h.265 News - Page 28 of 33 - CNX Software

April 9, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Intel Celeron N3000 2-in-1 Laptop, and MSI Motherboards with Celeron N3050/N3150 and Pentium N3700 Processors

Intel introduced the first low power Braswell Celeron and Pentium processors with 4 to 6W TDP, meaning a lower power consumption compared to Bay Trail-M processors, and with better performance. The first devices and motherboards based on these have started to show up with Intel’s Orchid Island 2-in-1 Reference Design based on Celeron N3000, and three MSI motherboards: N3050I ECO, N3150I ECO, and N3700I ECO respectively powered by Celeron N3050 dual core processor, Celeron N3150 quad core processor, and Pentium N3700 quad core processor, all clocked @ 1.6GHz (base frequency) and with 6W TDP. MSI did not release full details about their motherboards but we still now they’ll support H.265/HEVC hardware decoding up to 4K, Blu-ray playback and 8-channel HD Audio via an HDMI 1.4b port. Other connectors and interfaces include two DDR3L-1600MHz SO-DIMM slots (up to 8GB), two SATA III ports, one PCIe slot, Gigabit Ethernet, a COM port, […]

April 7, 2015April 8, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 22 Comments

Mygica ATV1900AC Quad Core Media Player Runs Android 5.0 Lollipop

Geniatech has launched a new Amlogic S812 quad core media player that should be one of the very first to run the full version of Android 5.0. It comes with 2GB RAM, 16GB internal flash and fast connectivity options with a Gigabit Ethernet port and 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MIMO. Mygica ATV1900AC specifications: SoC – Amlogic S812 quad core cortex A9r4 @ 2 GHz with Mali-450MP6 GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB eMMC flash + micro SD card reader Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi 2T2R Video Output – HDMI 1.4 Audio Output – HDMI, optical S/PDIF Video Codec – H.265 up to 4K2K, H.264, etc… USB – 4x USB 2.0 host ports Misc – IR receiver, reset pinhole, power button, network and power LEDs Power Supply – 5V/2A Dimensions – 168 x 132 x 21 mm Weight – 300 grams. The Android 5.0 Lollipop firmware will […]

April 7, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

Kodi 14.2 Linux Tested on MeLE PCG03 with Ubuntu 15.04

I’ve already tested Kodi 14.1 on MeLE PCG03 running Windows 8.1, with the Intel Atom Z3735F device performing greatly for 1080p videos, working DTS and Dolby pass-through (no HD Audio though) and automatic frame rate switching working at all frequencies I tested. Later I installed Lubuntu 15.04 on the mini PC, and I had planned to test Kodi 14.x in Linux to compare the performance in Windows 8.1. Unfortunately, I did not manage to mak HDMI audio, nor the audio jack work in Linux, so instead I purchased a cheap USB sound card from DealExtreme for around $2 US, and connected a pair of USB powered speakers to enable audio output. The USB sound card performs pretty well, and out of the 80 or so videos I used for testing, only one had some saturation issues likely due to the sound card itself. I installed Kodi 14.2 using the recommended […]

March 27, 2015March 28, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 37 Comments

Amlogic is Working on S905 and S912 64-bit ARM Cortex A53 Processors

The relatively popular Amlogic S805 and S812 Cortex A9 processors are soon going to be joined by Amlogic S905 and S912 processors, both featuring ARM Cortex A53 64-bit cores, with the former destined to entry-level media players, and the latter for higher end devices including 4K60 / HDMI 2.0 support, as well as H.265 and AVS+ hardware video codecs. The company is now showcasing its new processors at China Content Broadcasting Network Exhibition (CCBN) 2015 in Beijing until March 28. Details are sparse, but we still know a few features for the new Amlogic 64-bit ARM processors: CPU – Quad Core ARM Cortex A53 CPU @ 2.0 GHz with 512KB unified cache. GPU – S905: 5 core Mali-450MP to 750MHz with OpenGL ES 11./2.0 and OpenVG 1.1 support, unnamed 2.5D GPU S912: TBD Video – 4K@60 Hz video decoding 10-bit HEVC and AVS+ codec support; H.264 up to 4K 30 […]

March 4, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Kodi 15 Alpha 1 Adds Support for H.265 on Android, Drops Some Older OS Versions and Hardware

Kodi 15 Isengard got its first public Alpha release, with 400 pull-request for code merges, 1322 commits and thousands of code lines changed compared to Kodi 14 release with modifications of all operating systems ports, and changes to newer OS versions. Major changes for Kodi 15.0 Alpha 1 include: Added adaptive seeking through audio and video playback, also know as “skip steps” Android HEVC H.265 HW decode support for some chipsets Improved webserver caching control External subtitles over UPnP Allow scanning of new sources and marking as watched during other library operations such as “update library” Allow different sort orders for different sort methods Start of integration binary add-ons and changing the build system around it Improved CC (Closed Captions) support for Live TV ffmpeg 2.5.4 update Remove remaining SDL code New OS Requirements: Minimal Mac OSX 10.7 Lion requirements (Only OSX 64-bit builds provided, no more 32bit builds) Minimal […]

March 2, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

Mediatek MT8173 is a big.LITTLE Cortex A72 / A53 Quad Core Processor for Tablets

Mediatek MT8173 first showed up in the Linux kernel as a quad core Cortex A57 / A53 processor, but now that Mediatek has officially announced the processor, it turns out the Cortex A57 cores are actually the new Cortex A72 cores, with a similar architecture, but more powerful, about 1.8 times faster. Key features listed by the company: Processor – Heterogeneous 64-bit Multi-Core big.LITTLE architecture up to 2.4GHz featuring ARM Cortex-A72 and ARM Cortex-A53 64-bit CPU. Big cores and LITTLE cores can run at full speed at the same time for peak performance requirement GPU – Imagination PowerVR GX6250 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.1, OpenCL. Performance: 350Mtri/s and 2.8 Gpix/s. Display Support WQXGA display (2560×1600) up to 60 Hz with TV-grade picture quality enhancement. Up to 120 Hz mobile display for other resolutions. HDMI and Miracast support for multi-screen applications Video – Ultra HD 30fps H.264/HEVC(10-bit)/VP9 hardware video […]

February 11, 2015February 22, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 17 Comments

Review of Zidoo X9 Android Media Player and Video Recorder

Zidoo X9 is quite a unique product on the market, as it’s the only low cost Android platform that I know of that features an HDMI input port with recording capabilities. The hardware is actually based on Kaiboer F5, with some modifications, but the latter focuses on the Chinese market, while Zidoo X9 targets oversea markets with an English firmware by default. I took pictures of Zidoo X9 and its board about a month ago, but a busy schedule and some initial issues with Google Play Store delayed the review. Finally, I’ve completed testing of the device, and ready to share my findings about performance, stability, and features in this review. OTA Firmware Update I’ve had to go through two firmware updates before carrying on with the review, and this part is working great, and they even include a detailed changelog with each release, which they also publish on their […]

January 31, 2015August 24, 2015 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 41 Comments

Kodi 14 Video Playback on Intel Atom Z3735F Computers Running Windows 8.1

I’ve already written a short review of Mele PCG03 mini PC powered by Intel Atom Z3735F processor, with 2GB RAM, and 32GB eMMC flash, where I found out that almost it’s not the fastest device around, it’s still usable for most tasks, albeit you can quickly run out of space with only 32GB storage, so if you really plan to use it as an actual computer using applications such as email clients, web browser and office suites, an external USB hard drive, or connection to a NAS is probably a must, or you’ll probably have to run Disk Cleaner fairly often. Mele PCG03 also have a valid Windows 8.1 license, and a VGA port, both of which are often missing on many other Bay Trail-T mini PCs. I’ve now installed Kodi 14.1 – downloaded directly from xbmc.org – on this low cost and low power computer, in order to go […]