Previously known for its tablet SoCs, Allwinner has been focusing on low-cost Cortex-A7 and Cortex-A53 processors for consumer devices in recent years, and the Allwinner TV303 quad-core Cortex-A53 processor is yet another one and appears to be the first of Allwinner TV-series processors designed for “smart screens”, notably smart Android projectors.
I could not find any references for TV303 on the Allwinner website, but the company did publish a post on Weixin about a “Smart Android Projector” by Hotack based on the new processor and showcased at CES 2023.
Allwinner TV303 preliminary specifications:
- CPU – 4x Arm Cortex-A53
- GPU – Arm Mali-G31
- VPU – 4K hardware video decoding + image quality engine
- Video Output – Up to Full HD
- Video Input – HDMI input
The projector itself features two stereo speakers, WiFi 6 connectivity, and can be turned into a Bluetooth speaker. It also supports keystone correction and autofocus. Allwinner says it can provide companion chips (wireless and PMIC) with the Allwinner TV303. It’s unclear whether the chip could also be used for recording video from HDMI input, but I suppose not considering the target products.
The processor is also mentioned in the Linux kernel mailing list, but only shortly as in the patch about Allwinner D1 were are told that “other recent Allwinner SoCs (e.g. TV303) have a PPU with a different set of domains.” The linux-sunxi community says it’s a sun50i chip like Allwinner A64 or H6, so part of the software support will likely be shared.
Thanks to Li for the tip.
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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Recycling at it’s best…
I bought an X88 Android TV box off AliExpress 6 or 7 years ago with nearly this identical spec – 4xA53@1.83GHz, ARM Mali G31 GPU, 2GB RAM. Its performance was on par with my 2 core Atom D525 from 2010 as far as the CPUs went, but it did have better 3D performance Android gaming and it did surprisingly well with Retrocade running N64 titles, not that the Atom couldn’t do that too, but I didn’t expect to see the same level of optimisation on ARM. Anyhow it also claimed to support 4K60 HEVC decoding. I never tried it, because I bought it with the intent of installing Debian on it, borked the bootloader, and never got around to unbricking it. Around the same time I was donated a 6200u laptop that ended up making a much, much better Linux HTPC.
So, TLDR: Wow this part is stuck in the past!
Actually the best OS for those allwinner tv boxes is libreelec, the maintainer there really knows what he’s doing on the Linux level
But still mine is laying in a drawer now
> those allwinner tv boxes
William’s most likely isn’t Allwinner since A53 @ 1.8 GHz came only with the H6 in mid 2017 and a Mali G31 even later (H616 where the A53 are clocked at just 1.5GHz which is what I would expect with this TV303 as well).
It’s possible too that I am mis-remembering when I got it. Might be Jan 2018. It was advertised at 1.83 but it never actually operated over 1.6gHz. Don’t know if it was an Allwinner chip. My comment is that this new chip is anachronistic… which isn’t a terrible thing if it’s extremely cheap, and the user doesn’t need CPU performance much beyond a 2010 Atom.