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NEWS: Bad news from Zappiti?

carajo

carajo

Well-known member
⭐️ Premium ⭐️
***FROM ANOTHER LOCATION***

It’s with the greatest sadness that I have to announce that Zappiti will be over soon.
As you already know, we are fighting since January to keep our baby alive, but unfortunately Justice has refused to hear us….
We have done everything we could , we have worked without being paid to maintain customers happy waiting to have the Go to continue, but now the Cloud will be disconnected before the end of the year.

What does that mean for customers?

Zappiti Video will no longer work for the players and the NAS. Customers can always create an offline collection to keep it working even after the close down, but the new movies won’t be identified anymore.
Zappiti Explorer will still work and people will still be able to access their movies in their NAS or the internal HDD.
For the NAS owners, they will still be able to rip and to have access to their files. They will be able to keep their actual collection but with not further possibilities for identifying the new Movies on Zappiti video.

What do you tell to your customers?

That Zappiti is liquidated unfortunately, that we tried everything to continue but that we have been shut down for good

Is it really over?

We are working on a solution to propose to all the Zappiti users.

The plan is to install a new App, so they can continue to enjoy their Zappiti products. There will be a small fee for that App but at least they will be proposed a solution.
They will have to create a new account and a new collection, it’s impossible to retrieve the customer’s collection unfortunately. It will be based on a new cloud.

Repair and services

All players under warranty will be taken care by Let’s get Physical , the parts will be exchanged at no fees but the labor and shipping will be at customer’s expense.
The players out of warranty will be taken care of by Let’s get physical with the usual fees.

I will keep you all posted on the progress of the App

I’m terribly sorry for this situation that will put us all in a difficult position, but tell your customers that we are trying our best to find a way for a fair solution.
 
Absolutely. Kaleidescape is the only player that did it the legal way. They are the only company that obtained licenses with all of the studios. And of course , as we all know , Kaleidescape is far superior to all of them.
 
I get so many questions about what happens when K goes out of business, and I've long turned that question around to what happens when any element of one's DIY ripped media server system goes down...
 
Not unexpected, any company shortcutting the legal process operates in constant jeopardy of being shutdown. Another company that I won't name tried to imitate the K experience many years ago. They also ignored the legal realities and were eventually shutdown. I knew two dealers selling their line, and both were burned financially when orders went unfulfilled and they did not receive refunds.

There's a difference between garage startups and a company like K that has skilled engineers, and skilled forward-thinking business professionals.

Jim
 
I recently purchased the Zappiti Nas and have just spent two months ripping just over 1000 Blu-rays and 4K discs.

Really happy with the product and so sad to hear that Zappiti is closing down.

What is not clear though is what support the Nas will have?

They have said that will still be able to rip movies and access our content however the Nas is a closed system...

Will we be able to insert new drives into the empty slots?

And will we be able to replace broken hard drives ourselves?

If there closing down they really should give Nas owners full access to the Windows server Nas operating system, otherwise as soon as one of the hard drives fails the whole unit is a dustbin job.
 
I hope to be wrong with this comment, and hope all Zappiti owners find a way to keep their systems operational, BUT, my experience with these niche businesses is they usually start out with "We're sorry to have to report..." and end by "we plan to provide....." to soften the blow. However well-intended those statements are, they almost never result in actual support. I think that's probably because people still have to make a living, and move on to other jobs or ventures. Then there's the psychological trauma of hanging around a failed business....not fun for anyone.

Jim
 
I guess at the end of the day it’s not supported by the studios and therefore will always be a challenge to rip movies to your server.
 
cinelife said:
I hope to be wrong with this comment, and hope all Zappiti owners find a way to keep their systems operational, BUT, my experience with these niche businesses is they usually start out with "We're sorry to have to report..." and end by "we plan to provide....." to soften the blow. However well-intended those statements are, they almost never result in actual support. I think that's probably because people still have to make a living, and move on to other jobs or ventures. Then there's the psychological trauma of hanging around a failed business....not fun for anyone.

Jim
Click to expand...
This is almost certainly correct. If the product relies on web services, those services will almost certainly cease to be supported sooner rather than later. The hardware itself (and locally-installed software) should continue to work, but there will be no updates after (typically) a very short support period. Ultimately it sounds like this is a disorderly wind down by Zappiti, so there aren't likely to be people working on support tickets, which is sometimes the case if a company can manage a soft-landing acquisition.

The best owners of the products can hope is that they open source the software on the way out and a user community steps up and does some ongoing maintenance, but I don't have a feel for whether there are enough Zappiti owners out there to foment such an effort.
 
I really like Zappiti and bummed that several of my devices will just be bricked. I just upgraded to the $1k unit less than 6 months ago too.
But at least all my files can be ported to Zidoo or Dune. Waiting to see if Zappiti will develop a paid app like Plex so that I don’t have to make another investment.
I worry about my K library if this happens to them since hundreds of my movies reside in their cloud because my 48TB is full.
 
alexbeans said:
I really like Zappiti and bummed that several of my devices will just be bricked. I just upgraded to the $1k unit less than 6 months ago too.
But at least all my files can be ported to Zidoo or Dune. Waiting to see if Zappiti will develop a paid app like Plex so that I don’t have to make another investment.
I worry about my K library if this happens to them since hundreds of my movies reside in their cloud because my 48TB is full.
Click to expand...
From what I understand, the root of their financial problems was legal challenges and copyright concerns, per a communication to dealers earlier this year. Essentially, Kaleidescape has already been through this process and they chose to "go legit" and went all in on the store-based ecosystem. I'm not too concerned about Kaleidescape seeing a similar fate. Not that they're invincible, but if they go under it won't be for the same reasons as Zappiti.
 
thrillcat said:
From what I understand, the root of their financial problems was legal challenges and copyright concerns, per a communication to dealers earlier this year. Essentially, Kaleidescape has already been through this process and they chose to "go legit" and went all in on the store-based ecosystem. I'm not too concerned about Kaleidescape seeing a similar fate. Not that they're invincible, but if they go under it won't be for the same reasons as Zappiti.
Click to expand...
And yet Modulus seems to continue to operate .....huh?
 
Yes we worked with kaleidescape on that offer. It’s a great opportunity to migrate over
 
I don't see Zidoo having the same fate, for two reasons, they aren't providing any capabilities to do the ripping itself as far as I'm aware (which is where the legal issues come into play; the breaking of the DRM), and two they're China based, not US or Europe based. Given that Zidoo basically just provides devices to play back the content, and the user has to do everything themselves to actually acquire the content without DRM, then I don't see them facing the same issues. I was honestly surprised Zappiti lasted as long as they did, so I can't say I'm surprised by this announcement. Curious what this means for their Reavon and Magnetar BD players, since, as far as I can tell, they're somehow financially linked at a minimum, if not owned by the same company directly.
 
I think that whatever device permits or plays back any ripped content is going to face the legal challenges.
 
carajo said:
I think that whatever device permits or plays back any ripped content is going to face the legal challenges.
Click to expand...
That would include any PC on the planet... A media player just provides the capability of playing back content. And there´s a lot of DRM-free content.
 
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