Upcoming Tivo Mega DVR Will Store up to 24TB of Data, Feature 6 TV Tuners

Tivo has unveiled their Mega DVR for people who have some serious TV recording needs, as it can record 24 TB of data, the equivalent of over 26,000 hours of SD TV (That’s about 3 years!), and 6 tuners to record multiple programs simultaneously. Users will also be able to stream live TV or recordings to their smartphones and tablets, and download programs for offline playback. Tivo Mega DVR features listed by Tivo: Storage – 24 Terabyte RAID 5 HDD Six tuners Streaming live and recorded TV to smartphones and tablets anywhere: Built-in stream transcoding Multi-room – Whole home capable 26,000 hours of SD recording space, approximately 4,000 hours of HD recording space Content navigation: Universal search across cable, video-on-demand and web apps including Netflix and YouTube “What to Watch” provides a personalized dashboard with recommendations for what’s on now, next and tonight Collections offers editorial collections based on current events […]

Raspberry Pi Based Slice, and EzeeCube Quad Media Players Support Internal Hard Drives (Crowdfunding)

Slice is a media player based on Raspberry Pi Compute Module, and EzeeCube Quad is media hub powered by Freescale i.MX6 Quad, and an upgrade to EzeeCube based on i.MX6 dual, which was successfully funded. The underlying hardware between Slice and EzeeCube is much different, but both devices have a lot in common. They are both media players currently being crowd-funded respectively in Kickstarter and Indiegogo, both comes with an internal hard drive, run XBMC, targets typical end-users (rather than tinkerers) and are somewhat pricey. Slice Media Player When I first saw Slice, all I could see was an Raspberry Pi module, put in a case with an internal hard drive bay, and lots of pretty RGB LEDs, and with an air mouse sold for an inflated price of 114 GBP ($190 US) without hard drive or 179 GBP ($300 US) with a 1TB drive, with admittedly some cheaper early […]

Review of WeTek Play Android DVB-S2 Satellite Receiver

[Update, December 29, 2014: You may want to read the updated WeTek Play Review with newer firmware including IPTV services, and bug fixes] I’ve already posted pictures of WeTek Play and its boards, and now it’s time to do a full review of this Android DVB-S2 receiver / media player. I’ll start by giving my first impressions, going through the system settings, testing my library of video test files, as well as DVB-S2 support via WeTek Theater, and check most of hardware features. I’ll also test network and storage performance, before running Antutu benchmark to make sure the device runs at optimal speed. First Boot, Settings and First Impressions Contrary to the vast majority of devices, WeTek Play does not come with a basically useless infrared remote, but instead an RF air mouse with an IR transmitter in order to provide true power ON/OFF capabilities. The remote is very nice […]

Unboxing of WeTek Play DVB-S2 Android / Linux STB

WeTek Electronics, a company based in Hong Kong, has sent me an Android TV powered by Amlogic AML8726-MX dual core Cortex A9 processor. Nothing new here, but I was very very interested in reviewing it because it includes a DVB-S2 tuner, and on top of their stock Android firmware, the company provides various Android and Linux firmware files such as CyanogenMod, ParanoidAndroid, OpenELEC, Linux with Enlightenment desktop environment, Lubuntu 14.04 and so on. Today, I’ll list the hardware specifications of the device, show some unboxing pictures and video, and as usual, open the device to see what’s inside. I’ll provide a full review in one or two more posts. WeTek Play Specifications Apart from the DVB-S2 tuner are the serial port, the hardware specifications sound familiar: SoC – Amlogic AML8726-MX dual core Cortex A9 @ 1.5GHz with Mali-400MP GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 Storage – 4 GB NAND flash […]

OpenELEC Ported to TBS 2910 Matrix Board Supports DVB T/S/C, DVR and IPTV Server Functions

TBS 2910 Matrix, also simply called TBS Matrix, is a board powered by Freescale i.MX6 Quad SoC with 2GB RAM, 16 GB eMMC, and supporting various TBS USB DVB tuners. The company provides images for Ubuntu, Android, and something called Matrix TV. The company also releases the source code for the boards, and two OpenELEC developers, namely Ovi and Vpeter, though it could be a nice idea to port OpenELEC to TBS Matrix, and that’s exactly what they did. The video demo below shows online video streaming via 1channels add-on, which can be done with any Android or Linux media player running XBMC or OpenELEC, but the second part is more interesting, as it shows Live TV from a Cable TV USB tuner connected to the board. Ovi also confirmed the system supports DVR, and you can also use the board as a micro IPTV server. DVR function is supported […]

Unboxing of HD18T Android Media Player with DVB-T2 Tuner

Shenzhen Tomato has sent me a sample of HD18T, an Android TV box powered by Amlogic AML8726-MX dual core processor that features a DVB-T2 tuner with In and Out antenna connectors. This is quite timely as Digital TV in Thailand has just started on April 1st of this year. Today, I’ll go through the specs, unbox the device, and show some pictures of the box, the board and DVB-T2 tuner. HD18T Specifications The device enclosure and specifications are very similar to EM6-S2 DVB-S2 Android TV box I covered previously, expect the DVB-S2 tuner is replaced by a DVB-T2 tuner: SoC – AMLogic AML8726-MX dual cortex A9 @ 1.5 GHz + Mali-400MP2 GPU System Memory – 1GB DDR3 RAM Storage – 8GB NAND FLASH + SD card reader Video & Audio Output – HDMI 1.4, AV Audio Output – HDMI, AV, and optical S/PDIF.  Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD pass-through. USB […]

Upcoming MeLe and Egreat A-Series 4K Android Media Players to Feature Realtek RTD1195 SoC

AndroidPC.es has reported that Mele is preparing to launch a new set-top boxes based on Realtek RTD1195 STB SoC with a dual core ARM Cortex A7 (or A9) and a Mali GPU (TBC), and Egreat will also launch their A-Series STB based on the same SoC according to a video by charbax which also features older Realtek and Rockchip Android TV Boxes, and an RK3188 based game console (Egreat K3). RTD1195 supports 4K, H.265 video decoding, and products usually come with USB 3.0 and Gigabit Ethernet ports, and in some cases, even a SATA drive bay. Here are the preliminary specifications from the the upcoming (and unnamed) Mele boxes: SoC – Realtek RTD1195 dual core ARM Cortex A7/A9 @ 1.2GHz with Mali-400 GPU (TBC) System Memory – 1GB DDR3  Storage – 4GB flash (8GB optional), internal bays for 2.5″ or 3.5″ SATA drives up to 3TB Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11n WiFi, and Bluetooth […]

Amlogic STB SoCs Comparison – AML8726-MX, S802, S805, and S812

The second quarter of 2014 is promising to be an exciting time for Android TV boxes based on Chinese SoCs with lots of announcements. Devices powered by Amlogic S802 quad core SoC such as M8 and Vega S89 are already available, Rockchip RK3288 Android TV boxes are likely to sell in May, together with AllWinner A80 development board and tablets, and Android media players probably coming to market in June or July. But Amlogic S802 is not the only new quad core processor announced by Amlogic, with S805 and S812 soon to be featured in HDMI TV sticks and TV boxes. Amlogic IP/OTT STB SoC page has a comparison table for their four STB SoC. Let’s go through this table to see which processor may better match different end-users requirements. Multi-core CPU Dual Core ARM Cortex A9 Quad Core ARM Cortex A9 Quad Core ARM Cortex A9 Quad Core ARM […]

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