ZDMC compatibility of PSE

@Reelyator Have you tried to install this?  It should work if its based on Kodi.  Its a Python plugin that utilizes Kodi.  If you have tried and received an error you can report it and we'll take a look.  

I have talked to @Reelyator about this.  It's on my to-do list.  Zidoo boxes have their own players and have forked kodi as zdmc to make it compatible.  

It's great that they released ZDMC 20.1.  It didn't seem like they would do it for a while.  I installed it on my system over the weekend and continue working to see if I can get PreShow to work with it.  

So far 20.1 has been very unreliable for me.  My system never crashes and almost every add-on that I've installed has crashed on me.

I have spent some time on this and have to say this is a weird problem.  I've tried a bunch of different potential solutions inside of PreShow to get it to work, but none of them have been successful.

However, I do think I have a workaround to get the PreShows to play properly in ZDMC.  I need to do some more testing and if all goes well, I'll provide instructions on how to get it to work.  It doesn't require editing anything inside of zidoo.

I am going to create a guide on this with details instructions, but want to explain the issue and the process for my workaround.

The issue is that using the zidoo player inside of Kodi breaks the sequence after a video bumper or feature is played.  As I stated previously, I have explored multiple solutions to resolve the problem.  Unfortunately, none of them have worked.

The challenge is that the Zidoo player doesn't have an API, so I'm more or less working in the dark to try to fix the issue.  Compound that by them Zidoo not releasing the source for the current version ZDMC publicly.   I went through the source for a previous version and compared every single change to the same version of kodi to see what I could learn.  By my logs, it doesn't even appear that what they have in it matches how it actually works (CPlayerCoreFactory::GetPlayer(ZidooPlayer): no such player: ZidooPlayer).

So, short of redoing how PreShow works, it doesn't appear that there is an optimal solution.  But there is a workaround.  It isn't a perfect solution, but it works for me.

In the past, people created a playercorefactory.xml to try to get it to work.  The file designate what player to played certain types of content.  In my opinion, the problem with that is that you don't necessarily have 100% control of the types of files that you are using unless you are creating everything yourself.

Using the playercorefactory.xml points out where the issue is, which is the compatibility with the with the Zidoo external player.  I double checked this in my system, which is a Zidoo 1000 Pro, and confirmed that if I turned off "use external player" in the ZDMC settings that the PreShows would play without issue.  

So my workaround is to create action files that turn off the Zidoo external player for everything prior to the feature film.  The added benefit of this is that if you use a skin that is set up for PreShow Experience, it won't show the loading icon before videos.  There will still be the 1 instance of "Video Loading ..." prior to the feature film, since this is in the Zidoo side and I don't have any information on how to turn that off.

One additional thing that has to be changed in order to get to work is if you want to have a rating before the feature, then it has to be an image since we can only show 1 video.  Also, this will only work for showing 1 movie and not a sequence of movies.

The action files can be downloaded here:

Here is the guide: