2013-08-27, 10:21
Archos has released an Android TV set top box called the TV Connect which you can buy from their website or Amazon and I managed to get my hands on one. What makes this unit interesting is it features a fairly rare chipset the Texus Instruments OMAP 4470 which is a dual core 1.5Ghz CPU, PowerVR SGX544 GPU along with 1GB RAM and a VPU that handles H.264, MPEG4 ASP, VC-1, MPEG2, VP7 and VP8. It's the same hardware as their gen 10 101XS tablet, they share the same firmware though the TV version has some changes.
The box runs Android 4.1, uses a bluetooth gamepad controller, has HDMI output, WiFi, ethernet, USB, a micro SD card slot, internal webcam & a physical on/off switch, Android runs very smoothly on the device and all the stuff like Google play is there along with DRM support.
The good news = XBMC runs very nicely on this hardware at 1080p and most other skins run very well too. The supplied gamepad with mini keyboard works quite well with XBMC.
The bad news = Libstagefright works okay for video but audio is out of sync, though even if that were to improve there are other problems
* No manual display settings (picking 720p, 1080p) it's all automatic.
* HDMI handshaking problems.
* No audio pass-through support.
* Apps install & store data on the internal storage rather than SD card.
* The Android task/buttons bar is visible all the time in XBMC but not their own media player when playing a video.
* Only FAT32 support is present for USB hard drives.
* The gamepad internal mouse drifts to the right when idle though you can turn off the mouse pointer.
* The gamepad also has some lag issues in XBMC that are not present in their own media player, turning off UI audio in XBMC greatly helps but doesn't entirely fix it.
* To top if off there is no root access so you cant even mess with the box and Archos go out of their way to make root support hard to enable.
When I contacted Archos if they could address some of these issues they replied not gonna happen more or less.
This could have been a very nice box for XBMC given the hardware with a little bit of effort from Archos but it's their loss & it's simply not worth buying one for XBMC even if media decoding was fine.
The box runs Android 4.1, uses a bluetooth gamepad controller, has HDMI output, WiFi, ethernet, USB, a micro SD card slot, internal webcam & a physical on/off switch, Android runs very smoothly on the device and all the stuff like Google play is there along with DRM support.
The good news = XBMC runs very nicely on this hardware at 1080p and most other skins run very well too. The supplied gamepad with mini keyboard works quite well with XBMC.
The bad news = Libstagefright works okay for video but audio is out of sync, though even if that were to improve there are other problems
* No manual display settings (picking 720p, 1080p) it's all automatic.
* HDMI handshaking problems.
* No audio pass-through support.
* Apps install & store data on the internal storage rather than SD card.
* The Android task/buttons bar is visible all the time in XBMC but not their own media player when playing a video.
* Only FAT32 support is present for USB hard drives.
* The gamepad internal mouse drifts to the right when idle though you can turn off the mouse pointer.
* The gamepad also has some lag issues in XBMC that are not present in their own media player, turning off UI audio in XBMC greatly helps but doesn't entirely fix it.
* To top if off there is no root access so you cant even mess with the box and Archos go out of their way to make root support hard to enable.
When I contacted Archos if they could address some of these issues they replied not gonna happen more or less.
This could have been a very nice box for XBMC given the hardware with a little bit of effort from Archos but it's their loss & it's simply not worth buying one for XBMC even if media decoding was fine.
