(2017-01-14, 11:55)Jeffers24 Wrote: +1
What is the standard that a buyer should look for, when buying an Android box??
Personal opinion...
Well Kodi sponsors obviously have a particular interest in the Kodi project itself so will provide better Firmware support & Kodi developer dialogue than others as they already have a vested interest in the project.
Then you have manufacturer developer resources.
Multinational Tech companies like nVIDIA & Xiaomi will naturally have more resources to call upon to develop and provide regular updates to known standards. nVIDIA is in a very unique position of being the hardware manufacturer and Android Firmware support / seller of the Shield. This naturally has extra benefits, especially when interacting with Google and Android TV.
AMLogic themselves look to be taking a serious interest in Android and doing their best lately to adhere to standards, which is a nice turn of events. LibreELEC developers are seeing some nice benefits from AMLogic now as well.
Sony and Amazon, well it's hard to see what they want to do. Sony seems slow providing any Android OS support to the required standards, and Amazon have made no mention of Android Nougat which will give IEC Audio support.
You will still then have the passionate guys like MINIX, WeTek, Himedia and Zidoo releasing Niche Android products to compete against the Multinationals. Again trying to release stable Firmware, with regular updates that meets the Android standards. Experience over a period of time with the same hardware chipset family is important here for getting decent Android Firmware.
In the end its all about priorities and resources made available by the manufacturer and willingness to adhere to Google standards.
Oh and
avoid the cheap Ship and Forget Android sellers, hopeless Firmware support lies down that pathway.
And after all that I probably still did not answer the question.
As already posted above, for the Audio standard used for Kodi Krypton - that being IEC61937 audio passthrough, currently only
nVIDIA when they release Android Nougat on the Shield and AMLogic, with backported Nougat into Marshmallow Audio code will meet it.
At this present point in time the Xiaomi Mi Box is the only device I know of that meets the IEC61937 audio passthrough standard.