I will be finally making the plunge at the end of next week and was looking to future-proof as much as I can with one purchase.
With the S912 3Gb boxes and Amazon Fire boxes being the same price more-or-less, I was interested to hear peoples opinions of what would be the better purchase?
Many thanks in advance...
Q. How much DIY do you want to do ?
Q. Do you want a device that works reasonably well out of the box ?
You question is absolutely useless when we do not know what the device will be used for...so....
Q. What Audio and Video do you plan to watch , 1080p, 4K 3D, 5.1 AC3/DTS etc ?
...and the BIGGEST question of all, have you even bothered to read the START HERE thread ?
You have make the number one rookie mistake here of just looking at Tech Specs. Particularly where the AML S912 is concerned.
Backing wrxtasy here... If you don't plan to flash with a custom rom then you need to stay away from S912 boxes. The features sound great but the stock firmware is utter shit and will cause you headaches (others won't have).
I speak from experience as an owner of a S912. Mine is working great ONLY after flashing a custom rom to it which fixed the majority of the issues I was having.
(2017-02-16, 00:21)hdmkv Wrote: [ -> ]Curious, which custom ROM? Does it solve lack of framerate switching, lack of HD audio, other key issues?
I used superceleron's custom ROM for a sunwell T95Z Plus box, which was the exact same chipset as my X-Player. Freaktab.com has a bunch of others as well. I don't have framerate issues to fix. I don't believe HD audio works on any marshmallow build unless it's customized with backported nougat audio code. Fritsch can confirm/clarify that.
My main issue was overall sluggishness.and DTS pass through skipping intermittently on krypton and special 16.5. The custom rom got rid of the bloatware, sped my box up, and played all my files as expected.
So the question is future proofing...
Well a no brainer $69 Xiaomi Mi box gives you - working - very good WiFi, 4K Netflix, HDR Kodi, 4K HEVC, HD Audio in Kodi Krypton, Excellent Wireless Remote. Very easy to use Android TV. Proven manufacturer support with bug busting updates.
Deinterlacing in Kodi is a bit broken - but Live Channels works. With Android Nougat possibly in the 1/4 of this year.
And yet people still want to buy bug ridden, unsupported, touchscreen OS AML S912 boxes of crap just because it "looks good on paper" !
And you still need to buy an Air Mouse Remote on top of that to use those dinosaur touchscreen Apps.
Get a FireTV if you really really want Amazon Video. Its a bit of a closed box. Built in Apps usage will be far easier and you get a Wireless remote vs IR for S912's.
There is no Google Play Store with Amazon, all PlayStore Apps (inc. Kodi & SPMC) will need to be sideloaded. They will not Autoupdate. A Kodi Fork (version) called MrMC is available for download however. See the MrMC forums for details.
The only usable Chipset advantage of a S912 vs a S905x (Mi Box) is the GPU is a bit more powerful. You will likely get GigaE as well. 1Gb extra RAM will make no difference when just playing back Audio & Video.
The GUI will be a bit quicker and 3D games will play a bit better.
The VPU that decodes video will be the same. Here is a comparison:
http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/09/19/a...omparison/
Anyone that is marketing 2GHz AMLogic S9xx Chipset devices is actually lying. They are standard clocked at 1.536GHz due to heat and stability issues.
Inferior Firmware tho compared to the Mi Box and FireTV tho. This is the most important factor in ANY Android media player device if you want it to be working properly, with stability, out of the box.
These boxes are about the price of a current gen video game if not cheaper. My future proofing is just buying another box when the next new thing comes out and its supported. But that's me, I like customizing them to what I want. At the same time I don't have crazy requirements either. I dont need anything beyond 5.1. And I'm perfectly fine with 1080p. I agree the remotes are crap and I use Rii i8+ backlight mini keyboards for all my android boxes.
As for the Mi Box it sounds interesting, its received mixed reviews but granted those were late last year I guess when it was released. I prefer wired over WiFi and I have optical out for my digital audio so for me I'd have to buy a bunch of coverting devices to get this to work.
To me the most important thing is the ability to flash the box myself.
But yeah, for those who don't do this for a living go with what works out of the box and save yourself the headache.
I have a Fire TV and live outside of Amazon account countries so it's OK except for Amazon Prime Video (the international service). Capable box for sure but I do get sick of being confronted by the Amazon UI and the fact that its remote has no volume control. One thing that is good about it is that it has a USB port in which you can put an air-mouse dongle AND SD card slot for expandable storage.
I also have a Shield and that's just brilliant.
The generic Android boxes are of no use to me as I use Netflix a lot and even the semi-HD 'hacked' Netflix apps that used to work on them are becoming increasingly problematic. Personally I also hate the Android mobile interface and touch screen apps where an air-mouse is an essential, rather than a useful supplement to the main remote.
Quite fancied replacing my Fire TV 2 with a Mi 3 as that device is in the bedroom and uses wifi only. What puts me off though is the combination of just 8GB storage (with what, 5 usable?) and one USB 2 port. So it's either add a splitter on the bank (and yet more junk hanging out the back) or put up with using a 32gb thumb drive for storage OR being able to use an air-mouse. So for now I stick with the Fire TV as it's usability is better for me, despite the fact that I don't enjoy using GUI wise.