Ten years ago, I remember ALi was in big player in DVD players, but I had not much heard about them since then. Thanks to a ARMdevices.net I found out they are still around, and their latest Ali M3733 dual core ARM Cortex A9 processor will soon be found in DVB set-top boxes like Uyesee L100T2 with a DVB-T2 tuner, or EKT DSD7045 DVB-S2 hybrid set-top box. The former is running Android 4.4, but the latter is likely based on Linux since it only has 512MB NAND flash.
The EKT receiver runs SolidTV middleware with HbbTV, conditional access, and more features, and it does look like an interesting product, but I’ll focus on the Uyesse for this post:
- SoC – ALi M3733 dual core Cortex A9 processor with a dual core Mali-400 GPU
- System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 (Option: 1GB)
- Storage – 4GB NAND flash (Options: 8 to 32GB)
- Video Output – HDMI 1.4a up to 1080p + composite video ouput
- Audio Output – HDMI + audio port
- Tuner
- DVB-T and DVB-T2 with male and female IEC 169-24 connectors for loop and output.
- Frequency – 104-862MHz(VHF/UHF)
- Demodulation – QPSK,16QAM,64QAM for DVB-T; QPSK,16QAM,64QAM,256AM for DVB-T2
- FFT mode – 2K,8K for DVB-T; 1K,2K,4K,8K,16K,32K,32K ext for DVB-T2
- FEC Code rate – 1/2,2/3,3/4,5/6,7/8 for DVB-T; 1/2,3/5,2/3,3/4,4/5,5/6 for DVB-T2
- Guard interval – 1/4,1/8,1/16,1/32 for DVB-T; 14,5/32,1/8,5/64,1/16,1/32,1/64,1/128 for DVB-T2
- Bandwidth – 6MHz,7MHz,8MHz
- De-multiplexer – MPEG2 ISO/IEC 13818-1
- Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, 2.4GHz Wi-Fi
- USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports including one OTG port
- Power Supply – 5V/2A
- Dimensions – N/A
The box runs Android 4.4.4 with a customized version of XBMC/Kodi with “dolby dts hardware decoding”. Uyesee box specifications do not have any codec listed, but I found some details on the EKT device:
- Single 720p Hardware transcoding MPEG-4 Part 10 AVC HD/ H.264 HP@L4, MP@ L3
- HEVC, h.265 software decoding @720p
- Backwards compatible with MPEG-2 MP@ML
I’m assuming the 720p limitation is only for transcoding and H.265, and that common codec like H.264 / MPEG-4, MPEG-2 can all be decoded in Full HD. There’s no M3773 on ALi products page, so it’s difficult to confirm this information right now. DVB-T2 recording is only working with the 1GB version, so once this type of devices become available make sure you don’t get a model with only 512MB, unless you don’t care about recording and time-shifting. The receiver will come with a remote control, an HDMI cable, a power adapter, and user’s manual by default, with optional 2.4GHz air mouse or wireless mouse and keyboard combo.
You can find out a bit more about L100T2 and its user interface in the video below.
The video might have been recorded a few weeks ago, and M3773 devices should be available very soon. Uyesee will showcase their L100T2 box and other products at the Hong Kong Electronics Fair on April 13-16, 2015.
[Update: Reference price is $45, and pre-production sample will be available by the end of April]
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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I think it should be affordable, and ali has a long history with DVB devices, we can expect a stable kernel with DVB LINUX API support, the most intersting thing here is the support for SOLIDTV with the EKT, it seems on part with Spark 2 the best DVB software layer for the moment
It looks really good but i still think that a minix neo x8-h is better
@nion
but, ali chipsets is very cheap and we can expect dvb android boxes from them under 50$
I saw some ALi guys hanging around the Linaro Connect also.
ALi Corporation never had single SoC with DVB API and pure Linux support
@kusta
it’s a good start then, in fact they never had an arm SoC as far as I know
@natsu
Reference price: $45. Pre-production samples available at the end of April.
@Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) very nice 🙂 and sadly it marks the death of MIPS processors on this segment, ALI & Sigma were the majors players left with MIPS, but all is about change, if Imaginations Technologies does not do something quick on this segment, it’s gonna to be eated up it by ARM designs the major issue with ARM though in the video segment products is the absence of any DSP for Video Post Processing, it’s nice to have at least a Denoise & Sharpen effects on android for videos, even without using a DSP, just the Shaders of the… Read more »