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android boxes & android sticks megathread
(2014-03-20, 06:18)funtasticguy Wrote:
(2014-03-20, 05:26)spcano01 Wrote: You can run linux, but I have to say I'm more of an android kinda guy. They have SD cards and eMMC cards preinstalled with latest builds. U3 is being tested with 4.4, and has CM running on it. The XU has 4.2.2, and is what I have mostly. Android builds are great, been running nightlies until Beta 1/2 came out. Only used rPi, hated it. Too slow, not wife friendly in that it corrupted the SD card all of the time so I had to keep f'ing with it. Plus, very slow...U3 is $20/more, and it flies -no tweaking RSS feeds or thumbnails needed. Besides that, only used my laptops of varying speeds/builds and an older Acer nettop with OpenElec. End of day, I'm an android fan and use it as a 2nd desktop with Chrome Beta, Office, etc.

Based upon this information, I'm looking into buying a U3 running Android. I have a couple of questions. If you plug a USB drive into the U3, can it read NTFS hard drives (where my movies would be stored)? Secondly, can you install Android apps on the SD card (assuming you have an eMMC card already installed running the OS)?

Thanks for your input.

Not sure, I'll reformat a USB drive and tell ya in a bit. I have mine streaming via NFS from a Synology NAS personally. ABsolutely you can install Android apps on it, but you need to find the GAPPS one-click and run that first. Then, sign in and off to the races you go! Feel free to find me on those forums when you get it up and running. Rest of hte people there are very helpful too!!!

(2014-03-19, 06:16)kily69 Wrote: Hello ... looking for a stick that read well the movies at 1080p, good wi fi and that works well XMBC.
So many do not even know which one to choose. Mk809III is a good choice??
What to advise a price of 45 €.

cumps

U3 Community Edition - 59+5.50+4+SDCard/EMMC.

(2014-03-20, 16:43)Reframer Wrote: I have this one. http://tinyurl.com/n9tntj8
Nice unit but crashes on Gotham and the 1080 movies are buggy.

The price is good but I would stay away.
I am looking for another one.

Does anyone know of a good quad core under $150.00?

I would say the processor may be to slow for Gotham. I understand the is quad but the processor is at 1.5 GHz

Minimum Req. - When software decoding of a Full HD 1080p high-definition video is performed by the system CPU, a dual-core 2 GHz or better CPU is required in order to allow for perfectly smooth playback without dropping frames or giving playback a jerky appearance. XBMC can however offload most of the video decoding process onto GPU graphics hardware controller that supports one of the following types of hardware-accelerated video decoding: Intel's VAAPI, Nvidia's VDPAU, AMD's XvBA, Microsoft's DXVA, Apple's VDADecoder/VideoToolBox, OpenMAX, and Broadcom Crystal HD Enhanced Media Accelerator. By taking advantage of such hardware-accelerated video decoding, XBMC can run well on most inexpensive, low-power systems which contain a modern GPU.

XU-Lite = 159+16 *eMMC*

That's an 8-core, a it overkill for XBMC only. But runs emulations very well!! Been running XBMC Frodo/Gotham, and now that it's HW Decoded, runs flat out.
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I would forget about sticks and get the Ouya gaming console, it is a great XBMC platform. It plays everything I throw at it. The only problem is it can not play DD 5.1 or AC3 surround sound. It will let you do 5.1 surround sound pass through if you use XBMC's developers SPMC version of XBMC. Read the XBMC threads on ouyaforum.com or do a Google search for XBMC/SPMC forums.
Nothing left in my right brain, Nothing right in my left brain :-P
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(2014-03-22, 01:01)lartomar2002 Wrote: I would forget about sticks and get the Ouya gaming console, it is a great XBMC platform. It plays everything I throw at it. The only problem is it can not play DD 5.1 or AC3 surround sound. It will let you do 5.1 surround sound pass through if you use XBMC's developers SPMC version of XBMC. Read the XBMC threads on ouyaforum.com or do a Google search for XBMC/SPMC forums.

Does the Ouya allow you to adjust the refresh rate of the output based on the file you are playing. This is a key requirement for many of us - particularly in Europe - where we want 50Hz content (TV, DVD and some Blu-ray) output at 50Hz, and 60/24Hz content (US DVDs, most Blu-rays, a lot of other content) output at 60 or 24Hz.
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Nothing that is Android based will permit adjusting the display refresh rate on the fly. There is no public android API for that. Android OS owns the display.
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(2014-03-22, 20:29)davilla Wrote: Nothing that is Android based will permit adjusting the display refresh rate on the fly. There is no public android API for that. Android OS owns the display.

I feared that might be the case. Thanks for clarifying Davilla.
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What about the MK888?
Has ethernet and a great wifi reception.

It should be capable of 1080p decoding under gotham, right?
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Hi,

I'm owning a Himedia Q-10 II android mediaplayer with these SPECs:

OS Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
Main Chip Dual Core / Cortex-A9 up to 1.6GHz / Mali400 GPU
Memory 1GB DDR3

With its own Videoplayer-app the box is able to play HD and 3D-movies - in perfect quality.

The Hardware-accelleration in xbmc (Gotham beta 2) does not really work. HD-video or blueray stops or is running much to slow.

There are some frodo-oyua.-versions with much better HW-accelleration for this box (720p runs perfect, 1080p - some yes, some not - "it depends") - but the ouya has tegra-chip inside, right?

So I do not understand, why the HW-accelleration does not work. Could it be a Firmware-Problem or is it possible, that future Gotham-versions will better support my hardware?

Thank you

SaEt9000
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(2014-03-24, 17:31)SaEt9000 Wrote: Hi,

I'm owning a Himedia Q-10 II android mediaplayer with these SPECs:

OS Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
Main Chip Dual Core / Cortex-A9 up to 1.6GHz / Mali400 GPU
Memory 1GB DDR3

With its own Videoplayer-app the box is able to play HD and 3D-movies - in perfect quality.

The Hardware-accelleration in xbmc (Gotham beta 2) does not really work. HD-video or blueray stops or is running much to slow.

There are some frodo-oyua.-versions with much better HW-accelleration for this box (720p runs perfect, 1080p - some yes, some not - "it depends") - but the ouya has tegra-chip inside, right?

So I do not understand, why the HW-accelleration does not work. Could it be a Firmware-Problem or is it possible, that future Gotham-versions will better support my hardware?

Thank you

SaEt9000

thanks so much for your input. would you recommend this box then, overall?
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Keedox Smart TV Box Quad-Core I would give a try or take a look at some reviews, Tronsmart MK808II is a great travel media player, and KDLINKS A100 is a decent media player to look into. In my opinion, the Keedox is better than the others because of having the Quad-Core capabilities.
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(2014-03-24, 22:53)thebearnecessit Wrote: thanks so much for your input. would you recommend this box then, overall?

Yes, I can recommend the himedia Q10.
I had popcorn-boxes until purchasing the himedia - so I had some expectations Big Grin
The quality of picture is really good - no question. The performance is good - no wait states.
I can use all my video-files. Bluray Bd-iso and BD-folders works with "light-menue".
Streaming over LAN - no problem. Gigabit-Lan is a special feature for an android TV-box. And it is really fast. With ftp almost 35-40 MB/s transfer rate. that was very important for me.
Streaming from other TV-Cards (windows PC with dvbviewer or enigma2-box) - perfect !

XBMC:
there is a special 12.2 beta-version for himedia, but it has some problems.
With XBMC 13 beta2 or other nightly and by using the HimediaVideoplayer as external player in the playercorefactory it works good. At the moment the himedia-users are not able to to play BD.iso-files from xbmc. Other HD-contend works good.
For Bluray at the moment you have to use the internal Himedia Videoplayer directly without using xbmc.
I myself do not use 3D at the moment, but the forum-users are telling that 3D works very good. There was one FW-Version with a 3d-bug, but this is fixed in between.

Some other workarounds are necessary -f.i for youtube app, network file-access with smb. It it is not a plug-and-play box. But at the end everything works fine and I'm really satisfied with this box.

SaEt9000
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I'm about to buy an android box,this summary have gave me some clues.
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Own many apple tv 2 and now 3 ouya's.

Bottom line: OUYA is the best out there for the price and performance.

It plays everything you throw at it. 720P, 1080P etc.

It updates XBMC automatically for you and also they are always improving the box which updates itself as releases come out.

Besides ouya if you want to go to the next step up than I hear MADCATZ MOJO but thats double the price.

good luck!
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