Android Set-top Box: Bonux HZ20A / HZ20B – ZiiLABS Processors

Bonux, a Taiwan company founded in July 2009, announced two Android 2.2 set-top boxes based on ZiiLABS processors: The Bonux HZ20A and HZ20B. If you can remember Bonux also showcased a 50 USD Android STB earlier on.

Here are the specs of the two media players:

	HZ20A	HZ20B
OS	Android 2.2
CPU	Ziilabs ZMS-08 ARM Cortex A8 @ 800 MHz	Ziilabs ZMS-05 ARM9 @ 400 MHz
RAM	512 MB DDR2	256 MB DDR2
NAND Flash	512MB	256MB
Wifi	802.11 b/g/n (Via optional external USB Dongle)
Adobe Flash	Flash 10.1	FlashLite
Video Codecs /Formats	MPEG-1/MPEG-2/MPG-4(MP4 & MOV)/DivX(4/5)/Motion JPEG/H.264/WMV9/VC1/Real Video (RMVB – VGA Resolution)
Audio Codecs	MP3/WAV/WMA/AC3/AAC/OOG
Max Resolution/Bitrate	1080p 40 Mbps
Subtitles	SRT/SMI/SUB/SSA
File Systems	FAT32 / NTFS(Read-Only)

They are not using the default Android user interface, but their own customize UI, which can be a good thing on a TV. Their user interface has the usual Videos, Music, Pictures and Settings, plus the Browser, Youtube and Applications menu. HZ20A will costs 100 USD and HZ20B 80 USD and will be available next month. The video performance seems very good as you can see in the video below. However, I’m very surprised they do not support NTFS R/W, as their processors should be powerful enough to support NTFS-3G or/and commercial NTFS implementations.

If you want to develop a similar set-top box, you can use Ziilabs development board for ZMS-05 or ZMS-08 with their optimized Android OS. Alternatively you could also get their Digital Media Hub reference design called Zii Sivo, where they provide all you need to start development namely:

Schematics
Gerbers
Design Files
Bill of Materials
Mechanical drawings
3D CAD model
Assembled PCBs
Board Support Package
Operating System, middleware & CODECs

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.