ZAPPITI 4K HDR MEDIA SYSTEM

WITH TODAY’S streamers and smart TVS offering myriad apps to watch movies from, one thing has become painfully obvious about discs: they’re clunky. While I’m a firm believer in pre-recorded media due to its superior technical merits, I’ll admit that shelves overflowing with discs can get overwhelming. Also, let’s face it: case spines aren’t nearly as sexy as a slick onscreen interface. From early Windows Media solutions to the latest apps like Kodi, I’ve seen numerous options crop up over the last decade to bring pre-recorded media to a modern playback environment. But there hasn’t been a simple consumer-friendly offering that lets the general user migrate an existing collection to a digital media library with a stylized interface. The closest I’ve seen is Kaleidescape, but the hardware for that system is pricey, and the company’s latest 4K/hdr-compatible offering is a disc-free solution that requires repurchasing your movie library through its online store.

I recently learned about Zappiti, a new company to these shores (they’ve been in Europe for quite some time now) with a compelling digital media library and hardware solution featuring multiple options for an average user to choose from. Zappiti offers an array of “players” that can access your media directly from either onboard or attached storage, or from network-attached storage (NAS), and the company’s graphic interface is akin to what you see with streaming media solutions like Netflix, Apple TV, and even Kaleidescape. For this article, Zappiti sent me a full system so I could experience it not only in my theater, but multiple rooms: the Mini 4K HDR player ($249), the Pro 4K HDR player ($995 without storage), and the NAS Rip 4K HDR ($3,495 without storage).

THE PLAYERS

Zappiti’s website lists no less than six 4K HDR players, along with one older Hd-only option. All the 4K players feature an identical interface and playback ability; the difference between them comes down to build quality and the presence of internal storage bays for loading up media. The Mini 4K HDR player Zappiti sent me has no internal storage, so library access with it is via your home network or an external drive. And when Zappiti says Mini, they mean it! The player is about the size of a typical portable hard disk drive but has a full-bandwidth HDMI input and output, Ethernet and Wi-fi, an optical digital audio output, three USB inputs, an ESATA input, and a slot for an SD/MMC card. Clearly, Zappiti has gone out of its way to make sure its players provide every possible means to access content stored on different media.

The Zappiti Pro 4K HDR is the flagship of the line and is designed as a no-compromise playback solution. It looks like a high-end Blu-ray player, with exceptional build quality and a sleek exterior design. There are two internal drive bays for internal media storage (these also become accessible to other players on your home network) and no less than five USB ports to plug in external drives (including a USB type- C and 3.0 input). The Pro also has two HDMI outputs (one audioonly), gold-plated RCA outputs for stereo analog and coaxial digital audio connections, and a ¼-inch front-panel headphone output.

THE SYSTEM

The heart of the system is the

Zappiti Video media player software, which runs on an Androidbased processor. Zappiti Video is common to all players, but some features are reserved for the Pro model, including direct output of the video source resolution rather than a fixedresolution output. The software has its own image enhancement to improve the look of lower-res media plus HDR-TOSDR conversion for playback on displays that don’t support 4K/ high dynamic range. The only real compromise I noted was a lack of Dolby Vision support, a feature that’s also missing from high-end media player solutions like Kaleidescape.

The elephant in the room here, of course, is how do you get your library onto the drives to begin with? A Google search will call up plenty of software options to do just that, and Zappiti supports most file types you’d create with these, including MKV, ISO, and BDMV. The latter two even provide full menu access, just like you’d get with standard disc playback.

The other solution— one supported by Zappiti—is the third box the company sent me, the NAS Rip 4K HDR, a NAS with eight hard drive storage bays that can be accessed over your home network. A disc drive built into the NAS Rip 4K is programmed to automatically copy just about any disc format you own, including Blu-ray,

Ultra HD Blu-ray, DVD, and CD. The user simply places the disc in the tray and the software transfers it to your Zappiti library along with all the necessary information to populate a snazzy onscreen interface. This makes it a truly plug-and-play solution.

Zappiti’s NAS uses the RAID-5 data protection standard to provide fail-safe storage of your collection. With support for up to eight 16TB drives, it can accommodate 1,400 4K/HDR movies uncompressed at full resolution. And since both the NAS and Zappiti players don’t require proprietary storage, you can purchase your own drives and load them up. Any player on the network can simultaneously access media from the NAS or the internal drives of any other player. Media stored on external drives attached to a player is only available locally, however.

SETUP

The Zappiti system isn’t something like a home theater PC that requires a lot of end user know-how. Setup was simple using the included manuals (there are also online support videos), which did a nice job of walking me through the settings and playback options. As mentioned above, similar to some of the more popular streaming boxes on the market, all Zappiti players are built upon an Android OS. This presented my only real gripe about the setup process. Because it uses an Android backbone, there are numerous apps and settings unrelated to the Zappiti playback experience. For this reason, users may be confused about what part of the playback system they are changing settings for.

The biggest factor in making the Zappiti system work smoothly (especially for a whole-home solution) is the reliability and robustness of your home network. All players provide Ethernet and Wi-fi connectivity, but you’re going to want to use a wired network for streaming 4K/HDR media throughout the house. Since not everyone has a wired home network (myself included), this could be the biggest obstacle for those seeking a multi-room system. I ended up creating a makeshift solution in my theater room using a switch to emulate a wired home network for testing. Even with this setup, the one quirk I encountered was that the NAS sometimes wouldn’t be available, and I would have to cycle power to access it again. I’m not sure why this occurred, but instances of it happening were rare.

The Zappiti player software initially gives you three options to choose from: Video, Music and Explorer (you can tailor this to open directly to a preferred option after initial setup).

With all players attached to your home network, you can also move media around from players to NAS and vice versa using a computer located on the network, which will see each device as a network drive.

PERFORMANCE

After I got everything up and running and the players set up properly, the experience of using the system turned out to be pretty fantastic. The player software does most of the heavy lifting to fill in all the title data needed for your library, including poster art, movie info, even soundtrack music, which cues up when you hover over a specific movie when browsing the interface. The presentation of all these options can also be customized within the menus. Along with that, Zappiti offers some cool collections. For example, if you own a movie that is part of a trilogy or saga, Zappiti will group it with the rest of those titles automatically. You can browse your collection as a list or by cover art, and sort videos by genre, title, resolution, and date added. Zappiti also provides skins to change the overall look of the interface. The default uses a red background that I wasn’t a fan of, but the silver backdrop provided a more regal, high-tech look that I preferred. Once again, all of this

is configurable in the menus, with clear instructions provided in the player’s manual.

Image quality was largely the same with both players, despite the more rugged build of the 4K Pro. The latter did offer more connection choices, and I appreciated the option for a direct output of the source resolution when using the player with my external Lumagen video processor. Transferring files from the NAS to a player was a piece of cake, and watching files located on either of the standalone players proved seamless. I also attached some portable hard drives loaded with video, and accessing that media was simple using the Zappiti Explorer, though filebrowsing in that manner lacked the slick interface that’s a main selling point of this system.

Zappiti offers ios/android apps to control the players. I also used the included hardware remotes to navigate the system without much hassle. Music added to the NAS can be ripped in lossless FLAC and ALAC formats for perfect

replication, and you can access music files stored on a portable device connected wirelessly to the same network for playback.

During my time with the system I pretty much concentrated on watching movies and TV. When you select a movie, the Zappiti software asks you if you’d rather view the disc’s menus or start the movie directly—a nice touch.

I didn’t note any quality loss during movie playback compared with playing a disc directly using my Oppo UDP-203 Ultra HD Blu-ray player, regardless of image resolution or frame rate. For the most part, I left the system output in source direct, which means the video was not being processed by the Zappiti software. When I set the player’s output to a fixed resolution, I didn’t see any glaring issues with the software scaling/ de-interlacing. Overall video performance was generally excellent and in line with my Oppo UDP-203. The only “change” I did notice with the Zappiti system was when playing HDR content. HDR10 uses metadata that provides details about the content itself and the mastering display used to create it. Most TVS and projectors ignore this data, but some rely on it for tone mapping. The Zappiti system does not retain HDR metadata, which could cause issues with some displays.

ERGONOMICS

Using Zappiti’s onscreen interface was reminiscent of experiences I’ve had with both Kaleidescape and my Apple TV box. Once a movie is selected, you see an info screen that tells you when the film was released and the file format (including relevant technical info like video resolution and audio soundtrack details). You can easily browse your library by title and genre, though the system lacks sophisticated features similar to Kaleidescape’s intelligent grouping functions.

Because the Zappiti software automatically imports all relevant data for the discs you import, it’s very easy to use. This is a system that would be simple for anyone in the household to operate, kids included.

CONCLUSION

The Zappiti 4K HDR media system provides a scalable multiroom solution with very little compromise when it comes to browsing and playing movies and music. Other solutions offer similar features, but most of these require that you use a

PC for playback and do most of the work to fill in data for your collection. Also, Zappiti doesn’t have the boutique prices of similar hardware systems with a locked-in infrastructure like Kaleidescape. I was impressed with not only the video quality of the Zappiti players, but the system’s overall ease of use, from ripping titles in my disc library to the NAS, to navigating and selecting a movie. If a multiroom digital media solution is on your shopping list and you don’t want to have to rebuy your movie collection in digital-only format, Zappiti’s system is worth a close look.