Himedia Q5 Pro & Q10 Pro TV Boxes Get Android 7.0 Nougat Firmware

The majority of TV boxes sold today are running Android 4.4 to Android 6.0, but with the release of Android 7.0 for smartphones and tablets earlier this year, it was just a question of time before the OS got ported to TV boxes. Himedia appears to be the first company to have released Android 7.0 for their Hisilicon Hi3798CV200 based TV boxes, namely Q5 Pro and Q10 Pro. The changelog for the new firmware includes: Android N OS running stable and smooth Support for Android N Google Play version Support for Samba UPnP System function perfectly upgraded from 5.1 to Android N with compatibility Youtube updated to 4.10.7 and Netflix to 1.3.11 Homepage, Application Management, Media Center optimized, focus movement are more swift and smooth Media Player upgraded and support mouse operation Local Media Playback Improved; Certain rare videos black screen, display ratio of 3D to 2D abnormal, and occasional […]

Egreat A10 4K Android Media Center Comes with an Internal 3.5″ SATA Bay, an external SATA Port and a USB 3.0 Port

Egreat A10 is an Android TV box powered by Hisilicon Hi3798CV200 processor, coupled with 2GB RAM, 16GB flash, and is an exciting device for people who like to keep the media files on local storage, as it includes an Internal SATA bay for 3.5″ hard drive, an external SATA connector for 2.5″ “laptop” drives, as well as a USB 3.0 port. Egreat A10 specifications: SoC – HiSilicon Hi3798C V200 quad-core ARM Cortex A53 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with ARM Mali-T720 GPU System Memory –  2GB DDR3 Storage – 16 GB eMMC flash + 3.5″ SATA bay + external SATA interface with support for EXT-3/4, FAT32, NTFS and GPT Video Output – HDMI 2.0a up to 4K2K @ 60 Hz and CVBS output (RCA) Video Codecs – 10-bit H.265/HEVC 4Kx2K@60fps, VP9 up to 4K @ 60 Hz, H.264 AVC, H.264/AVC MVC up 1080p30, MPEG-1/2/4 up to 1080p60, VC-1 up […]

V-Bridge Muses DTV Modulator and Video Encoder Review – Part 2: Muses-β Turnkey Solution Demo

V-Bridge Muses-α and Muses-β boards can be used to respectively broadcast video to DTV standard from your PC, and as a turnkey solution taking any HDMI, CVBS, or USB inputs. The VATek SoC used in those  board support various DTV standards including DVB-T, DVB-C, ATSC/QAM, DTMB, ISDB-T/TB up to full HD resolution. I’ve received an early prototype for each, and I’ve already taken pictures and show how to assemble both Muses-α and Muses-β kits in the first part of the review. Today, I’ll show a demo with Muses-β turnkey solution taking HDMI input from an Android TV box (R-Box Pro), encoding and modulating the video to DVB-T, before broadcast it to an Android STB with a DVB-T/T2 tuner (U4 Quad Hybrid). This tool could be useful to test STB featuring ATSC or ISDB-T too, as those two standards are not supported in my country, and I could instead generate signals […]

Huawei Unveils Mate 9 HiSilicon Kirin 960 Smartphone with 5.9″ display, 4GB RAM, 64GB Storage

Hisilicon Kirin 960 is one of the most powerful ARM mobile processor to date with four ARM Cortex A73 cores up to 2.4 GHz, four low power Cortex A53 cores, and a Mali G71MP8 GPU. It was expected in Huawei Mate 9 smartphone, but we did not have that many details, and now the company has made it official. Huawei Mate 9 specifications: SoC – HUAWEI/HiSilicon Kirin 960 octa-core processor with 4 Cortex A73 cores @ up to 2.4 GHz A73, four Cortex A53 cores at up to 1.8 GHz, a Mali-G71 MP8 GPU, and i6 co-processor/sensor hub System Memory – 4GB RAM Storage – 64GB UFS 2.0 flash + micro SD card slot up to 256 GB Display – 5.9″ FHD (1920 x 1080) display, 373ppi, 16.7M colors Audio – 4x microphones, stereo? speakers, 3.5mm headphone jack! Cellular connectivity MHA-L29 model: dual SIM support (one share with micro SD […]

HiSilicon Kirin 960 Octa Core Application Processor Features ARM Cortex A73 & A53 Cores, Mali G71 MP8 GPU

Following on Kirin 950 processor found in Huawei Mate 8, P9, P9 Max & Honor 8 smartphones, Hisilicon has now unveiled Kirin 960 octa-core processor with four ARM Cortex A73 cores, four Cortex A53 low power cores, a Mali G71 MP8 GPU, and an LTE Cat.12 modem. The table below from Anandtech compares features and specifications of Kirin 950 against the new Kirin 960 processor. SoC Kirin 950 Kirin 960 CPU 4x Cortex A72 (2.3 GHz) 4x Cortex A53 (1.8 GHz) 4x Cortex A73 (2.4 GHz) 4x Cortex A53 (1.8 GHz) Memory Controller LPDDR3-933 or LPDDR4-1333 (hybrid controller) LPDDR4-1800 GPU ARM Mali-T880MP4 @ 900 MHz ARM Mali-G71MP8 @ 900 MHz Interconnect ARM CCI-400 ARM CCI-550 Encode/ Decode 1080p H.264 Decode & Encode2160p30 HEVC Decode 2160p30 HEVC & H.264 Decode & Encode2160p60 HEVC Decode Camera/ISP Dual 14bit ISP 940MP/s Improved Dual 14bit ISP Sensor Hub i5 i6 Storage eMMC 5.0 UFS 2.1 Integrated Modem […]

Linux 4.8 Release – Main Changes, ARM & MIPS Architectures

Linus Torvalds has officially released Linux 4.8 last Sunday: So the last week was really quiet, which maybe means that I could probably just have skipped rc8 after all. Oh well, no real harm done. This obviously means that the merge window for 4.9 is open, and I appreciate the people who already sent in some pull requests early due to upcoming travel or other reasons. I’ll start pulling things tomorrow, and have even the most eager developers and testers hopefully test the final 4.8 release before the next development kernels start coming 😉 Anyway, there’s a few stragging fixes since rc8 listed below: it’s a mixture of arch fixes (arm, mips, sparc, x86), drivers (networking, nvdimm, gpu) and generic code (some core networking, with a few filesystem, cgroup and and vm things). All of it pretty small, and there really aren’t that many of them. Go forth and test, […]

HICAT.Livera Machine Vision Board and Robot Kit Feature HiSilicon Hi3518 SoC (Crowdfunding)

HiSilicon Hi3518 ARM9 processor is mostly being used in IP cameras, but Hicat startup decided to combined the camera processor with an Atmel MCU and a MT7601 WiFi module to create a wireless camera board to be used with OpenCV, and even provide a complete affordable robot kit with the board. Hicat.livera board specifications: Vision Core – Hisilicon Hi3518 ARM9 processor @ 440 MHz Storage – 16MB flash + micro SD card MCU – Atmel ATmega32U4 AVR micro-controller Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n WiFi via Mediatek MT7601 module + u.FL antenna connector Camera interface with provided 140 deg. camera using Omnivision OV9712 720p (1280×720) sensor USB – 1x micro USB port for power and programming Audio – Built-in microphone, speaker header Sensors – MPU6050 accelerometer and gyro Expansion – 2x GPIO headers with GPIOs, I2C, SPI, serial, PWM, digital, analog and power signals. Misc – MCU reset and Linux reset buttons, […]

Hisilicon Hi3798M V200 SoC to Allow for Cheaper 4K TV Boxes with Gigabit Ethernet, SATA, and/or USB 3.0

One year after Hisilicon Hi3798C V200 processor was unveiled at IBC 2015, Hisilicon has now introduced a cost down version named Hisilicon Hi3798M V200 at IBC 2016 with a lower-end Mali-450 GPU, only 2 TS input interfaces, one less USB 3.0 interface, and only 1x GMAC (Gigabit Ethernet MAC) or 1x Fast Ethernet PHY, instead of two GMAC interfaces. The processor also adds 1080p30 H.265 video encoding. Hisilicon Hi3798M V200 key features: CPU – Quad core Cortex A53 processor (15K DMIPS) GPU – ARM Mali-450 + Hisilicon dual-core GPU Memory I/F – 32-bit DDR3/3L/4 Storage I/F – eMMC/NAND/SPI, 1x SATA 3.0, 2x SDIO Video Engine (VPU) HiVXE 2.0 video engine supporting 4Kp60 10-bit H.265 and VP9 decoding, 4Kp30 H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC1, VP6/VP8, Real Media 8/9/10 Encoder – H.264/H.265 @ 1080p30 or dual 720p30 Imprex 2.0 processing engine with support for HDR10 & HLG high dynamic range, BT.709/BT.2020, etc.. Peripherals: […]