[JonSnow88]

I haven't had any crashes or lockups in the past two weeks and have played a dozen or so movies on it, and a lot of test material. I run the Confluence skin and don't use any addons apart from the media scrapers though. I will probably get the WeTek once it is available now that I have seen how perfect this can be, but an S905 is slated to replace my i3-3225 media PC currently (which couldn't output 4K so bye-bye). Over the 10 years I've used XBMC/Kodi (and even done some development!) this is the first time that I've felt one of these streaming boxes has had the performance I've come to expect from my PC build. I still need to upload a more complete remote definition but that's trivial.

Can you perform a few test for me?

1.) With the Confluence skin can you use the Thumbnail view with fanart for Movies library and scroll really fast (hold down arrow key) and see if it freezes? You may need to do this a few times to get it to freeze.
2.) With the Confluence skin switch to list view for Movies and then play any 1080P video and press the back key so you see the Kodi UI then scroll again really fast in your library to see if it freezes while a video plays in the background.
3.) If 2 works try the same with the Thumbnail view.

I find the box works great, but if the box has to display to many images it lockups or restarts Kodi. These are easily avoidable, I set the back key to exit the video and don't use the Thumbnail view which equals to no more lockups.

EDIT: LE performs much better only time i run into lockups or freezing now is when ram fills up beyond 80%. Easily avoidable by turning the box off or using a reboot schedule with cron.

[crashnburn]

It would be interesting to hear more about the performance of this new 20-30$ MXQ with *ELEC builds. At that price range I can gift one to bunch of uncles/ older people and not feel bad if they dont really use it. It would be a good starting point for them if they start leveraging / enjoying using Kodi..

[mike523]

Are these boxes good for 1080p IPTV streaming?

[MrCrispy]

NEXBOX MXQ Pro (26$)

I think this is atm the cheapest S905 box you can find.

I have it for 3 weeks and works good for me.
Tbh I don't have high demands but I played couple of 4k movies and everything was just fine.

Only bad thing I could find that it comes with preloaded Kodi so you must uninstall it and install clean version from Play Store.

26$ is a current flash sale price on GearBest (LINK) and I don't know for how long will it last but I think that normal price is around 30$.

I had one for about 3 weeks before I ordered a Shield, now the MXQ Pro is a paperweight on my desk until I find another use for it.

I'm guessing Shield is much faster but can you give your impressions on the main differences?

[808?]

NEXBOX MXQ Pro (26$)

I think this is atm the cheapest S905 box you can find.

I have it for 3 weeks and works good for me.
Tbh I don't have high demands but I played couple of 4k movies and everything was just fine.

Only bad thing I could find that it comes with preloaded Kodi so you must uninstall it and install clean version from Play Store.

26$ is a current flash sale price on GearBest (LINK) and I don't know for how long will it last but I think that normal price is around 30$.

I had one for about 3 weeks before I ordered a Shield, now the MXQ Pro is a paperweight on my desk until I find another use for it.

I'm guessing Shield is much faster but can you give your impressions on the main differences?

It is like night and day. I am so glad I got the Shield with free remote & free shipping combo when I did instead of waiting for the overpriced WeTek Hub (which now doesn't even ship to Asia).

Everything "just works" on the Shield, whereas the MXQ box had problems all the time, freezing up, no power button, UI slow and unstable etc.

I may use my MXQ again on another TV in the house if/when I can get LibreELEC loaded onto it.

[JonSnow88]

I may use my MXQ again on another TV in the house if/when I can get LibreELEC loaded onto it.

Well its out https://forum.libreelec.tv/thread-524.html

[crashnburn]

I had one for about 3 weeks before I ordered a Shield, now the MXQ Pro is a paperweight on my desk until I find another use for it.

I'm guessing Shield is much faster but can you give your impressions on the main differences?

It is like night and day. I am so glad I got the Shield with free remote & free shipping combo when I did instead of waiting for the overpriced WeTek Hub (which now doesn't even ship to Asia).

Everything "just works" on the Shield, whereas the MXQ box had problems all the time, freezing up, no power button, UI slow and unstable etc.

I may use my MXQ again on another TV in the house if/when I can get LibreELEC loaded onto it.

25$ vs 200$ is bound to be But it be nice to see how the budget vehicles perform

[808?]

Yes, indeed!

[JonSnow88]

Here is my review of the MXQ Pro 4K, mines is a generic MXQ box and it isn't the NEXTBOX from OP. However I suspect my review will still apply to the NEXTBOX MXQ.

4K HEVC main10 issues (4K cable TV), this applies to all s905 boxes that do not come with the revision C processor. Currently only the hub currently has the updated processor. This is generally not an issue with normal 4K content i tested a 60fps 4k MP4 demo on my MXQ and it played fine on my 1080p TV. If you have the money for a 4K TV might as well invest in a proper box such as the Wetek Hub/Play2S but if like me you don't plan on jumping the 4K bandwagon or have cable TV and still want to be able to play whatever you throw at it then MXQ is a decent choice. However I cannot comment how the MXQ performs with 4K content on a 4K TV since i Don't have one.

Ram management is poor and fills up quickly. The solution is to reboot the box, if you plan on turning off the box once you finish watching then this most likely won't be an issue however see next issue. According to Kszaq this maybe the same on all s905 boxes just not noticeable on devices with 2GB such as the C2. This will most likely get addressed in do time hopefully after we see official LE builds for the Hub.

Power off issues, since there are so many clones it hard to say which will power off correctly. On my box pressing the power button on the remote just turns off hdmi, i can power the box off using the kodi power menu and then turn it back on using the remote. So its not the end of the world having to click a few extra buttons. LE uses the Android DTB so if the android firmware has proper power off functionality i suspect this would work with LE as well. I have tried a few different android firmware and all just turned off hdmi but left the box on, some had the power off option after holding the power button but i cannot find which firmware that had it.

If you want/have to keep the box on 24/7 a quick fix is to setup a daily con job that reboots the box at like 5AM. During my testing I can get away without rebooting for a few days but setup cron in any event just to avoid unexpected freezing, with a previous OE build DTS-MA, DTS pass through worked perfectly. I have yet to test with LE but i suspect it already has the proper patches.

So overall the box is worth the $$ in my opinion even with the above issues if you can live with them until/if they are resolved then go for it. After a bit of training with how to power off the box etc I would consider it friendly enough to use for an old parent or kids, its a device that will play about 95% of currently available formats/content. That is a huge WIN in my books for a box that is under $30 USD. Kszaq LE really changed the game for these cheap boxes I still have a MiniMXIII on the way but I'm confident enough to give the MXQ to a family member and not have to worry about complaints.

[mike523]

Anyone have a favorite budget box just for IPTV?

[CapnBry]

1.) With the Confluence skin can you use the Thumbnail view with fanart for Movies library and scroll really fast (hold down arrow key) and see if it freezes? You may need to do this a few times to get it to freeze.

This worked just fine and I scrolled up and down and 6 ways Sunday through my 503 item list. 10 times all the way down, then 10 times all the way up, scrolling over one to the right or left each time. No lockups. Then I tried playing a 1080p movie, stopping and doing it again and it locked up after one up and down.

2.) With the Confluence skin switch to list view for Movies and then play any 1080P video and press the back key so you see the Kodi UI then scroll again really fast in your library to see if it freezes while a video plays in the background.

Same here. With the movie playing in the background, fast scrolling on the thumbnail view makes the UI freeze movie start playing about 1 frame per every 10 seconds. One time it restarted Kodi, the next time it just hung there for a few minutes showing me a frame here and there until I pulled the plug.

Finally, I tried Media Info 2 view, scrolled all the way through all my movies and backward through them again, then tried to play a 1080p movie and it locked up. So yeah apparently there is a lockup issue. I haven't seen this happen in practice, and the device shuts itself down or something on idle so it gives me a fresh system every time I use it which is probably why I haven't seen it.

[dukester]

an easy workaround to the ram problem is to enable a swap space on an sdcard, the box can stay running for weeks like that while using heavy skins and having no problems.

[JonSnow88]

an easy workaround to the ram problem is to enable a swap space on an sdcard, the box can stay running for weeks like that while using heavy skins and having no problems.

I've tried the many suggestions with swap enable on a 4GB USB key and it still freezes, I made sure swap was available and usable with the "free" command but it locks up before then, I have yet to test with LE.

Finally, I tried Media Info 2 view, scrolled all the way through all my movies and backward through them again, then tried to play a 1080p movie and it locked up. So yeah apparently there is a lockup issue. I haven't seen this happen in practice, and the device shuts itself down or something on idle so it gives me a fresh system every time I use it which is probably why I haven't seen it.

Thanks for testing, LE is much better on my MXQ and the freezing is way less frequent now and does not lock up as it did with OE on the thumbnail view.

[dukester]

an easy workaround to the ram problem is to enable a swap space on an sdcard, the box can stay running for weeks like that while using heavy skins and having no problems.

I've tried the many suggestions with swap enable on a 4GB USB key and it still freezes, I made sure swap was available and usable with the "free" command but it locks up before then, I have yet to test with LE.

Finally, I tried Media Info 2 view, scrolled all the way through all my movies and backward through them again, then tried to play a 1080p movie and it locked up. So yeah apparently there is a lockup issue. I haven't seen this happen in practice, and the device shuts itself down or something on idle so it gives me a fresh system every time I use it which is probably why I haven't seen it.

Thanks for testing, LE is much better on my MXQ and the freezing is way less frequent now and does not lock up as it did with OE on the thumbnail view.

yes, swap on an USB key didnt do anything for me either, only SDcard works.

[CapnBry]

yes, swap on an USB key didnt do anything for me either, only SDcard works.

I just tried it with a 4GB class 4 microsd, created the swap partition swapon'ed it, and started a 1080p video. Went back and scrolled through my movie list, no problem on Media Info 2 view. Then switched to thumbnail and started scrolling through and after a bit it hitched then froze. My SSH session was still open and I was able to type `free` and the characters echoed back, but when I pressed enter it never came back with the results. The thumbnail images eventually loaded after 20 seconds or so but the movie never continued playing and the UI is locked.

Is it possible to modify or override /etc/amremote/remote.conf? It is on squashfs so the only way I know how to deal with that is extract the filesystem to a USB, edit it, recompress it and reflash the device with the new fs image. I have a Harmony and I'd like to have more buttons like use this remote.conf.

FAKE EDIT: Herp derp just answered my own question. Checked the /usr/lib/systemd/system directory and found amlogic-remotecfg.service, which calls /usr/lib/openelec/remote-config, which checks for a file in /storage/.config/remote.conf first before loading the default.

Code:

wget -O ~/.config/remote.conf https://github.com/zehnm/wetek-core-harmony/raw/master/remote.conf
sync && reboot

Buttons all work great using the "Wetek Play" remote definition in Harmony. Hooray!