av1 News - Page 6 of 8 - CNX Software

May 15, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

MediaTek Dimensity 900 6nm SoC brings UFS 3.1, LPDDR5 to mid-range 5G smartphones

Arm Cortex-A78 and LPDDR5 would have been premium features not so long ago, but time flies, and the just-announced MediaTek Dimensity 900 5G SoC for mid-range smartphones includes two Cortex-A78 cores, six Cortex-A55 cores, support for LPDRR5/4 memory, UFS 3.1 storage, and of course 5G cellular connectivity up to 2.77Gbps. The mobile processor’s multimedia capabilities are pretty good as well with support for displays up to 2520 x 1080 resolution at 120 Hz, up to 108MP camera, 4Kp30 video with H.265, H.264, AV1, as well as an Arm Mali-G68 MC4 GPU and third-generation APU 3.0 AI accelerator. MediaTek Dimensity 900 specifications: CPU – Octa-core DynamIQ processor with 2x Arm Cortex-A78 @ Up to 2.4GHz, 6x Arm Cortex-A55 @ Up to 2GHz GPU – Arm Mali-G68 MC4 AI Accelerator – MediaTek APU 3.0 VPU Video Encoding – H.264, H.265 / HEVC up to 4K @ 30FPS Video Playback – H.264, H.265 […]

May 14, 2021May 14, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

S805X2 AV1 Android TV dongles and TV boxes are starting to show up

Amlogic S805X2 AV1 capable processor was first teased as an update to S805X and S805Y Full HD TV box processors in 2019 with very little details. But companies have started to list some S805X2 based Android dongles and TV boxes. That means we also have additional details for the processor, and we’ll look into SDMC DV9035 TV box and SEI Robotics SEI103 dongle, neither of which should be sold to end-users, but instead OEM’s or content providers. SDMC DV9035 S805X2 TV box Specifications: SoC – Amlogic S805X2 quad-core Arm Cortex-A35 processor with Mali-G31 MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR4 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash Video Output – HDMI up to 1080p60 with HDR support Video Codecs – AV1, VP9, H.265, H.264 High-dynamic Range – HDR 10, HLG, HDR10+Optional Connectivity 10/100M Ethernet Dual-band 2.4GHz/5GHz 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFI 5 with optional 2×2 MIMO, Bluetooth 4.2 or higher USB – 2x USB 2.0 ports DRM – […]

April 18, 2021December 10, 2022 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 18 Comments

Mecool KT1 4K AV1 capable Android TV STB ships with DVB-T2 tuner

Amlogic S905X4 TV boxes such as Mecool KM6 have already been available for a few months with the main selling being support for 4K AV1 video hardware decoding. But if you’d like to watch AV1 YouTube or Netflix videos, and also get free-to-air channels using older codecs, Mecool KT1 adds a DVB-T2 TV tuner that works in the EMEA region, some Asian countries, Oceania, and a few other countries that adopted the standard. Mecool KT1 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X4 quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G31MP2 supporting OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.1, and OpenCL 2.0 System Memory – 2 GB RAM Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, MicroSD/SDXC card socket Video & Audio Output HDMI 2.1 up to 4K @ 60Hz with CEC, HDCP2.2, HDR AV output with composite video and analog stereo audio Video Playback Codecs AV1 up to 4K @ 60 fps H.265 HEVC […]

February 23, 2021February 23, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Encoding and decoding AVIF pictures with open-source software & libraries

One of the new features of Android 12 is support for the AVIF file format that provides much smaller files at the same level of quality. Jake Archibald has done a great job comparing AVIF format to JPEG, WebP, and other still picture formats, and the results are really impressive. Besides Android 12, AVIF is already supported in Chrome browser, will be enabled by default in Firefox 86, but here’s we’ll look at some of the open-source programs and libraries that allow you to manipulate AVIF pictures. With libavif library, AOMedia has published a reference implementation in C, together with avifenc and avifdec tools, that rely on various codecs, but it appears rav1e is recommended for encoding AVIF picture, while dav1d is the best choice for AVIF decoding. libavif will not automatically build the codec, and they need to be enabled in CMakeLists.txt

option(AVIF_CODEC_AOM "Use the AOM codec for encoding/decoding (see AVIF_CODEC_AOM_DECODE/AVIF_CODEC_AOM_ENCODE)" OFF)
option(AVIF_CODEC_DAV1D "Use the dav1d codec for decoding" ON)
option(AVIF_CODEC_LIBGAV1 "Use the libgav1 codec for decoding" OFF)
option(AVIF_CODEC_RAV1E "Use the rav1e codec for encoding" ON)
option(AVIF_CODEC_SVT "Use the SVT-AV1 codec for encoding" OFF)

option(AVIF_CODEC_AOM "Use the AOM codec for encoding/decoding (see AVIF_CODEC_AOM_DECODE/AVIF_CODEC_AOM_ENCODE)" OFF)

option(AVIF_CODEC_DAV1D "Use the dav1d codec for decoding" ON)

option(AVIF_CODEC_LIBGAV1 "Use the libgav1 codec for decoding" OFF)

option(AVIF_CODEC_RAV1E "Use the rav1e codec for encoding" ON)

option(AVIF_CODEC_SVT "Use the SVT-AV1 codec for encoding" OFF)

as well as define the path […]

February 20, 2021February 20, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Kodi 19 “Matrix” released with AV1, HDR, tvOS support

Kodi is an open-source media center that was initially designed for the XBOX game console, but was quickly ported to other platforms such as Windows and Linux, and eventually to low-cost Android TV boxes and single board computers such as Raspberry Pi. A new stable release of the software comes out every couple of years, and the developers have just announced the release of Kodi 19 “Matrix” a little over two years after Kodi 18 “Leia” release. The default user interface may look similar to the one for Kodi 18, but there have been many changes over the last two years with some of the highlights including: Skin/Look-and-Feel Screen redesign, especially for music with new metadata displays and changes to playlist views New “now playing” view Artwork and image file improvements Video Playback AV1 software decoding Windows 10 – HLG HDR and static HDR10 playback Android – Static HDR10 and […]

January 26, 2021January 26, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 23 Comments

4K AV1 Android TV dongles surface with Amlogic S905Y4 Cortex-A35 processor

Amlogic S905X4 is a quad-core Cortex-A55 SoC for 4K TV boxes and set-top boxes with H.265, H.264, VP9, and AV1 hardware video decoding. The silicon vendor usually provides a lower cost version of the processor for dongles without Ethernet, but keeping most of the same features, as we’ve seen in the past with S905X2 and S905Y2 processors for instance. S905X4 has now its own cost-down version with S905Y4 for Android TV (certified) dongles relying on WiFi for connectivity, but instead of keeping Cortex-A55 cores, the processor features four low-power Cortex-A35 cores. We do not have the full details about S905Y4 processor just yet, but it has start to show in dongles from SEI Robotics and SDMC that appears idendical. SDMC DV6071Z / SEI Robotics SEI450 TV dongle specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905Y4 quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A35 processor with Mali-G31 MP2 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR (4GB optional) Storage – […]

January 21, 2021March 9, 2021 by Nico Dekerf - 27 Comments

Mecool KM6 Deluxe (Amlogic S905X4) TV Box Review

Back in September 2020, Jean-Luc wrote about the Mecool KM6 TV Box. This comes with the Amlogic S905X4 with AV1 support and preloaded with Android TV 10. Since Jean-Luc could not review the KM6, I offered to do this for him. It was already mentioned the box was delayed in the previous article published in September. After that, it was further delayed until January 2021. So last week I received the Mecool KM6 deluxe for review. It comes with a remote, a 2A/5V PSU, and an HDMI cable. My deluxe version has 4GB LPDDR4 and a 64GB eMMC flash. They also sell the KM6 Classic which comes with 2GB LPDDR4 and a 16GB eMMC flash. Under the moto, don’t turn it on, take it apart. I opened the box to see its internals. There were 4 screws to undo under its rubber feet. It comes with a metal plate on […]

December 28, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Amlogic S905X3 vs S905X4 – Features Comparisons

AV1 capable Amlogic S905X4 processor has been expected for more than a year, and only now are we starting to see announcements of S905X4 TV boxes and development kits. So it may be a good time to compare the features of the new Amlogic S905X4 processor again its predecessor, namely S905X3, and see if there are other notable differences apart from support for AV1 open video codec. We’ll use data from S905X3 specifications, S905X2 vs S905X3 comparison, and a post on SDMC LinkedIn page. Amlogic S905X4 will be slightly faster due to the higher (default) maximum CPU frequency of 2.0 GHz, but most people will not notice the difference. S905X4 is supposed to support Vulkan 1.1, while S905X3 does not, but I believe this is just due to more up-to-date Android SDK, and not differences in the silicon itself. S905X4 supports Nagra DRM, a more recent version of HDCP, and […]