TBS 2910 Matrix, also simply called TBS Matrix, is a board powered by Freescale i.MX6 Quad SoC with 2GB RAM, 16 GB eMMC, and supporting various TBS USB DVB tuners. The company provides images for Ubuntu, Android, and something called Matrix TV. The company also releases the source code for the boards, and two OpenELEC developers, namely Ovi and Vpeter, though it could be a nice idea to port OpenELEC to TBS Matrix, and that’s exactly what they did.
The video demo below shows online video streaming via 1channels add-on, which can be done with any Android or Linux media player running XBMC or OpenELEC, but the second part is more interesting, as it shows Live TV from a Cable TV USB tuner connected to the board. Ovi also confirmed the system supports DVR, and you can also use the board as a micro IPTV server. DVR function is supported thanks to Tvheadend and VDR back-ends, and this OpenELEC port is said to support “all XBMC front-ends add-ons”. If the claims are all true, TBS Matrix would be a much more interesting proposing than some of the Amlogic DVB T/S/C Android TV boxes on the market that come with rather poor apps according to feedback from users, and my own limited testing.
You can download the firmware image “Gotham Releasel.zip” to try it out. I’ve been told the update instructions are similar to the ones for Cubox-i. According to the readme in the file, there are two kernels, one for DVB-T, one for DVB-C, but there are current missing from the zip file, and I can only find “KERNEL”.. More information will soon be posted on TBSTV forums. TBS 2910 Matrix board sells for $149, without tuners, which can be purchased as option.
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.
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board very nice … but I don’t know why i.MX6 Freescale Quad runs only at 1 Ghz … (on Wiki is reported 1,2 Ghz)
There is no way to boost up ?
Connectivity – 10/100/1000M Ethernet -> due to internal i.MX6 buses the 1000Mbps interface speed is limited to 470Mbps.
Well we did not tried to overclock the soc because we did not need it.
1133 mhz quadcore for the piece of software we adapted (Openelec) is more than ok.
IR,HDMI CEC works perfectly plenty of usb tuners supported aswell even with mpcie adapter easy can add pcie dvb cards.
There are 2 versions hardware revision 1.3 and 2.1 of the TBS board. For those who are interested pick the 2.1 as it has some few more features.
It’s too bad the i.MX6q is so damn hard to source (and thus quite expensive).
mumudvb ,dvblast , tsdecrypt , oscam & mpxy are instalable as zip xbmc addons (repositories in the build) and usable alongside with few other “goodies” packed as zip addons and foundable in the openelec unofficial repositories.
There are also multiple scripts for flashing but my recomendation would be to use reinstall v1 and reinstall v2.1 scripts for burning the image on emmc.
At this moment we are testing intensive on Kernel 3.10 and making all we can do to have working fine and stable on this newer kernel.
@ovi / @vpeter: Thank you guys for porting OpenElec to TBS2910. That’s great. And also I love to have a more up-to-date kernel (like 3.10 or something)!
Keep up the good work 🙂
public offcial download link
http://mirror1.openelec.tv/tbs.matrix/OpenELEC-TBS.arm-devel-20140807170606-r18774-g2c40356.zip
Fran, 3.10.17 is working. But there are some problems. Like with CEC which was unstable.
The problem is that there are so many different kernels which are supported in a different way. Seems sabresd platform (on which tbs matrix is based on ?) is not actively maintained and latest kernels has even worse problems. Like old device tree.
ovi: Hi Ovi, thank you for the link.
Please, let me know. At this point is it better than the official MatrixTV builds? or is better to wait a bit more to get that level?
Hi! Do you think that it would be possible to use other USB tuners like Terratec HTC HD with it?
@Fran for my point of view is performing better with OE than with matrix tv at least resources wise , less space less memory consuming .
It is a bit more complicate to set it up but once setup is stable and working well.
@Sam
Only vpeter knows and can insert inside the image support for other tuners.
vpeter / ovi: Thank you guys for your replies.
As @sam said, should be great if we can attach different devices (non-tbs) to Matrix box 🙂
We will see!
In this image I used the same kernel config what matrixtv has. But I already enabled bunch of other stuff which should be available in next releases.
vpeter: That would be great! Great work!
I just tested and it really works great! I’m very happy with the work you did.
Thank you. I’m trying my best 🙂
vpeter/ovi:
I log in into SSH with Putty, but when I going to copy a file a get an error:
OpenELEC:/etc/samba # cp smb.conf smb.conf.bk
cp: can’t create ‘smb.conf.bk’: Read-only file system
Is a OpenElec behavior or is a firmware bug?
Also, I can’t install Addons from a zip file stored in ‘Downloads’ folder of OpenElec, for example …
Fran, Openelec is readonly distribution that’s why you can’t copy anything to the system. The only writable folder is /storage. Check the wiki for instructions what and how can be done.
Which addon can’t be installed? What’s the error/problem? Because this works.
I am traveling for few more days … cannot help too much at the moment but i think Peter will be able to help you out 🙂
Hi there,
Great work !
Do you think if this image could also work on a udoo quad board ? Basic hardware is close…
Don’t know this. If anyone send me one I will check and do something.
Basic close hardware is also Cuboxi but there are different images.
@vpeter I’ll ask on the udoo’s forum, thanks for your interest.
Just installed the OPenelec on the Matrix TV. Nice, did a very nice job guys. Way better than what Matrix is offering. Matrix TV does not even support the wifi setup. I have one question, there is a fan on the Matrix PC for CPU cooling. Does it even work under OpenElec? I never see it running.
It is started at 70 degrees and runs till 55. But some users had some issues in the past (check tbs forum).
Soon I will prepare new up to date LibreELEC image for it.
And yes, OpenELEC runs on Udoo quad/dual 🙂