I’ve been asked by several people when there would be a Mele with 1GB RAM, well the time is now, with the Mele A1000G and Mele A2000G. Both appear to be based on the previous Mele A1000 and Mele A2000 set-top boxes, but feature 1 GB RAM and 8 GB Flash instead of 512 MB RAM and 4 GB Flash.
Here are Mele A1000G & Mele A2000G Specifications:
- SoC – AllWinner A10 Cortex A8 processor @ 1GHz
- System Memory – 1 GB DDR3
- Storage: 8GB NAND Flash SD card slot (up to 32 GB)
- Connectivity:
- Wi-Fi – 802.11 b/g
- 10/100 MB Ethernet
- USB – 3 USB Host ports
- SATA Interface for 2.5″ HDD
- Video Output – HDMI, composite and VGA.
- Audio Output – RCA stereo output and optical out (SPDIF)
- Audio Formats – MP3 / WMA / WAV / OGG / FLAC / MKA
- Video Formats – TS / M2TS / TP / MKV / MP4 / MOV / AVI / RM / RMVB / WMV / VOB /ASF / FLV / DAT / MPG / MPEG
- Video Codecs – HD/MPEG1/2/4, H.264, HD AVC/VC-1, RM/RMVB/XVID/DIVX4 x 5 x 6, REALVIDEO9/9/10, VP6
- Picture Formats – JPG / JPEG / BMP / GIF / PNG
The set-top boxes are currently running Android 4.0 (ICS). I assume they are just has hackable as the Mele A1000 and A2000, and you can easily connect a debug board to access the serial console (TBC), and/or insert an SD card to boot to your favorite Linux distributions.
The package includes the Mele, an IR remote control, a composite cable (Audio + Video) or an HDMI cable (depending where you buy), a power supply and a user manual in Chinese and English. The only difference I see between the two boxes is the casing, and the Mele A1000G (like the Mele A1000) includes a case for a 2.5″ hard drive.
Both Android media players are available for around $100 on dealextreme (Mele A1000G $107.10 | Mele A2000G $106) and Aliexpress (Mele A1000G $99.90 | Mele A2000G $102.10). Prices include shipping via China Post or Hong Kong Post.
Thanks to mj.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Looks good. Too bad the video decoding drivers are closed so no Linux HTPC functionality is possible. Would have liked to see XBMC on this one. Would not recommend the Mele Ax000 for anyone not happy with a half-baked ICS image full of Chinese bundleware.
@Inge
Progress has been done on XBMC (Linux) on AllWinner, and you can now run XBMC and play videos, without having to run Android. See the video in the PengPod post.
This is excellent news! After all the frustration with the VPU libs as well as the problems with A10 VersC timing, this would be a welcome break.
Great little product (i have one running as a headless server running my squeezebox server/minidlna) … but time moves on for this price i can get a quadcore imx6 … breathe the clean air of not having to put up with the androlinux mess of linux on the A10
@mac me
I suppose you talk about the Hiapad Hi-802 (or another one?). Sure it has more processing power, and proper documentation and source code will be released, but the Mele Boxes are still good because of all the options (SATA, VGA, 3x USB etc…). But I do agree that for your application (headless server), a i.MX6 Quad product around $100 is a better choice (unless you need SATA).
for a full fat GUI linux you really need a quad core IMHO for a nice experience .. for my application (headless media server) the mele is fine but it is CPU constrained rather than memory constrained (256MB would be ok at a push in fact) … but at the end of the day the A10 like the mele has been around for a year or so and now its price point has gone through dual core and is approaching quad core soon …. in a few months time i’ll definately be getting a sub $100 quad core/SATA/ethernet board (assuming ones around) not to replace the mele as my media server but just to play around with as a full fat GUI linux/XMBC box
The fact that Allwinner has such an awefull reputation for releasing linux source/drivers and freescale such a good reputation is a bumper bumper bonus 🙂
@cnxsoft
http://armdevices.net/2012/10/29/overview-of-the-latestbest-hdmi-sticks-and-set-top-boxe-out-of-shenzhen-china/
@mac me
If the dual core Arm processors handle Android reasonably well, shouldn’t they handle Linux (which has less overhead etc) even better?
Got to agree that the meles are looking very expensive now. Their USP seems to be “nice box & has SATA” :p
@mac me
With charbax, you may have to be careful with pricing, as it may be:
1. Factory price (1k order)
2. Shenzhen market price, which people who don’t live there can’t get due to shipping and handling costs.
3. “Normal” price, for lack of a better word.
I think the prices he gave in the post above, are Shenzhen market (“Saige” in Huaqianbei) prices, except for the $89 Hiapad HI-802, which is a special offer for armdevices.net members ($20/year) and includes China Post shipping.
@onebir
I guess people multitask more on a Linux PC, than an Android devices, which is why more memory and processing power maybe needed. On Android apps are optimized for low footprint, but on Linux you would generally run a full browser such as Firefox or Chrome, as well as office suites etc…
I agree that Mele’s price could be more competitive (e.g. $80), as it is double the price of a dual core stick like the UG802, but I would not go as far as saying it’s very expensive, since you’ve got Ethernet, SATA, optical out, composite out & VGA, one or 2 more USB ports and an IR remote which are not available or sold (by default) with the mini-PCs. It all depends on your needs.
@cnxsoft
Agreed! The SATA is a big, big plus on the A1/2000’s side. Get a 2nd hand SSD, one of the slower, put your FLACs onto it and have it run as a headless audio-player, remote controlled by an Android phone or tablet. At least this is the thought my mind is still playing with.
@cnxsoft
Wouldn’t a ‘wine for Android apps’ largely fix this? It’s really bugged me for some time that Linux doesn’t have one. Given they both use the similar kernels, how difficult can this be? Windoze has one… Canonical’s project mysteriously stopped. Possibly because they decided to take Ubuntu itself in that direction with the execrable Unity. But *Unity doesn’t make the UI’s of all the applications suitable for touchscreen use*. Try using Evince on a touchscreen device… So they’ve pushed down a whole load of UI work to Linux application developers (that will get done unevenly at best) while ignoring thousands of touchscreen optimised, low resource consumption Android apps.
Re Mele’s price – I forgot the extra ports, so not *very* expensive. But doesn’t the cubieboard have most of those?
@onebir
I’m also disappointed by the (apparent?) lack of traction of Ubuntu for Android.
There’s actually one way to run Android apps in Linux, but that involves installing the Android SDK and running them in the emulator, not exactly user friendly.
Re Mele price. Yes, excluding VGA and the remote, the equivalent Cubieboard with casing, cables and DHL shipping costs $79 on http://www.indiegogo.com/cubieboard.
Or $59 by airmail! & I see they’ve hit the funding target already 😀
@onebir
Just one more thing I’ve just remembered about Ubuntu for Android: the project is still very much alive, as Mark ShuttleWorth (canonical Founder) demo’ed it again at UDS 13.04 last week!
Oh – I heard about that, but thought it was just porting Ubuntu to Android devices. But it sounds like it’ll allow Android apps to run on Ubuntu too – so it could be the best of both worlds 🙂
Now all I need is a working tablet – stopped charging recently! :s
@onebir
Actually, Ubuntu for Android is Ubuntu running side-by-side with Android on multi-core processors by sharing the same kernel. So if you are inside Ubuntu, you should be able to get back to Android (in the blink of an eye) and use apps. I also know there’s some kinds of integration with Android. For example, SMS messages can pop-up in Ubuntu as shown in last week demo.
In case you plan to buy a tablet on Aliexpress/Dealextreme or Amazon, it could be a good idea to buy via this blog :p