Zappiti has been one of the few equipment manufacturers with a wide range of 4K media players that have gained popularity among movie lovers and experts alike. In a statement released to customers, Zappiti said: “It is with great sadness that we have to announce that Zappiti will soon cease to exist. As you already know, since January we have been fighting to save the life of our brainchild, but, unfortunately, justice has refused to hear us . ”
It is believed that there were disagreements within the company over ownership and that workers continued to maintain the services without pay. Zappiti used a cloud-based solution to catalog user content, which it said in a statement will be taken offline before the end of the year.
Regarding existing Zappiti equipment owners, the company said: “We are working on an alternative solution that can be offered to all Zappiti player users. There are plans to release a new app so they can continue to use Zappiti products. There will be a small fee for this application . ” It also means that customers will not be able to automatically migrate their movie library metadata to the new app and will need to re-register and rebuild their library. In the meantime, Zappiti players will still work with local offline collections, but new content will no longer be recognized.
Zidoo remains one of the last dedicated hardware manufacturers working with local 4K film libraries, and given the recent success of its sister brand EverSolo, it’s fair to assume the company is firmly on its feet. Also, don’t forget that alternative products like Apple TV and Nvidia Shield, which use software solutions like Emby, Plex and others, are also capable of working with locally stored content, such as copies of Blu-ray discs.