Posted on by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 31 Comments on Amlogic S905 Android TV Boxes, Sticks, and Digital TV Receivers Are Coming Soon

Amlogic S905 Android TV Boxes, Sticks, and Digital TV Receivers Are Coming Soon

Amlogic S905 is the first 64-bit ARM processor of the company, with four Cortex A53 cores, a Mali-450MP GPU, as well as support for HDMI 2.0, and 10-bit HEVC video decoding. It will come to market before S912 processor featuring a Mali-T7xx GPU, and compete with Rockchip RK3368 octa-core processor.

I’ve already features two Amlogic S905 TV boxes a few months ago with Acemax G9C and Eny EM95, but these two products were announced several months before the actual release, and now several other products have been announced, and should become available very soon. Geniatech unveiled two products based on Amlogic S905: ATV495 Android TV box, and ATV1950 Android digital TV receiver with dual ATSC, DVB-T, or ISDBT tuners, while Guleek A8 is an Amlogic S905 Android TV stick.

Geniatech ATV495 TV Box

Enjoy_TV_ATV495ATV495 specifications:

  • SoC –  Amlogic S905 quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 2.0GHz with a quad core Mali-450MP GPU up to 750MHz
  • System Memory – 2GB RAM
  • Storage – 8GB flash + micro SD card slot
  • Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4K @ 60Hz with support for HDCP 2.2 , AV output (CVBS)
  • Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n
  • USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports
  • Misc- Power button, IR receiver
  • Power Supply –  DC 5V/2A
  • Dimensions – N/A

Price and availability information have not been disclosed by the company. Further details can be found on Geniatech ATV495 product page.

Geniatech ATV1950 TV Box with Dual Tuner

ATV1950

ATV1950 “Quad Core Gold” preliminary specifications:

  • SoC –  Amlogic S905 quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 2.0GHz with a quad core Mali-450MP GPU up to 750MHz
  • System Memory – 2GB RAM
  • Storage – 16GB flash + micro SD card slot
  • Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4K @ 60Hz with support for HDCP 2.2
  • Connectivity – Ethernet, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/ac
  • Dual Digital TV Tuner built-in (ATSC/DVB-T/DVB-T2/ISDBT) for simultaneous watching and recording
  • USB – 4x USB 2.0 host ports
  • Misc- Power button, IR receiver
  • Power Supply –  DC 5V/2A
  • Dimensions – 160x110x33 mm

You can may find more details on Geniatech ATV1950 page, but the pictures don’t match the specs, which are themselves inconsistent on the product page, and even the dual tuners are missing from the pictures, despite being prominently advertised on multiple places and on marketing materials.

Guleek A8 Android TV Stick

Amlogic_S905_TV_StickGuleek A8 specifications:

  • SoC –  Amlogic S905 quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 2.0GHz with quad core Mali-450MP GPU up to 750MHz
  • System Memory – 2GB DDR3
  • Storage – 8GB eMMC flash + micro SD card slot
  • Video Output – HDMI 2.0 up to 4K @ 60Hz with HDCP 2.2
  • Audio – HDMI, AV, optical S/PDIF
  • Connectivity – WiFi 802.11 b/g/n (AP6212 by default, with RTL8189,AP6330,AP6335 supported for dual band or/and 802.11ac)
  • USB – 1x USB 2.0 host port, 2x micro USB port (one OTG, one for power only)
  • Misc – FN key
  • Power Supply –  5V/2A via micro USB port
  • Dimensions – N/A

The stick is one of the rare Amlogic S905 products currently listed for sale, and you can find it for $75 + shipping on Aliexpress. The seller has good feedback, but there’s no way to tell whether the TV dongle is really ready to ship or not.

All three devices run Android 5.1, and Amlogic S905 is the first low cost SoC that supports both HDMI 2.0 and 10-bit HEVC. In my past reviews, I’ve also noticed that video capabilities of Amlogic based devices in Kodi and Antutu Video Tester are usually much better than competitors such as Rockchip, but we’ll have to find out with actual devices.

Via AndroidPC.es here and there.

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31 Replies to “Amlogic S905 Android TV Boxes, Sticks, and Digital TV Receivers Are Coming Soon”

  1. really, it’s an enormous relief from the A5 S805, CPU performance will be good, at least on pare with the S912 A9, if there is a DVB S2 version, it will be interesting with openelec, just hopping that amlogic will release the linux source as soon as possible, finaly I think it’s time for wetek to change the aging and now absurde 8726 MX

    Reply

  4. @Txemoto
    Gbit eth is available since S805 (ODMs still using 100mbit because its few cents cheaper?). I found USB 3.0 driver in one of aml kernels but Im not sure for which platform it is. Maybe for TV SoC T866 which supports usb3 (I saw it somewhere in specs).

    Reply

  5. I would have thought for a HomeTheatre device, streaming Hi-Res films, USB2 is a bottleneck, so need USB3. When you do get the S905 boxes into test, pls check carefully that aspect. I seek a small HomeTheatre TV box (one that actually has live TV tuners) for >1080p that is guaranteed stutter free in Kodi15, be it from ext USB drive, WiFi link, or live terrestrial.

    When you describe the box internals, can you add a paragraph on the type of daughter card interface the TV Tuner uses, and whether the TV Tuners are dual standard (eg DVB-T2 & ISDB-T) ?
    Your recent Geniatech review skipped this.

    Some of your reviews helpfully measure the actual power consumption from the wall (under idle, film-streaming, max conditions) which is very helpful for the energy conscious, and a measure of how hot the box becomes. Helpful if the measurement included in all your reviews.

    Reply

  6. It seems weird to keep using older Mali-450 GPUs with the newer 64-bit cores. I wish I knew why they weren’t implementing an ARM GPU like T7x or T8x series. Surely a lot of the 4K and higher applications would benefit from those more?

    Reply

  7. @paul

    USB 2.0 supports up to 480Mb/s, and real world USB 2.0 3.5″ HDDs deliver sustained transfer speeds of at least 20MB/s (or 160Mb/s) and often higher. Blu-ray stuff doesn’t really go over 50Mb/s, and broadcast HEVC 2160/60p is sitting at 40Mb/s and below, so USB 2.0 shouldn’t be a limiting factor for real time video replay. Similarly 100Mb/s Ethernet should be OK for video replay. Lots of media players only have USB 2.0 connections and are fine with the highest bitrate H264/VC-1/MPEG2 stuff you find in consumer media releases like Blu-ray ISOs etc. that haven’t been recompressed.

    Where USB 3.0 and Gigabit Ethernet are really useful is when you want to transfer content as quickly as possible, in a NAS-type scenario, or where you are running a server delivering content to multiple clients simultaneously, or when you are are streaming multiple full satellite transponders or DVB-T2 muxes to Live TV clients.

    For single stream replays USB 2.0 and 100Mbs Ethernet should be fine. (The Rasperry Pi 2 shares a single USB 2.0 bus between 4 USB 2.0 ports AND the 100Mbs Ethernet port and is one of the few platforms that can play un-recompressed 3D Blu-ray content – re-wrapped but untranscoded – in MKV, and that is the highest bitrate Blu-ray content you will find until UHD arrives…)

    Reply

  8. S912 has the mali t7xx, with the same CPU cores as S905. So they are implementing them, in another model.
    S905 is the lower-power lower-price alternative.
    are these devices (Android TV) (boxes) or (Android) (TV boxes)?

    Reply

  9. @natsu
    S812 was based on Cortex A9, but S912 uses Cortex A53 (same cpu core of S905) and not Cortex A57 or Cortex A72

    Since Cortex A53 is only a little better Cortex A7 with 64 bit support, probably S912 will be slower cpu side than the older S812.

    Reply

  11. @Fabry
    I would strongly disagree with you regarding the Cortex A53 being only a bit better than cortex A7.
    Acording to ARM Cortex A53 is anywhere between 30% to 50% faster than Cortex A7 (http://www.arm.com/Performance_Graph_A53_to_A7.jpg).

    As Cortex A7 has about 85% the performance of Cortex A9, again according to ARM (http://www.arm.com/White_Background_PNG_Cortex-A7.png). This makes Cortex A53 about 15% faster than Cortex A9.

    I know the DMIPS/mhz page from wiki says otherwise, but that is wrong.

    Also in this review on techreport http://techreport.com/review/27539/samsung-galaxy-note-4-with-the-exynos-5433-processor/2 they are saying “In fact, ARM tells us the A53 is roughly 15% faster than the mid-sized Cortex-A9 rev4.” (So if ARM says that A53 is 15% faster than Cortex A9 rev4, I would believe them.)

    Reply

  14. Txemoto :
    And Gigabit and USB 3.0?
    New soc without these features?

    S905 supports Gigabit Ethernet, I guess, as S905 is the lower performance of S9XX family, design houses are trying to save money.

    USB2.0 dual

    Reply

  17. @cnxsoft
    I found this ANDROID DVB image on the xls file, and it confirms the DVB version of the KI+
    looking forward for this BOX, finally we will have something decent for a DVB receiver with the s905, the S805 was so anemic CPU wise

    Reply

  20. @natsu
    I can see they are using Kodi 14.2, so they played the H.265 is a different player. It was last month, so hopefully, they’ve now ported Kodi 15.x to it.
    Videostrong has said they’d send K1 Plus 905 sample for review, I guess it’s the same.
    I should also get a K1 DVB T2+S2 combo (S805).

    Reply

  21. @kusta
    i think MyGica is brand of Geniatech? I had one MyGica ATV585. forget the price. i paid arrond 90$ ,and they offers firmware OTA update. until now i am satisfied with their device

    Reply

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