Amlogic has unveiled three new processors this year with Amlogic S905X, S912 and S905D. The latter is not found in devices yet, we’ve seen Amlogic S905X is a bit slower than Amlogic S905, but surely Amlogic S912 with eight Cortex A53 cores and its “multi-core high performance 3D GPU”, namely ARM Mali-T820MP3 must deliver a significant boost in performance. I now have full benchmarks results for two devices: M12N MXQ Plus and Qintaix Q912. M12N is the fastest devices of the two according to benchmarks, and I’ve been told YokaTV KB2 has about the same Antutu score (41K points) as M12N, so I feel confident enough that we have relevant benchmark’s results to compare Amlogic S912 and Amlogic S905 performance using M12N (MXQ Plus) and MINIX NEO U1 TV boxes. The comparison table below contains scores for Antutu 6.x, Vellamo 3.x, and 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme. MINI NEO U1 runs […]
Qintaix Q912 Android Box Review – Part 2: Android 6.0, Kodi 17, Benchmarks, etc…
Qintaix Q912 is one of the many octa-core Android boxes based on Amlogic S912 processor. I’ve already shown photos of the device and its internal design in the first part of Qintaix Q912 review, so today I’ll report the results of my testing with Android firmware, video & audio capabilities in Kodi 17 Alpha 3 (pre-installed), features supports, benchmarks, and other comment. I will also be interesting to find out how it compares to M12N TV box, also based on Amlogic S912 processor. First Boot, Settings, and First Impressions I’ve connected all necessary cables including HDMI and Ethernet, added some USB devices including two 2.4 GHZ USB dongles for my air moues and wireless gamepad, a USB keyboard to take screenshots, and a USB 3.0 hard drive to the USB 2.0 ports of the device. Once you apply power, the LED is turn red, and you need to press the […]
Nextcloud Box is a $80 Private Cloud Server with 1TB HDD for Development Boards
While there are plenty of cloud services provided by companies such as Dropbox or Google, you may want to manage you own private cloud server instead for performance and/or privacy reasons. One typical way to do this is to install Owncloud or Nextcloud (a fork of Owncloud), on a Linux computer or board such as Raspberry Pi 3. The former is usually a little expensive for just this task, the latter often results in cable mess, and in both case, some people may not be comfortable with setting it all up. Nextcloud, Western Digital, and Canonical seems to have addressed most of those issues with Nextcloud Box including a 1TB USB 3.0 WDLabs harddrive, Nextcloud case with space for the drive and small ARM or x86 Linux development boards, and a micro USB power supply. The kit also include a micro SD card pre-loaded with Snappy Ubuntu Core, Apache, MySQL […]
Kodi 17 Setup and Audio/Video Support in Amlogic S912 TV Boxes (as of September 2016)
Most people installing Kodi are going to select Kodi 16.1 as of today, since it is the latest stable release. But I’m currently reviewing Qintaix Q912 TV box based on Amlogic S912 octa-core processor, whose Android 6.0 firmware includes Kodi 17 Alpha 3, so since that’s the first time I run Kodi 17 “Krypton”. I’ve decided to report my experience about the interface, and the current status about audio and video support by testing some 4K videos, and audio files. I used the latest available firmware for the test. Kodi 17 can be found on the main launcher, and for the first launch, we’ll see the default skin has been replaced from Confluence to the new Estuary skin. It’s a little confusing a first. We can access the setup menu by going to the icon on the bottom left, just on the right on the power button, and then select […]
SCISHION V88 PRO TV Box Powered by Amlogic S905X SoC Sells for $22 (Promo)
Amlogic S905X was supposed to allow for cheaper TV boxes compared to Amlogic S905 ones thanks to more integration with built-in Ethernet and audio DAC, as well as support for 2-layer PCB. It also adds 4K VP9 support, but it’s mostly useful for YouTube 4K, a feature only available in devices running Android TV operating system, with Xiaomi Mi Box the only option that I’m aware of based on S905X. Amlogic S905X has also been found to be slower than Amlogic S905 processor, so unless you absolutely need Android 6.0 or/and VP9 support, there’s very little reason to buy an Amlogic S905X box if it’s more expensive, which was the case for most devices so far. SCISHION V88 PRO TV box changes that somewhat as the Amlogic S905X TV box is sold for just $21.99 on GearBest. SCISHION V88 Pro: SoC – Amlogic S905X quad core ARM Cortex A53 processor […]
Beelink GT1 4K TV Box Review – Part 1: Unboxing and Teardown
Beelink GT1 is among the cheapest Amlogic S912 TV boxes available today, selling for around $56, but despite the inexpensive price tag, its specifications are not too bad with Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi, 2GB RAM, 16GB flash, and 4K H.265 & VP9 video capabilities. The company sent me a sample for review, and as usual, I’ll start by posting photos, and having a look at the hardware design, before reviewing the firmware in more details in a the second part of the review. Beelink GT1 Unboxing My package appears to have had a rough trip, but apart from the edges of the black retail package nothing was damaged. The main specifications are shown on the bottom of the package together with CE and FCC certifications, and the type of power adapter inside the package. GT1 ships with a simple IR remote control, a shortish HDMI cable (~1 meter), a small […]
WeTek Play 2 Amlogic S905 TV Box Gets Ubuntu 16.04 Mate and Minimal Firmware Images
WeTek Play 2 is the latest TV box from WeTek with DVB or ATSC tuner, and powered by Amlogic S905-H processor. It ships with Android 5.1.1, but Ubuntu 16.04 Mate and Ubuntu 16.04 minimal firmware images have been released by the community. You can try Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Mate (with desktop environment) or the headless Ubuntu 16.04 LTS minimal image by uncompressing the images, and flashing them to a micro SD card with dd or Win32DiskImager. Two default credentials (username/password) are provided: wetek/wetek and root/wetek. This required the latest Play 2 Android firmware, so make sure you get the latest OTA update before trying Ubuntu. The Ubuntu 16.04 images should just boot from the SD card without replacing or affecting your Android installation. If this type of images for Amlogic S905 seems similar, it’s because are based on Hardkernel ODROID-C2 Ubuntu 16.04 images. You can find the Linux kernel for […]
MINIX NEO U9-H 4K HDR Amlogic S912-H Android TV Box Coming in October
MINIX may have officially announced MINIX NEO Z83-4 Cherry trail mini PC at IFA 2016, but they also showcased NEO U9-H Android TV box based on an “Octa-core cortex A53 processor with ARM Mali-820MP3 GPU”, which the company confirmed to be Amlogic S912-H processor with Dolby and DTS licenses. I also asked the company whether they had specs sheet for the new model, but the replied they did not have finalized specifications to share, nor exact pricing and release date. But we can still derive info from a video on HDBlog.it showcasing an early development model at IFA 2016. MINIX NEO U9-H preliminary specifications: SoC – Amlogic S912-H octa-core ARM Cortex A53 processor @ up to 1.5 GHz with ARM Mali-820MP3 System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash and micro SD card slot Video Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4K @ 60Hz with CEC, HDCP 2.2, […]