ZoomPlayer & TheaterTek

[Mike]

I had been demoing TheaterTek, but noticed that ZoomPlayer was used by some here (and with an m-audio card as well which I was interested in).

ZoomPlayer seems a little cheaper (when you account that it contains no decoder), but also seems to add audio control and an API for controlling it.

Functionally, from what I can tell it seems ZoomPlayer might be a better choice.

Does anyone here have an opinion on this from their usage?

 

[DavidL]

It used to be that they both were capable of best video quality.
And that Zoom Player was more configurable and TT was easier to install and maintain.

Now TT adds IP connectivity (that Zoom had for a while) so that really starts even ing the score. TT UI look nicer out of the box than Zoom, but I see Zoom 5 is going down same path. TT also does a better job of knowing when the movie is over, for automation. I asked Zoom to implement this a while ago, but they only did a partial solution. TT has a complete one now.

Both will play trailers and premovie fillers. At least TT can randomize them like what I used to use PreMovieManager for with Zoom.

Pretty much a crap shoot right now. On my personal setup, I like the Nividea codecs that TT is using. Seems very stable too.

At this point I would go with the one that is best supported by the HA /HT software you use. For MainLobby, that would be TT right now. Wouldn't take much to do same with Zoom.

 

[Dean Roddey]

From an automation interface standpoint, they are about the same. Andrew pretty carefully matched the automation interface capabilities of ZP, so they are quite similar. So it really comes down to which one you prefer as a player and the features they provide. We have drivers for both.

 

[DavidL]

MainLobby supports both zoom and TT btw. Not sure if that was obvious from my prior post. We are doing more with TT now with IP and are reselling TT bundled w/ our plugin.

 

[Mike]

Thank you both. At first I thought that TT had better automation capabilities given the recent press, but after reviewing I saw that ZP had it before.

This helps. The big piece for me (and I need to look further) is the ability to tie ZP to output pairs of an m-audio delta 410 or 1010, which I don't think TT can do. While I'm not there yet, I plan on getting to that type of approach eventually and with all else being roughly equal I think this tips the favor to ZP.

Of course I have not played with it yet, so I will need to do that as well.

I appreciate the feedback. I'm running out of filler and will need to make a decision on the IR items shortly as well.

 

[IVB]

the one interesting bit is that TT has an app called "autokiller", which allows you to minimize it to the system tray. HOwever, it listens on a different port than theatertek, so you'll need a bit of ickiness to be able to keep TT in the tray, and only maximize it on will.

ZP doesn't have a seperate autokiller-type app for the tray, so it's a bit cleaner.

That upgrade request has already been logged on the TT forums by me, however it simply shows that ZP has a more mature interface than TT.

That said, TT still looks like a better PQ for me, and is certainly much simpler to use.