The first Amlogic S812 Android TV box I had seen was Xtreamer Wonder which should start shipping for 99 Euros ($140) by the end of the month, but they’ll have some competition as Eny Technology will soon manufacture M8S and M8C Android media players, also based on the same quad core Cortex A9 processor, with 4K UHD video output and HEVC/H.265 hardware video decoding.
M8S and M8C have the same technical specifications except that the former comes with 2GB RAM, and the latter with 1GB RAM:
- SoC – Amlogic S812-H quad core cortex A9r4 @ 2 GHz with octa-core Mali-450MP6 GPU @ 600+ MHz
- System Memory – 1GB (M8C) or 2 GB (M8S) DDR3
- Storage – 8GB NAND flash + micro SD card reader
- Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, dual band 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
- Video Output – HDMI 1.4 up to 4K2K @ 30 Hz, AV port
- Audio Output – HDMI, AV, optical S/PDIF
- Video Codecs – 4k2k H.264, H.265 UHD, HD MPEG1/2/4, AVC/VC-1, RM/RMVB, Xvid/DivX3/4/5/6, RealVideo8/9/10,
- Audio Formats/Codecs – MP3, WMA, WAV, OGG, FLAC, APE, AC3, AAC etc… Dolby, TrueHD, DTS, SRS, AC-3
- USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports
- Power Supply – 5V/2A
- Dimensions – N/A
- Weight – N/A
These Android STBs will run Android 4.4, and come pre-loaded with XBMC/Kodi 14.x, hopefully with H.265 support. Amlogic S812 is supposed to support Gigabit Ethernet, but Amlogic must have problems with their GMAC IP or drivers,m because none of the products based on S805 / S812 feature a Gigabit Ethernet port.
Eny Technology informed me they’ll manufacture a small batch at the end of the month, so hopefully they’ll be up for sale at the retail level in November or December. The company was not ready to release pricing information publicly yet, but the Chinese SoC little fairy told me that Amlogic S805 costs about $5, S802 about $10.5, and S812 about $11.5, with further discounts available in large quantities, so products based on Amlogic S812 based products may not be that much more expensive than Amlogic S802 based products using similar components.
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.
Support CNX Software! Donate via cryptocurrencies, become a Patron on Patreon, or purchase goods on Amazon or Aliexpress
