Android 5.0 Lollipop Running on Amlogic AML8726-MX Based WeTek Play STB

Last month as Android Lollipop was shown booting on a Rockchip RK3188 tablet, and a few days later several companies such as Allwinner and Rockchip announced Android 5.0 ports were in progress for their latest processors, a few people asked me: what about Amlogic? I had no news at the time, but I expected the company to port Android 5.0 to their recent processor such as S802, S805, or S812, so I was surprised when I saw WeTek Play might be the first Amlogic device to boot Android 5.0 (CyanogenMod version), since it features the old dual core Amlogic AML8726-MX processor. The company has just released their latest Android 4.2 firmware, so this Android 5.0.1 version is most probably an early firmware, just not quite ready for prime time just yet, but hopefully they’ll release a stable version  within a few weeks. That’s the boot and About WeTek Play video […]

OpenELEC For Amlogic Media Players – MXIII, Tronsmart Vega S89, TV110 and CX-S806 (S812)

XBMC / Kodi is now working pretty well on Android devices, and even automatic frame rate switching is available on some Android platforms such as MINIX NEO X6. But if you want a pure XBMC experience, you may consider XBMC/Kodi Linux distributions such as OpenELEC also providing support for some USB DVB tuner dongles and PVR function, both of which are currently unavailable in Kodi for Android. We’ve also seen OpenELEC released for M8 TV Box, but  Kerber, a Russian developer (or at least a Russian speaking developer) has also released OpenELEC 4.97.x for MXIII (Amlogic S802), Tronsmart Vega S89 (Amlogic S802), TV110 (Amlogic S805) , and CX-S806 (Amlogic S812) media players. The forum post is dated on August 2014, but it has been updated on December 12 with more up-to-date images: OpenELEC-Amlogic.MX3.arm-4.97.2.zip for MXIII (1GB) OpenELEC-Amlogic.S82.arm-4.97.2.zip for Tronsmart Vega S89 (2GB) OpenELEC-Amlogic.TV110.arm-4.97.2.zip for TV110 OpenELEC-Amlogic.S806.arm-4.97.2.zip for CX-S806 (Amlogic S812 […]

Linux 3.18 Released

Linus Torvalds released Linux Kernel 3.18 last Sunday: It’s been a quiet week, and the patch from rc7 is tiny, so 3.18 is out. I’d love to say that we’ve figured out the problem that plagues 3.17 for a couple of people, but we haven’t. At the same time, there’s absolutely no point in having everybody else twiddling their thumbs when a couple of people are actively trying to bisect an older issue, so holding up the release just didn’t make sense. Especially since that would just have then held things up entirely over the holiday break. So the merge window for 3.19 is open, and DaveJ will hopefully get his bisection done (or at least narrow things down sufficiently that we have that “Ahaa” moment) over the next week. But in solidarity with Dave (and to make my life easier too 😉 let’s try to avoid introducing any _new_ […]

M85 HDMI TV Dongle Powered by Amlogic S805 SoC Features Two Wi-Fi Antennas

We’ve already seen Ugoos S85 board with Amlogic S805 processor for HDMI TV sticks some time ago, and now Android TV dongles based on the low power quad core Cortex A5 processor are finally up for sale, starting with M85 model coming with 1GB RAM, 8GB flash, HDMI and USB ports, and two Wi-Fi antennas. M85 technical specifications: SoC – Amlogic S805 Quad-Core Cortex-A5 @ 1.5GHz with Quad Core ARM Mali-450MP GPU @ 600MHz System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 8GB NAND FLASH + micro SD card slot Video & Audio Output – HDMI 1.4 up to 1080p Connectivity – 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi with two external antennas, Bluetooth. USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port, 2x micro USB ports (1x OTG, 1x for power) Power Supply – DC 5V/2A The device runs Android 4.4. It’s not clear whether any cables or even a power supply are included. I’ve already […]

MXQ S85 Android TV Box (Amlogic S805) Review

MXQ S85 (aka MXQ OTT TV box) and EM6Q-MXQ are two main Full HD H.265 Android media players based on Amlogic S805 currently selling on Chinese online stores. I’m lucky enough to have received both, and I’ve already completed the review for EM6Q-MXQ, so today I’ll complete MXQ S85 review and compare both devices. I’ve already taken picture of the device, accessories, and checked out the board’s components in my unboxing post, so in this post, I’ll focus on the user interface, evaluate performance, and test most hardware features of this media player. First Boot, Settings and First Impressions I’ve started by a quick test of the IR remote control, and it works as expected after inserting two AAA batteries, before switching to Mele F10 Deluxe air mouse for convenience. I’ve connected all ports of the device except the S/PDIF output: Ethernet cable, HDMI and AV cables, micro SD card, […]

Performance Comparison of Amlogic S805 and S802 Processors

Amlogic S805 is a quad core Cortex A5 processor for entry levels Android media players, S802 is a quad core processor with faster Cortex A9 cores clocked @ 2.0 GHz, and S812 is an upcoming upgrade of S802 with HEVC/H.265 hardware video decoding, and Gigabit Ethernet support. I’ve already written about the features differences between AML8726-MX, S802, S805, and S812, but since I now have some devices I can make direct comparison between S802 and S805. It’s quite clear on paper than S802 should be significantly faster than S805, so the only question to answer is by how much, but I’ve been asked to do it, and it could be a fun exercise.  The hardware devices used for the comparison are two Android media players: EM6Q-MXQ for S805 and Probox2 EX for S802, and I used the results from three Android benchmarks: Antutu 5.1, Vellamo 3.x, and 3Dmark Ice Storm […]

XBMC 13.2 Android and Source Code for Amlogic S802 Released

Based on comments on my M8 review post, many people have troubles with XBMC stability on this hardware, and the official XBMC 13.2 release can only be used on Android 4.2.2. But there’s hope, and maybe a solution to all these problems, as stane1983 has now released XBMC 13.2 for Amlogic S802 with backports from Kodi 14 alpha, that runs on Android 4.4.2. So if you have issues with XBMC in your Amlogic S802 Android TV box, you may want to download and install XBMC Gotham 13.2 (20140831_xbmcapp-stane.apk) from Stane1983’s download section. If you have an Amlogic device running Android 4.2.2, this won’t work due to differences with Amlogic’s libplayer header files, and you need to download and install mainline XBMC 13.2 instead. He’s also made all source available on his github account. Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as […]

Amlogic S802 TV Boxes Are Getting Cheaper: Meet $72 MX3 (M82) TV Box

When Android media players based on Amlogic S802 first launched a little over 3 months ago, they all sold for over $100. Since then various products have come to market, with prices slowly edging lower. But none comes as cheap as MX3 (aka M82), whose name is probably inspired from Gbox Midnight MX2, as it sells for $72.22 on GearBest including shipping. [Update: It can be found for $70 on DealExtreme] Let’s go through the specifications: SoC – AMLogic S802 quad core ARM Cortex A9r4 at 2.0GHz with ARM Mali-450MP6 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4 GB NAND Flash + micro SD card slot Video and Audio Output – HDMI  and AV Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports + micro USB OTG Misc – IR Sensor, Power LED, power button, and recovery/update switch via AV jack Power Supply – […]

EDATEC Raspberry Pi 5 fanless case