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October 2, 2018October 2, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Dav1d Open Source AV1 Decoder Aims to be Fast and Lightweight

Lots of efforts are being put into AV1 open source, royalty-free video codec with the AV1 specification published in March, and companies like YouTube and Netflix having recently uploaded AV1 video samples for testing and evaluation. We also reported FFmpeg 4.0 was released with AV1 supporting using libaom reference decoder. However, the library is not really optimized for code size and speed, but instead just to demonstrate AV1 decoding and encoding. So VideoLAN, VLC and FFmpeg communities have been working on another decoder called Dav1d – which stands for “Dav1d is an AV1 Decoder” – that aims to be lightweight, cross-platform, fast and open source. Some of the technical details about dAV1d include: written in C99 without VLAs (Variable Length Arrays) ASM in NASM/GAS syntax (no intrinsics), Meson/ninja buildsystem, Works on x86, x64, ARMv7, ARMv8 architectures for now Runs on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS operating systems Licensed under BSD […]

October 10, 2016 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 16 Comments

Zidoo X9S Android TV Box HDMI Input Testing – Video Recording, PiP, and UDP Broadcasting

One of Zidoo X9S media center‘s key features is its HDMI Input port with support for PVR, picture-in-picture, and video broadcasting over UDP. The company has come a long way since the implementation of HDMI input on Zidoo X9 TV box, which would only support PVR function, and exclusively work in the foreground. For this review, I connected K1 Plus T2 S2 Android TV box to the HDMI input of Zidoo X9S, and started HDMI In app.The first good news is that HDMI input does work, as we can see K1 Plus user interface preview inside Zidoo X9S’ HDMI IN app. Before testing all features, let’s go through the options for Video, Audio, and Output. You can select various video resolution up to 1080p, but I left it to Auto, which for this test meant 1080p. Framerate cannot be changed and is set to Auto, while bitrate ranges from 1M […]

October 25, 2015October 25, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

Kingnovel R8 Android TV Box Review (VLC Edition)

Kingnovel R8 is one of the many Rockchip RK3368 based TV boxes on the market, and since I’ve already provided the specs, as well as pictures of the device and board, I’ll carry on with the review today. While I’m usually testing video playback in Kodi, I’ve only spent a short time with Kodi 15.2 on this box, and instead switched to VLC (aka VideoLAN), an another open source media player, and my favorite program to watch videos in my Ubuntu computer. Of course, I’ve also tested most hardware features and performance of the device. First Boot, and First Impressions Since I like to test worst case scenarios, I also make sure I use all the ports of the devices, and connected a USB hard drive, USB RF dongles, USB webcam, and relevant cables to the device before powering it up. Once you connect the power, I recommend you have […]