G12S Amlogic S905X2 Android TV Box Comes with 2T2R WiFi 5 Connectivity

Several Amlogic S905X2 TV boxes running Android have launched with products such as X96 Max,  Beelink GT1 Mini, H96 Max X2, or Mecool KM9. Some of those boxes come with WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, and others feature better  WiFI 802.11ac (WiFi 5), but according to ACEMAX no model comes with a 2T2R (2 transmit / 2 receiver) antenna setup (aka 2×2 MIMO) except for their G12S TV box sold on Aliexpress for $55.99. So if you aim for the best WiFi throughput possible in your TV box, it might be worth having a go. ACEMAX normally adds their brand on OEM product, and the actual manufacturer should be ShiningWorth with the G12x2 model. G12x2 / G12S TV box specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X2 quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 2.0 GHz with Mali-G31 MP2 “Dvalin” GPU System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 32GB or 64GB eMMC flash, micro SD card […]

Xiaomi Mi Box S is Now Available Worldwide for $55.99 (Promo)

Xiaomi Mi Box S

Xiaomi Mi Box S TV box running Android TV 8.1 launched last month as an upgrade to the popular Xiaomi Mi Box with very similar specifications, but a new remote control, and a cheaper $60 price tag. That means if you already own a working Mi Box you probably don’t want to upgrade, but if you haven’t  already that’s a better deal. There’s one caveat however. It’s only available in the US at Walmart, so if you leave in another part of the world it’s not easily possible to order one, except going via a US forwarder. The good news is that you can now purchase it on GearBest for $55.99 with coupon GBMIBOXS (Note: they only have 1,000 pieces at this price). Xiaomi Mi Box S specifications as a reminder: SoC –  Amlogic S905X quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5GHz with penta-core Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – […]

Giveaway Week – Videostrong VS-RD-RK3399 Development Board

VS-RK3399 Board

That’s the time of the year for another Giveway Week on CNX Software. They will be some development boards, add-on boards, and one gadget. You’ll have to keep reading this blog everyday to find out, but I’ll start with VideoStrong VS-RD-RK3399 development board and accessories. Also know as Mecool VS-RK3399, it is one of the many Rockchip RK3399 development board on the market. The board I have comes with 4GB LPDDR3, and 32GB eMMC flash, as well as all accessories above, minus the USB type-C cable which I can’t find anymore… A 12V/2A will also be provided in the kit given away. I reviewed the board with Debian, tested the SDK, and ran a few benchmarks in Linux about a year ago, and I found that while the board mostly worked as expected, software support and documentation needed some improvements. The SDK page is still there,but they have not really […]

Singles’ Day 2018 Promotions on GearBest, Aliexpress, GeekBuying, Banggood…

Singles' Day 2018

Taking place every year in China on November 11, Singles’ Day is the equivalent of Black Friday and Cyber Monday in the US with shops offering large discounts on various products. The good news is that the event is not actually limited to China, since popular online shopping websites based in China will all organize events and promotions for overseas customers. I posted a list of Singles’ Day promotions in 2017, and I’ll do that again this year with promotions launched by shops like GeekBuying, Aliexpress, GearBest, and others, often starting in early November, and culminating on November 11 for the deepest discounts. GearBest GearBest will have two main Singles’ Day events: Deposit Expansion – To maximize your saving, GearBest implemented a “deposit expansion” policy. This is a FREE bonus that increases the worth of the deposit you made. Put a deposit in advance, get the extra discount when finalizing […]

H96 Max X2 Amlogic S905X2 TV Box with 4GB RAM, 32GB Storage Sold for $49.99 (Promo)

H96 Max X2

We’ve recently started seeing TV boxes based on the latest Amlogic S905X2 processor that offers slightly better speeds, USB 3.0, and several other improvements over Amlogic S905X. Models we’ve covered before including Beelink GT1 Mini, and X96 Max which started selling for under $50 with 2GB RAM and 16 GB storage at the time of the announcement. With competition and the holiday season coming soon, prices have started to come down, and you can now get H96 Max X2 TV box with 4GB RAM, and 32GB storage for $49.99 shipped on Banggood. H96 Max X2 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X2 quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 2.0 GHz with Mali-G31 MP2 “Dvalin” GPU System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 32GB eMMC flash, micro SD card slot up to 32GB Video & Audio Outputs HDMI 2.1 output up to 4K @ 75 Hz with HDR/HDCP 2.2/CEC 3.5mm AV port (composite […]

EACHLINK H6 Mini Allwinner H6 TV Box Sells for $39.99 (Promo)

EACHLINK H6 Mini

Allwinner H6 TV box SoC was announced last year with some interesting specifications with a quad core Cortex A53 processor clocked at up to 1.8 GHz, 4K & 6K HDR video playback Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.0, PCIe, etc… and was launched exclusively on Zidoo H6 Pro TV box, which delivered good performance and video playback capabilities, but at $99 was quite more expensive that RK3328 or Amlogic S905 based TV boxes. Lateron we started to find the processor in low cost development board such as Pine64 Pine H64 and Orange Pi One Plus, but I don’t think those become popular, and Allwinner H6 PCIe appears to have been botched. Nevetheless, Allwinner H6 is still a good platform for what i was designed for: TV boxes, and thanks to GearBest, it’s currently possible to purchase EACHLINK H6 Mini for just $39.99 including shipping. EACHLINK H6 Mini specifications: SoC – AllWinner H6 quad-core […]

Linux 4.19 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures

Linux 4.19 Changelog

With Linus Torvalds taking a leave from the Linux kernel project, Greg Kroah-Hartman was the one to release Linux 4.19 last Sunday: Hi everyone! It’s been a long strange journey for this kernel release… While it was not the largest kernel release every by number of commits, it was larger than the last 3 releases, which is a non-trivial thing to do. After the original -rc1 bumps, things settled down on the code side and it looks like stuff came nicely together to make a solid kernel for everyone to use for a while. And given that this is going to be one of the “Long Term” kernels I end up maintaining for a few years, that’s good news for everyone. A small trickle of good bugfixes came in this week, showing that waiting an extra week was a wise choice. However odds are that linux-next is just bursting so […]

Comparison of S905X, S905X2, and S905Y2 Processors Specifications

We’ve known the main features of Amlogic S905Y2 and S905X2 processors namely an upgrade to an Arm Mali-G31MP2 GPU with OpenGLES 3.1, and support for USB 3. since last month, and TV boxes launched earlier this month with products such as Beelink GT1 Mini or A95X Plus. But we were still missing some parameters like the manufacturing process, max CPU and GPU frequencies, and so on. We now have all this information and some more thanks to an S905X/S905X2/S905Y2 comparison table released by SDMC a few days ago, and likely coming from Amlogic themselves. There actually more differences than I expected. Going from top to bottom in the comparison table above, the new processors feature an ultra-low power MCU core to be used for wake-word detection, and possibly other features. We did not get CPU frequency numbers per se, but since Amlogic released DMIPS values and Cortex A53 core scores […]