Earlier this year, Allwinner H6 was introduced as a 4K set-top box SoC with a quad core Cortex A53 processor, a Mali-T720MP GPU, support for “6K” video decoding, and several high speeds interfaces like USB 3.0 and PCIe. Zidoo just unveiled H6 PRO TV box based on the processor.
Zidoo H6 PRO TV box specifications:
- SoC – AllWinner H6 quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 processor up to 1.8GHz with Mali-T720MP2 GPU
- System Memory – 2GB DDR4
- Storage – 16GB eMMC flash, micro SD card reader up to 32 GB
- Video Output – 1x HDMI 2.0a up to 4K @ 60hz with HDR support, AV port (composite)
- Video Playback Support
- H.265/HEVC Main/Main10 profile @ level 5.2 high-tier up to 4K @ 60fps / 6K @ 30 fps
- VP9 Profile 0/2, up to 4K @ 30fps
- H264/AVC BP/MP/HP @ level5.1, MVC, up to 4Kx2K @ 30fps
- MKV, MP4, Blu-ray ISO, 3D MVC…
- SmartColor 3.0 image optimization engine
- Audio I/F – HDMI, AV port (stereo audio), optical S/PDIF; DTS and Dolby supported
- Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1
- USB – 2x USB 2.0 ports including on OTG port, 1x USB3.0 port on other side. An external power needed if USB connects to over 1TB mobile HDD.
- Misc – IR receiver, reset/recovery button behind AV port, front panel display (TBC)
- Power Supply – 5V/2A
- Dimensions – 105.6mm x 105.6 mm x 17.5 mm
The box will run Android 7.0, and ship with a Bluetooth remote control, HDMI cable, a power adapter, and a user manual. 
I hope they will consider upgrading the design to support USB drives without external storage, and beef up the power supply too. This would avoid potential troubles for people who want to use USB drives. Zidoo has also revamped their ZIUI user interface / launcher for this model by making it simpler and more colorful.
I can’t find any other Allwinner H6 TV boxes on Alibaba, so it’s probably safe to assume Zidoo H6 Pro and other H6 devices are still a few months away. You may find a few more details on the product page.
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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1.8ghz in a small box without any fans? really?
@kc
CPU frequencies tend to lower between the first announcement and the actual product launch.
We’ll see.
Here seems to be (beta?) kernel source https://github.com/tinalinux/linux-3.10/tree/r18-v0.9/ Although I don’t know if H6 wafer code is sun50iw3p1 or sun50iw6p1. All nice things are already supported (HDMI 2.0, USB 3.0, PCIE, etc.) and as a bonus, I couldn’t find blobs.
@jernej
well, looking at dts files both hav 1.2ghz max at cpufreq tables (with 1.0ghz set as default).
@jernej
R18 is A64
@kc
Look at cpufreq_tbl, H6 (sun50iw6p1) is 480-1800 MHz, sun50iw3p1 is 480-1200 MHz (PCIe/XHCI also missing).
@TL Lim
Doesn’t matter, we spotted new Allwinner SoCs like R40/V40/T3 also first time in older A64 BSP code drops 😉
Well balanced set of features. Let’s wait for the price and see how long it takes to get Linux working on it 🙂
@jernej
By looking through both sun50iw3p1.dtsi and sun50iw6p1.dtsi it seems obvious to me that H6 seems to be the latter (since defined 1.8GHz as max cpufreq — that’s the value end users will see in CPU-Z and Android benchmarks — and USB3 and PCIe defined). It seems sun50iw3p1 is a stripped down version for mobile use (no USB3/PCIe, more limited thermal budget and charger0 –> status = “ok” instead of status = “disabled” with H6).
By looking through ths, thermal, cooler and dvfs nodes for CPU and GPU cores it’s obvious that heat dissipation is still a challenge even with a 28nm process now. But as you already mentioned I would consider this ‘beta’ we should take with a huge grain of salt.
@Willy
Well, wrt H6 and Linux support what @jernej spotted (no blobs) sounds promising but since we’re told Allwinner is preparing a new BSP variant relying on a 4.4 kernel (to be used with Android 7.0) I would better wait until this BSP drop is in the wild. AFAIK with Allwinner’s H5 BSP voltage regulation / DVFS is still broken so H5 devices that implement DVFS to increase CPU clockspeeds can not do this in Android or Linux with BSP kernel (limited to 1008 MHz since crashing above) while with mainline kernel this works. So we can only hope that H6 is as compatible to older H SoCs as possible to get the BSP mess out of our way asapissimo.
And then an already known H6 limitation is 2 GB DRAM max (a bit sad since if the single PCIe 2.x lane and USB3 could be saturated H6 would make up for a nice server and even virtualization/containerization platform)
So it does Hi10P anime in HW, like some Rockchip?
@TC
Based on the processor’s specifications: No.
Allwinner….thank you but NO ! Cheating backyard company that still uses 40nm i guess and the mali 7XX GPU now that we are past 8XX. As for Zidoo, they try to make good products but strangly pick strange stuff to do so. I had a X1 from them once (also Allwinner SOC)…a nightmare….kept it only cause i got it for free.
Power Supply – 5V/2A
Into the trash it goes…
@Mr Maso
28nm
Still Zidoo lists H.264/AVC Base/Main/High/High10 profile @ level 4.2; up to 4Kx2K @ 60fps
@Mr Maso
Agree. Both Allwinner, as well as Ziddo are cheats. Am the unfortunate owner of a Zidoo X6 Pro which was released with Lollipop and till date the firmware remains stagnated on Lollipop, with Zidoo remaining silent on sustenance.
I have no trust in both these companies.
@TC
Allwinner H6 product brief: “H264/AVC BP/MP/HP@level5.1, MVC, 4K@30fps”
I’ve asked Zidoo to confirm which one is right.
@TC
@cnxsoft
Answer:
I can’t see much in this to tempt people to buy other than the T-720 GPU and after the last great Allwinner debacle and their closed source kind of policy I think that this SOC should be avoided until it shows itself to be something different and with reliable and stable firmware.
Work like a charm!
Thanks!
Next H6 device around the corner: https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/5226-orange-pi-3-plus/