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+--- Thread: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options (/showthread.php?tid=255686)
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RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - MerinoNL - 2018-07-23
So I bought one of these cheap Chinese boxes and just checking in to see if I did right.
My demands are quite honestly not that much. Mostly I want to be able to stream video files from my desktop pc towards my not-so-smart 1080p tv (Philips). Netflix streaming would be useful also although I don't have an account there at the moment.
Since I don't need 4k or HDR right now I felt a Shield would have been overkill for my current wishes and tv setup. Whenever I'll upgrade my tv I will also get a new streaming box with it for 4k uses. Untill that time I hope that what I bought will suffice.
After lots of googling it became clear that within the jungle of Chinese multibranded boxes the biggest differences are in the processor (s905 vs s912), the #gb ram and possible firmware availability.
In my locality I found a T95R Pro 2gb/16gb that seemed to be the best bang-for-buck. Browsing the web I have seen multiple brandnames for this, both Sunvell and Wechip. It seems also that there is Android 7.1 firmware available for this box from Wechip website but I don't know if the Wechip firmware will work on Sunvell branded one and vice versa. It kinda seems like these are just different brand names for the same product.
It has a s912 processor (while most cheap ones I saw were s905). As far as I read here the s912 is better performing and the firmware issues this chip used to have seem to be solved nowadays. So s912 should be simply better choice than s905 correct?
I am a little confused why the more expansive boxes of Minix and Xiaomi (mi) are so often recommended online. Seems to me that the T95R Pro has better hardware inside then the Xiaomi Mi. Is this purely due to Android TV OS and Chromecast ability? Or has this to do with video/audio codecs or HDMI port or WIFI adapter being more capable?
Is there anything I will miss out on (for regular 1080p streaming with various audio codecs) with one of these cheap Chinese boxes that I was not aware off? Auto switching? Codec support?
Should I make this dual boot Android 7.1 and LibreElec or just use only LibreElec with Kodi?
Anything to take special care/attention off when upgrading the firmware to 7.1 on this machine?
Edit//
Okay, two more hours of reading further and if I understand correctly the difference between these cheap AmLogic boxes and a Xiaomi Mi lies mostly in Widevine and DHCP certificates that are not available on many chinese boxes which results in 720p Netflix only.
Considering I don't care for Amazon support/certificates and don't need 4K support in terms of certificates (and not sure why I would need Chromecast support), not having HD Netflix would be the only shortcoming in this machine.
Gonna debate internally now if I want to return this purchase and find a Amlogic box with Netflix HD support (Mecool I guess?)
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - wrxtasy - 2018-07-23
720/1080p Netflix at a minimum needs Widevine L1 DRM and HDCP 1.x - which the KM8 has... (Otherwise expect 480p only Netflix)
See THIS post regarding 1080p Netflix.
If you do not need Android Apps or Netflix and only need Kodi then the best bang for the buck is a AMLogic S9xx box and run LibreELEC Kodi Krypton on it. That combo will play virtually anything you throw at it.
You will get auto refresh, auto resolution and in the case of S905X and S912 hardware, auto colorspace switching.
We currently have no idea if the AMLogic S905X MECOOL KM8 has a locked bootloader like the Xiaomi Mi Box. If it is locked you cannot dual boot and run LibreELEC Kodi.
I doubt the KM8 will have working auto Android Kodi refresh switching. Only MINIX, WeTek and I believe Ugoos have bothered to invest time to get that working in Android on AMLogic devices.
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - clarkss12 - 2018-07-23
Wrxtasy, it will be interesting if the Mecool KM8 has "root" option like the Nexbox A95X Pro. If it doesn't, I don't think I will try to install SuperSu and it's binaries, in order to get root.
I could be dead wrong, but it appears that Mecool is monitoring the Freaktab website and implementing some of the items listed. For instance, Magendanz included the app drawer into his mods, and shortly afterwards, Mecool added that app drawer into their firmware.
One of my favorite items, is depressing the "home" button and holding it. Then the "resents" menu pops up so we can close out the running apps. Don't have my Xiaomi Mibox anymore, so can't check to see if that function is part of their firmware.
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - wesk05 - 2018-07-23
(2018-07-23, 19:18)clarkss12 Wrote: I could be dead wrong, but it appears that Mecool is monitoring the Freaktab website and implementing some of the items listed. For instance, Magendanz included the app drawer into his mods, and shortly afterwards, Mecool added that app drawer into their firmware.If the box is going to run Google approved Android TV OS, app drawer etc will not be permitted.
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - wrxtasy - 2018-07-23
(2018-07-23, 19:31)wesk05 Wrote: If the box is going to run Google approved Android TV OS, app drawer etc will not be permitted.Well if MECOOL allow Bootloader unlocking and reflashing of Firmware, NVIDIA style anything might be possible after ROM developers get their hands on such a device....
That's when such devices start getting "interesting"
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - clarkss12 - 2018-07-23
(2018-07-23, 19:31)wesk05 Wrote:That would really suck................................. How about the "recents" menu(2018-07-23, 19:18)clarkss12 Wrote: I could be dead wrong, but it appears that Mecool is monitoring the Freaktab website and implementing some of the items listed. For instance, Magendanz included the app drawer into his mods, and shortly afterwards, Mecool added that app drawer into their firmware.If the box is going to run Google approved Android TV OS, app drawer etc will not be permitted.
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - Fneufneu - 2018-07-26
(2018-07-23, 12:42)MerinoNL Wrote: It has a s912 processor (while most cheap ones I saw were s905). As far as I read here the s912 is better performing and the firmware issues this chip used to have seem to be solved nowadays. So s912 should be simply better choice than s905 correct?Not that simple, look what OSMC dev say about S912 being inferior to S905:
Quote:We didn’t use an S912. There are a couple of problems with this chip:source:
- Task scheduling is broken, which means that threads are often placed on the little cores. This makes it slower than S905 devices under a series of workloads
- Mali userspace libraries are not licensed for Linux. Kodi on Linux for S912 uses an Android driver and a libhybris wrapper which causes some issues. Kodi v19 will use V4L2/GBM, so this workaround would not be possible. It wouldn’t make sense for us to launch a new product with a shorter lifespan than our former product.
https://discourse.osmc.tv/t/vero4k-announcement/73752/26
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - wrxtasy - 2018-07-26
Well I can tell you the S912, especially one with quality eMMC storage, like a MINIX U9 is faster than any of the S905(X) devices apart from the CPU overclocked Odroid C2.
A S912 can CPU software decode 14Mbps 1080p Anime that all S905(X) devices choke on.
Kodi v19 is likely 1.5 - 2 years away. Which is a long time in tech terms. Who knows what will happen in the meantime
From a commercial long term support perspective I can understand why the Vero line of 4K media players has chosen the S905X/D series of devices. They want some certainty they can make long term plans with.
Having said all that the best bang for the buck for a LibreELEC S9xx device is the runt of the litter dirt cheap S905W.
A few tweaks to the GPU MHz, running LE from internal eMMC storage and using one with a USB dongle WiFi remote results in a decent snappy device with a few minor limitations like max. 24p 4K HDR only.
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - clarkss12 - 2018-07-26
Just received email advising me that my Mecool KM8 has shipped. A couple of weeks ago, I was advised that they would not start shipping until after August 3. Used free shipping, so will see how long it takes to arrive at my mailbox.
MECOOL KM8 Google Certified Android TV Box with Voice Remote - BLACK US PLUG
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - Sam.Nazarko - 2018-07-27
(2018-07-26, 18:41)wrxtasy Wrote: Well I can tell you the S912, especially one with quality eMMC storage, like a MINIX U9 is faster than any of the S905(X) devices apart from the CPU overclocked Odroid C2.Can you chuck some problematic (for S905X) Hi10 clips on https://collab.osmc.tv/s/rLsbYLJiW5GeDbe? I will look in to this.
A S912 can CPU software decode 14Mbps 1080p Anime that all S905(X) devices choke on.
Kodi v19 is likely 1.5 - 2 years away. Which is a long time in tech terms. Who knows what will happen in the meantime
From a commercial long term support perspective I can understand why the Vero line of 4K media players has chosen the S905X/D series of devices. They want some certainty they can make long term plans with.
Having said all that the best bang for the buck for a LibreELEC S9xx device is the runt of the litter dirt cheap S905W.
A few tweaks to the GPU MHz, running LE from internal eMMC storage and using one with a USB dongle WiFi remote results in a decent snappy device with a few minor limitations like max. 24p 4K HDR only.
Also: can you tell me which Mali version is working for these clips on S912?
We evaluated S912 extensively. Performance on CPU is less than stellar. Kernel task placement is simply broken. CPU speed is also 1.2Ghz under most workloads. See [1][2].
Khadas chaps are lovely, but S912 is a bad chip.
[1] https://forum.khadas.com/t/s912-limited-to-1200-mhz-with-multithreaded-loads/2311
[2] https://forum.khadas.com/t/vim2-performance/1862
@wrxtasy -- I'm happy to send another sample if you'd like to take it for a spin as mentioned in a message to you before launch.
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - wrxtasy - 2018-07-27
(2018-07-26, 18:41)wrxtasy Wrote: Well I can tell you the S912, especially one with quality eMMC storage, like a MINIX U9 is faster than any of the S905(X) devices apart from the CPU overclocked Odroid C2.
A S912 can CPU software decode 14Mbps 1080p Anime that all S905(X) devices choke on.
(2018-07-27, 04:40)Sam.Nazarko Wrote: Can you chuck some problematic (for S905X) Hi10 clips on https://collab.osmc.tv/s/rLsbYLJiW5GeDbe? I will look in to this.An example is the 10.6 Mbps 1080p 10bit H264 file..
Also: can you tell me which Mali version is working for these clips on S912?
Anime - Hi10P - [1080p][16_REF_L5.1][mp3_2.0]Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu BD OP.mkv
https://www.koi-sama.net/files/hi10/
Mali r7p0:
https://github.com/wrxtasy/LibreELEC.tv/blob/8.2.4.1/packages/linux-drivers/gpu-aml/package.mk
Plus....
https://github.com/wrxtasy/LibreELEC.tv/blob/5e624663f29d062d4a246fd093213699b98a5e1f/projects/S905/kodi/advancedsettings.xml#L12
Of course using ffmpeg CPU software decoding needs a decent S912 heatsink (or fan) once you really start stressing the CPU package.
I really don't care what GHz the S912 CPU cores are running at.
I'm just feeding back real world media player testing on a device that is NOT used as an ARM Linux development machine.
Once you start pushing AML devices for current Krypton / Leia - media player usage these things matter:
- Chipset cooling & thermal stability.
- Ethernet and WiFi performance.
- RAM / eMMC quality and speed.
- a Wireless remote, preferably WiFi with a USB dongle receiver.
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - natebizzle - 2018-08-02
Hi all, registered for the forums after reading through this thread as I am looking to upgrade a now unsupported (by ZIDOO themselves) ZIDOO X7 box.
My noob confession is I recently bought a new Samsung 4k HDR TV and got myself some 4k HDR content that I was playing through Krypton. Being new to 4k HDR content I actually had no idea that Kodi wasn't playing it as intended, I just assumed everything would work plug and play. I did think to myself that the image looked pretty washed out and after loading it into the X7's native player it became evident that Kodi wasn't playing it in 4k HDR as my TV gave me a prompt that it was updating it's picture settings for UHD and the picture was just so much nicer.
So my Googling led me here. I have read through a lot of this thread and was glad to see that there was already discussion regarding the Mecool M8S PRO L as this is the box I am leaning towards however would love another opinion as to whether I should get this or the M8S Pro+ instead? I've seen conflicting statements about whether the S912 is worse than the S905X and wondered if it would affect me for my usage needs which are -
- Dual boot Android TV and LibreELEC
- Ability to auto detect 1080p/4k/HDR/SDR content
I think I've probably already determined from this thread that both boxes are able to handle 4k HDR auto switching in LibreELEC well, I do like the idea of having 3gb/32gb in the M8S PRO L as opposed to 2gb/16gb in the M8S Pro+ for future proofing, however if this is somehow outweighed by the chip debate then I'd be happy to go with the M8S Pro+ which is about AUD$20 cheaper ATM.
One other thing that I would also love to be able to do is to SFTP into the box and transfer files to an attached NTFS USB HD. This is something that I can't currently do in the X7 due to the fact that there is no documentsui installed to call up the required permissions prompt for file managers to make changes to the drive. The X7 also isn't rooted like the Mecool boxes are so there wasn't even the option to try and edit the permissions.xml to add external write permissions. Does anyone know if the Mecool boxes can do this by default? Not a deal breaker but a nice to have.
Look forward to hearing your thoughts!
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - wrxtasy - 2018-08-02
4K HDR high bitrate Bluray REMUX video playback really needs 1000M / Gigabit Ethernet if you demand trouble free Kodi usage, especially after you skip around during video playback.
Plus large file listings appear in Kodi a lot quicker as well.
It's a good enough reason for the OSMC guys to release an upgraded - Gigabit Vero 4K+ vs the 100M / Fast Ethernet, older Vero 4K.
LibreELEC has a built in SAMBA server, you just connect your HDD's and network transfer files, and again this is much better with a Gigabit Ethernet media player. However you will still be dealing with the USB2 HDD data transfer bottleneck.
100M / Fast Ethernet devices can have a USB3 > Gigabit Ethernet adapter added to them, such as the Ugreen ones.
The mobile chipset AMLogic devices can only run one, possible two unpowered 2.5" HDD's themselves. They simply cannot supply enough power.
I strongly suggest getting a powered USB hub if using multiple 2.5" HDD's.
Next for a responsive box you want a Wireless remote. The best ones are the USB WiFi dongle types because they then work both in Android and LibreELEC without stuffing around.
The MECOOL Bluetooth Voice remote will NOT work in LibreELEC.
Someone would need to add support for it, but even then you would have to re-pair BT every time you change between Android and LibreELEC. That is a PITA.
The only two AML devices running the Android TV OS I can find with a USB dongle type voice remote are the
- S905W A95X PRO
- S905W MECOOL Pro W
THIS chart (click) from chigztech.com here has a bunch of Android TV OS device comparisons and links and reviews.
What you can do is get a MECOOL Pro L without the Voice remote and then buy a $10 compatible RF USB dongle Voice remote found in the links in the following video:
That would give you the most seamless Android TV OS dual boot LibreELEC remote option.
You could also get a USB dongle Mini Keyboard wireless remote if you wanted to splash out. I personally use a MINIX A2 lite mini keyboard remote for such dual boot devices.
For Android TV OS the S912 in the MECOOL Pro L has a much more capable, faster GPU vs the older one in the S905X MECOOL Pro+
It really does make a noticeable difference when using Android. (especially after a minor GPU MHz tweak !)
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - wrxtasy - 2018-08-02
A Warning.... if using Netflix on non certified Android devices...like the MECOOL's
Looks like a Fix has already been distributed to affected devices in the following thread.
Netflix in HD is being killed in some of the Chinese boxes (click)
RE: Budget AMLogic S9xx Media Player Options - natebizzle - 2018-08-02
Thanks for the reply wrxtasy.
(2018-08-02, 09:58)wrxtasy Wrote: 4K HDR high bitrate Bluray REMUX video playback really needs 1000M / Gigabit Ethernet if you demand trouble free Kodi usage, especially after you skip around during video playback.I actually looked at the Vero 4K+ and am still considering this as an option, although it's 2.5x the price of say the M8S Pro+, I do like the idea of a dedicated media box with a remote that is programmed to work with it. I also really like the look of the OS and am currently using the OSMC skin on my X7. That being said, I don't plan to have the box I buy connected to ethernet as I have no socket in the room. I also don't stream anything through Kodi add-ons, I only use local media on a USB3 HD so is this still a factor I should consider? I see even the Vero 4K+ still uses USB2 ports and a post in their forum said that 4k UHD would play just fine from a USB HD. My X7 plays 60Mbps files fine at the moment so I think I'm safe with whatever I get.
Plus large file listings appear in Kodi a lot quicker as well.
It's a good enough reason for the OSMC guys to release an upgraded - Gigabit Vero 4K+ vs the 100M / Fast Ethernet, older Vero 4K.
(2018-08-02, 09:58)wrxtasy Wrote: LibreELEC has a built in SAMBA server, you just connect your HDD's and network transfer files, and again this is much better with a Gigabit Ethernet media player. However you will still be dealing with the USB2 HDD data transfer bottleneck.To be honest I'm using an old MBP to transfer files to my external USB3 HD but because it is so old it only has USB2 ports! I'm used to the slow transfer speed, just being able to transfer remotely will be an upgrade for me.
(2018-08-02, 09:58)wrxtasy Wrote: Next for a responsive box you want a Wireless remote...I don't care so much for the voice assistant so I like the idea of buying the box only as I have a ZIDOO V6 RF air mouse, will that work in LibreELEC? The remote you linked also looks good for $10.
...What you can do is get a MECOOL Pro L without the Voice remote and then buy a $10 compatible RF USB dongle Voice remote...
(2018-08-02, 09:58)wrxtasy Wrote: For Android TV OS the S912 in the MECOOL Pro L has a much more capable, faster GPU vs the older one in the S905X MECOOL Pro+Good to know thanks, looks like I'll stick with the M8S PRO L for an upgraded Android box and run LibreELEC on it to see how things go. I'm still definitely thinking about the Vero 4K+ too, I just like it
It really does make a noticeable difference when using Android. (especially after a minor GPU MHz tweak !)
