DV8845 Amlogic S905C1 Android TV Hybrid Set-top Box Comes with DVB-T2 or DVB-C Tuner

DV8845 Amlogic S905C1 STB

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about SDMC DV8919 TV box with Amlogic S905X4 processor capable of decoding 4K AV1 videos beside the usual H.265, H.264, and VP9 codecs. But it turns out the company has other devices based on a “new” Amlogic  S905C1 processor, namely two hybrid set-top boxes running Android TV and equipped with either a DVB-T2 tuner (digital terrestrial TV) or a DVB-C tuner (cable). DV8845 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905C1 quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G31MP2 @ 850 MHz supporting OpenGL ES3.2, Vulkan 1.1 and OpenCL 2.0, and optional 1.2 TOPS NN inference accelerator System Memory – 2GB DDR memory (options: 1GB or 4GB) Storage – 8GB eMMC flash (options: 16GB, 32GB, 64GB) Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.1 up to 4K @ 60+Hz with CEC & HDCP2.2, AV output with composite video and stereo audio Video Playback […]

Broadcom BCM7218X STB SoC Comes with AV1 Hardware Decoding, WiFi 6

Broadcom-BCM7218X STB SoC AV1 Codec

CNX Software first covered AV1 open-source, royalty-free video codec aiming to compete against H.265 and succeed VP9 in 2016. I also tried the reference implementation and both encoding and decoding were really slow at that time and an AMD FX8350 powered computer would only achieve 0.36 fps encoding on a 352 x 288 video, while decoding was much faster at over 1,000 fps. This was really early work, and the final AV1 specifications were only released in March 2018, before companies like YouTube and Netflix started to publish AV1 video samples, and now I’ve noticed the former is sometimes streaming videos using AV1 codec on desktop computers and laptops. This still relies on software decoding, and most Arm platforms and entry-level level Intel computer may not be able to handle AV1 decoding, so hardware decoding will eventually be required, especially on battery-operated devices since it will consume much less power. […]

VideoStrong Introduces Low Cost Version of KI Plus T2 S2 Hybrid Android TV Box with Amlogic S805X Processor

VideoStrong K1 Plus T2/S2 is an Android 5.1 set-top-box with DVB-S/S2 and DVB-T/T2 tuner that was launched roughly two years ago with Amlogic S905 quad core processor. Since then, the company has now launched variant of the model with Amlogic S912 (e.g. KIII Pro hybrid TV box)  or Amlogic S905D (e.g. KI Pro set-top box) processors. But now, provided the information on Alibaba is correct, the company has launched a new version of KI Plus T2/S2 with Amlogic S805X which should be cheaper, run a more recent Android 7.1 operating system, at the cost of losing support for 4K decoding, since the processor only support Full HD (1080p60) decoding at most. Since the company updated an existing product, some specific details are wrong on Alibaba, but KI Plus T2 S2 (2018) specifications should be as follows: SoC –  Amlogic S805X quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.2 GHz with […]

Geniatech ATV598Max is a Certified Android TV Hybrid TV Box with ATSC, DVB-T2, DVB-C, or ISDB-T Digital TV Tuner

Geniatech ATV495 Max was the first model from the company to get official Android TV certifications. There now a bunch of those ATV OEM devices, but if you want one with a digital TV tuner, then the choice is much more limited, and so far, I only heard about ARRIS set top boxes. Geniatech ATV598 Max can now be added to the list, as the company informed me the Amlogic quad core hybrid TV box with ATSC, DVB-T2, or DVB-C tuner had just received official Android TV certification from Google too. ATV598Max specifications: SoC  – Amlogic S905D quad core Arm Cortex-A53 processor up to 1.5 GHz with penta-core Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 (optional 1GB) Storage – 16GB eMMC flash + micro SD slot up to 32GB Video Output – HDMI 2.0a; Audio – Via HDMI, optical output, optional Dolby support Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi […]

Mecool KII Pro Set-Top-Box Upgraded to Amlogic S905D Processor, Android 7.1.2

VideoStrong is making some of the most popular – at least on this website – Android set-box boxes with digital TV tuner on the market with products like Mecool KIII Pro, or KI Pro, mostly because of their affordability. Software may be hit or miss depending on your local requirement (e.g. AC3 on DVB-T2, language encoding issues, etc..), so there’s fairly large number of users and some community tools or firmware such as DVB Channel Editor or Vitmos OS that may make them better devices. Most models are based on Amlogic S905 or S912, but Amlogic launched S905D processor some time ago with better tuner support (multiple demodulator support) which for example allowing me to watch terrestrial TV (DVB-T2) while recording satellite TV (DVB-S2) on Sen5 TV box. VideoStrong decided to upgrade their KII Pro Android set-top box  with S905 processor, DVB-T2/T/C and DVB-S2/S tuners to the new Amlogic S905D […]

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