Amlogic T962E2 is an upgrade to the Amlogic T962E quad-core Cortex-A53 SoC we first found in the Alfawise H96 Mini TV box with both HDMI output and HDMI input ports. The new processor offers similar features but comes with more efficient Cortex-A55 cores, a Mali-G31 MP2 supporting modern Vulkan and OpenGL ES 3.2 APIs, and some other improvements including 4K AV1 video playback.
While mostly designed for Smart TVs, I found the Amlogic T962E processor in a TV box board with up to 4GB RAM, 32GB eMMC flash, HDMI 2.1 output, HDMI 2.1 input, Gigabit Ethernet, a wireless module, and allegedly running either Android 8, Android 9, or Android TV.
TV box boards specifications:
- SoC – Amlogic T962E2 quad-core Arm Cortex-A55 processor @ up to 2.0 GHz with Arm Mali-G31 MP2 GPU support OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.1 and OpenCL 2.0, 1.2 TOPS AI accelerator, 2x HiFi4 DSP
- System Memory – 2GB or 4GB DDR4
- Storage – 16GB or 32GB eMMC flash + MicroSD card slot
- Video I/F
- HDMI 2.1 output with eARC support up to 4Kp60
- HDMI 2.1 input up to 4Kp60 (Note: T962E2 specs, HDMI version and resolution not specified for the board)
- Audio I/F – HDMI In/Out, optical S/PDIF
- Video codecs
- 4Kp75 10bit AV1/H.265/VP9 decoding
- 4Kp30 H.264 decoding
- 1080p30 H.264 encoding
- HDR 10/10+, and Dolby Vision support (T962E2 specs)
- Widevine DRM, optional support for Verimatrix/PlayReady
- Connectivity
- Gigabit Ethernet
- Dual-band 802.11 b/g/n/ac WiFi 5 2×2 MIMO, Bluetooth 5.0 Classic/LE via UNISOC UWE5621DS module
- USB – 1x USB 3.0 port, 1x USB 2.0 port
- Misc – IR receiver, built-in RTC…
- Power Supply – 5V/2A via DC jack
- Dimensions – 10 x 10 x 1.9 cm
- Weight – 130 grams
As we can see on the Amlogic website, the T962E2 also supports digital and analog TV tuners (ATSC, USQAM, DVB-C, NTSC, PAL, SECAM) and comes with a PCIe Gen 2 interface multiplexed with USB 3.0. The company lists two applications for the processor: Split smart TV and Smart Home so I’d assume it could be integrated into a Smart Home gateway that also serves as media center and smart speaker. That’s a nice upgrade compared to the earlier T962E.
ONENUTS/Shenzhen Tomato informed me about the board and is selling it to other companies. They provide an enclosure, but I won’t show it because it’s clearly not for this board as only one HDMI port is shown. We have zero information about the software support for the HDMI input port, but that should mean 4Kp60 PVR function, picture-in-picture, and possibly local network broadcasting. A few more details may be found 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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It seems like they’ve focused on versatility for this board. I’m seeing a UART connector, a JTAG connector, an internal I/O connector for LEDs, the optional RTC I2C and battery, an internal WiFi antenna, so maybe it’s because it’s still a dev board, or maybe they’re trying to make sure their layout can easily be embedded as-is into several types of products.
The PCB antenna is most likely for Bluetooth.
There are some other optional part too, like a space for some SPI flash or an eeprom and what might be a space for a USB hub.
I was thinking this place was instead for the RTC like a DS1307. But it could also be an eeprom. I doubt it would be the SPI flash because the footprint is the small one (i.e. not like the usual 2564).
“also salso supports digital TV tuners (ATSC, USQAM, DVB-C, NTSC, PAL, SECAM )”
NTSC (USA) is an ANALOG television system (originally monocrhome 1941, with color coding specification added in 1953).
PAL (German) and SECAM (French) are color encoding systems for ANALOG television systems.
So an NTSC, PAL, or SECAM digital TV tuner is an impossibility and an oxymoron.
The pertinent question of support for digital TV tuners is does the board support DVB-t2 and DVB-s2 and not forgetting ISDB?
Why are the hdmi2.1 specs limited to 4k60?
Because it’s a partial implementation. The system does not support 8Kp60, but does support eARC, one of HDMI 2.1 features.