$50 Hotach HTV003 Android Media Player is Powered by Telechips TCC8935 SoC

The last few months have been pretty quiet in terms of new Android mini PCs and media players, at least when it comes to new platforms. But finally there’s something new, as Telechips TCC893x based devices are starting to show up on the marketplace. The devices won’t beat performance records as the new Telechips SoC features a dual core Cortex A9 processor with a Mali-400MP2 GPU, but they’ll be very affordable. Hotach HTV003 is one of the first media player powered by Telechips TCC8935, and sells for $50 on Aliexpress. Hotach HTV003 specifications: SoC – Telechips TCC8935 with two ARM Cortex A9 cores up to 1GHz, one Cortex M3 core, and an ARM Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4GB NAND Flash + micro SD card slot up to 32 GB Connectivity – Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi Video Output – HDMI Audio Ouput – HDMI USB – 2x […]

Telechips TCC893x Dual Core ARM Cortex A9 + Cortex M3 SoCs: TCC8930, TCC8933, TCC8935

Sometimes last year, Telechips discreetly released a triple core SoC comprised of 2 ARM Cortex A9 cores and one Cortex M3 core for tablet, set-top boxes, media player and car AVN (Audio, Video & Navigation). A dual core release in 2013 may not be that interested, but the addition of a Cortex M3, and high performance interfaces such as Gigabit Ethernet and USB 3.0 may make it interesting. Let’s have a look. There’s very little information on Telechips TCC893x page, apart from the block diagram above and the following description: The TCC893x is a system-on-chip with powerful multimedia solution and high performance such as dual decoding. It is ideal for high-end multimedia devices such as Set top box, Media Box, Car AVN, and Tablet. TCC893x multimedia application processor based on Cortex-A9 Dual & M3 has multi-format hardware video accelerator optimized to reduce power consumption, high-performance 2D/3D graphic engine for rich […]

XBMCHUB Releases XBMC for Android Version with HW Video Decoding on All Platforms

As you may know, XBMC developers have been working on XBMC for Android for a while, and have recently released XBMC 12.0 RC3 for Android APK. The only problem is that, apart from devices based on AMLogic AML8726-M1/3,  many platforms still do not support video hardware decoding, so this  must be handled by software. As the CPUs in most devices are not powerful enough to decode HD videos, some people have provided instructions to use an external player, for example with Telechips TCC8925 and Diceplayer. This is not ideal because you basically lose XBMC user interface during video playback, but it’s a good workaround until XBMC 4 Android supports more platforms. However, you still need to edit some config files by yourself. That’s why the guys at XBMCHUB have decided to release an XBMC for Android APK where all the configuration is done for you, so that you can get […]

$77.30 SAA-250 Telechips TCC8925 Board

Dealextreme is selling a board (Model SAA-250) featuring Telechips TCC8925 Cortex A5 processor with 1GB RAM, and 4GB Flash. They sell it as a “Android 4.0 DIY Intelligent TV Box / Advertising / Development Motherboard”, but it’s basically an Android set-top box board without casing, power supply, nor remote control, and you should not expect to do that much development (except Android app development) on it since no source code is available. Here are the board specifications: SoC – Telechips TCC8925 up to 833 MHz ARM Cortex A5 + 1080P VPU + Mali-400 GPU. (Dealextreme says it’s a dual core Cortex A5 up to 1.2 GHz, but if it’s TCC8925, that’s just plain wrong) System Memory – 1GB RAM Storage – 4GB flash + SD card slot Video Output – micro? HDMI 1.3 up to 1080p + CVBS AV output Video formats – RM/RMVB, MPEG, MKV, AVI, FLV, VP8 up […]

Top 10 Posts of 2012 on CNXSoft Blog

This is the last day of the year, so it’s probably a good time to look back and see what interested people on this blog. This has been a banner year for low cost ARM devices and boards starting with the Raspberry Pi, then MK802 and the new mini PCs / HDMI TV dongles / PCs-on-a-stick (whatever you want to call them) that came after, always cheaper and faster. Those low cost devices have in turn made people really interested in ARM Linux, and lots of development on those little devices and boards started. The top 10 posts of 2012, according to page views, reflect just those trends: 74 USD AllWinner A10 Android 4.0 Mini PC (May 2012) – MK802 started the whole “low cost mini PCs” craze, and drove the most traffic to this blog this year. People got excited about the price, form factor, and the possibility to […]

$444 Smartbeam Android 4.0 Media Player & Projector Powered by Telechips TCC8925

Android is now everywhere, from the ubiquitous smartphones and tablets to cars, cameras, satellites (no kidding), light bulbs (seriously) and more. Today is the first time I’ve come across a full sized projector running Android. The “Smartbeam” is a 2000 lumens 1280×768 (native) projector powered by Telechips TCC8925 with 512 MB RAM and 4 GB Flash running Android 4.0.4 (ICS), so the performance should be very similar to CX-01 mini PC. Here are the specs of this new device: SoC – Telechips TCC8925 up to 833 MHz System Memory – 512 MB RAM Storage – 4 GB NAND Flash WiFi – 802.11 b/g/n Display – 5.8″ Single LCD Panel Display Technology (cnxsoft: But I can’t find any display on any of the pictures…) Projector: Projection Lens – Manual Lens Resolution: Native SGA (1280*768 Pixels), Support Resolution QGA (1920 x 1200) Brightness (Typical) – LED lamp 2000 lumens, more than 320Lux […]

Yes! MK802 for less than $50! Oh wait… It’s based on Telechips TCC8920.

Pandawill has added a new device called “OEM MK802 mini Android TV Box” to its catalog. It looks like the “original” MK802 mini PC as you can see from the picture below, but this PC-on-a-stick is based on Telechips TCC8920 (Cortex A5) processor instead. The specifications on Pandawill read as follows: CPU – Telechips Tcc8920; Cortex A5, 1GHz; GPU: Mali 400 RAM – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4GB Nand Flash + microSD card slot (up to 16GB) Video output- HDMI 1080P (60Hz) WIFI – 802.11 b/g/n USB – 1 OTG port + 1 USB Host Dimensions – 88.5 x 35 x 12mm Weight – 25g The package includes a USB Cable, a DC? Cable, an English User Manual and an HDMI Cable, and this sells for $49.99. This is not a bad price actually, but they should really have given another name to this device. This shows you always have to […]

How to Create a Custom Android Firmware for CX-01 mini PC

I’ve written a post about updating the firmware on CX-01 mini PC last week. But, this week I’ve been able to go further since I’ve learned some tools available for Telechips TCC8902/TCC8903 firmware files are also compatible with TCC892X firmware files, and it’s possible to extract the firmware, modify/add files in different partitions and repack all this to burn it with FWDN tool. I’ll explain the different steps in this post, and even if you don’t own CX-01 it could be interesting as some of the commands are common to all Android devices. But first: BIG FAT WARNING!!! Although I believe the steps mentioned in this post are safe, and errors can be recovered by using the CX-01 firmware, CX-01 mini PC is not unbrickable, and if I’m wrong your device will become useless and you won’t be able to fix it. I may also mention some tools (but not show […]