[noggin]

The only downside I can see to the X7 at the moment is the very poor heatsink arrangements. It basically doesn't really have one. It has a plastic/rubber heat pad thing stuck to the top of the chips and a very thin bit of metal over some of them. This pad doesn't touch the case or any thing - so if you tax the CPU/GPU the temperatures go up VERY quickly and the heat has nowhere to go. I'd have thought a reasonable metal heatsink might have been a better idea in a passively cooled box, or something that made contact with the metal case (the two PCBs are held in place by a silver plastic bracket glued inside of the metal case?

Intriguingly on both the main board and the front panel connector board there are a pair of headers that aren't populated that look like an additional USB-type header. There are also two unpopulated LED-sized spaces on the PCB. I wonder if there was a plan for an activity or IR receiver/transmitter LED pair? (If it were an extra USB header that would be awesome - you could install a DVB USB tuner easily. There's lots of empty space in the case. There is also a much smaller edge-connector style header on the main board (factory programming? Different display interface?)

[doublea]

I ordered mine from Gearbest on Jan 8th. Arrived today - can't wait to check it out.

Gearbest, no problem!

[malcolmbarr]

Has anyone made any progress with being able to install openelec on this box?

Do we need to lobby them to provide a specific build?

[goujam]

Has anyone made any progress with being able to install openelec on this box?

Do we need to lobby them to provide a specific build?

There has been no advance from what I can see, they did try and get it working on the Zotac zbox pi320 which is simular hardware but it didnt work. The best option would be for PIPO to release a updated BIOS/UEFI that would either work with 64bit UEFI or allow BIOS mode within the 32bit UEFI

[rcph]

PIPO X7 has the support of CEC?

[Darkscythe]

No, I believe the Intel HD doesn't support CEC

[noggin]

Has anyone made any progress with being able to install openelec on this box?

Do we need to lobby them to provide a specific build?

There has been no advance from what I can see, they did try and get it working on the Zotac zbox pi320 which is simular hardware but it didnt work. The best option would be for PIPO to release a updated BIOS/UEFI that would either work with 64bit UEFI or allow BIOS mode within the 32bit UEFI

I wouldn't hold my breath for either of those. I suspect if we want to get OpenElec running on these Baytrail-T devices (like the Meegopad T01, Pipo X7 etc.) designed for Windows 8.1 we are going to need to solve the 32 bit UEFI issues.

Though my experience is that the cooling on the X7 is sub-par for high quality video in Windows (Cores hit 80C plus and then start throttling), and C't in Germany report the same for the Hannspree version of the Meegopad.

Be interesting to see what the Intel Compute Stick ships with.

[Darkscythe]

Suggestion:
You want 1080i/50fps and 720i/25fps (DBV-T) as well if you want to differentiate your website from all the other dross and lightweight reviews available.

I think you mean 720p/50fps... aka 720/50p or 720p50 (*) 720i doesn't exist in the real world.

I'd suggest the following as a minimum for a decent, exhaustive, review of any media player :

480/59.94i (aka 480i29.97) H264 and MPEG2
576/50i (aka 576i25) H264 and MPEG2
720/50p (aka 720p50) H264 and MPEG2
720/59.94p(aka 720p59.94) H264 and MPEG2
1080/50i (aka 1080i25) H264, VC-1 and MPEG2 (Interlaced VC-1 is a known issue)
1080/59.94i (aka 1080i29.97) H264, VC-1 and MPEG2 (Interlaced VC-1 is a known issue)
1080/23.976p (aka 1080p23.976p) H264, VC-1 and MPEG2

You might want to add H265/HEVC to these, and possibly some H264 with more than a standard value of reference frames (for some reason people encode non-standard content). Also some Hi10p H264. And possibly some 1080/24.000p and 1080/29.97p content?

For a UK audience a Freeview HD recording would be REALLY useful. It uses dynamic 1080i/p switching on the fly so can constantly be flicking between 1080/50i and 1080/25p in the same stream.

If you're feeling really fancy you could also test the de-interlacing by having 59.94i content that is native interlace, 29.97p in a 59.94i wrapper and 23.976p in a 59.94i wrapper using 3:2 pulldown.

(*) Annoyingly there are two dominant standards for describing video systems. If the letter comes at the end of the whole thing - like 576/50i or 720/50p - then the second number is the frame rate for progressive but the field rate for interlaced. If the letter comes in the middle - like 576i25 or 720p50 - then the second number is always the frame rate (so for 2:1 interlaced systems it will be half the field rate or picture rate) For progressive system the number is the frame rate for both. The first number is always the vertical active resolution.

I'm having some real issues tracking some of these down. Anyone know of any good sample sites?

[noggin]

I can provide some 576/50i, 720/50p and 1080/50i stuff as well as some UK Freeview HD stuff that flips between 1080/50i and 1080/25p. They will be DVB off-air H264 recordings of German and British TV from satellite and digital OTA. I can also do some mastering of stuff from a high quality 1080/50i source if that helps.

US/Canadian bods should be able to provide some 480i MPEG2 and some 720/59.94p and 1080/59.94i MPEG2 stuff from ATSC OTA or QAM Cable.

fritsch has some good interlaced test sequences as well.

[tendjose]

I got mine and doing my post with it.

There's one problem: memory always at 95% usage. I tried using Firefox and it uses much less memory than Chrome, but if I start streaming, 95% level is reached again, which leads the computer to constant swapping to disk, and slow.

Streaming from flash Stream has interruptions not because of the network, but because the Swapping is too much I think.

This computer comes with 2GB of RAM which is more than enough.

I was thinking in installing Windows 7 starter edition here, but wonder if there are drivers for this computer for Windows 7.

[noggin]

I was thinking in installing Windows 7 starter edition here, but wonder if there are drivers for this computer for Windows 7.

Don't think you can install Win 7 on a 32bit UEFI set-up (it isn't supported) - you would need a legacy BIOS or 64bit UEFI I believe (neither of which the Pipo X7 supports)?

[minkook]

Anybody know how to install 64bit windows on this?

[noggin]

Anybody know how to install 64bit windows on this?

Not sure Windows 64 bit will install on a system with a 32 bit UEFI, even if the CPU is 64bit (as is the case with the X7)?

[paulbid]

I am attempting to use my X7 as a server for displaying photos, without a monitor attached. Whenever I disconnect a monitor from the HDMI port, the NIC shuts down and I Iose network connectivity.

Does anyone know why this happens and is there any workaround in Windows?

Thanks.

Paul

[weyb]

here is the screen grab for supported audio formats
[/img][/code]

Hi everyone,

does that mean that there's no HD audio (DTS-HD & TrueHD) support in the PIPO X7 ?
is it becauase of PIPO or because of Kodi
i'm not sure to have understood...

sincerely yours