369, and is available from a number of local retailers. For more information, please refer to the Zensonic website - sincere thanks to them for providing the review unit.
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