Xiaomi recently launched the Mi Box S an update to their popular Xiaomi Mi Box with pretty much the same specifications, but an improved remote control and a lower price of $59 in the US. We also saw promotions as low as $55.99 for the new model. That means there’s very little reason to buy the original Xiaomi Mi box at the normal price now, and it would make sense for companies to offer discounts to get rid off their stock. That’s exactly what GearBest is doing by selling the Xiaomi Mi box TV Box running an official Android TV OS for $52.99 during a flash sale starting now until November 27 23:59 (Beijing Time) with allegedly no limits in quantity for this promotion. Here’s just a quick reminder of the specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X-H quad core ARM Cortex-A53 with penta-core Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage […]
Hailstorm Device Scaling Program To Enable Netflix Support on Amlogic and HiSilicon TV Boxes
If you’ve ever bought a random TV box you may have found out Netflix does not always work optimally, for example, HD or 4K UHD may not be available due to the lack of DRM, and/or Netflix certification even if you’re paying extra for the service. So you need to make sure you get a certified device and there aren’t that many. But thanks to Netflix Hailstorm – a program aiming at scaling the number of device officially supporting Netflix – we should see more and more TV box running Android TV with full Netflix support. I found about the Hailstorm program via an Amlogic press release, but the photo above shows some TV boxes based on HiSilicon processors will also be supported, and TV boxes manufacturers such as SDMC, Skyworth, and Himedia have joined the program. Amlogic explains they have now achieved pre-certification for its Android TV set top […]
G12S Amlogic S905X2 Android TV Box Comes with 2T2R WiFi 5 Connectivity
Several Amlogic S905X2 TV boxes running Android have launched with products such as X96 Max, Beelink GT1 Mini, H96 Max X2, or Mecool KM9. Some of those boxes come with WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, and others feature better WiFI 802.11ac (WiFi 5), but according to ACEMAX no model comes with a 2T2R (2 transmit / 2 receiver) antenna setup (aka 2×2 MIMO) except for their G12S TV box sold on Aliexpress for $55.99. So if you aim for the best WiFi throughput possible in your TV box, it might be worth having a go. ACEMAX normally adds their brand on OEM product, and the actual manufacturer should be ShiningWorth with the G12x2 model. G12x2 / G12S TV box specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X2 quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 2.0 GHz with Mali-G31 MP2 “Dvalin” GPU System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 32GB or 64GB eMMC flash, micro SD card […]
Xiaomi Mi Box S is Now Available Worldwide for $55.99 (Promo)
Xiaomi Mi Box S TV box running Android TV 8.1 launched last month as an upgrade to the popular Xiaomi Mi Box with very similar specifications, but a new remote control, and a cheaper $60 price tag. That means if you already own a working Mi Box you probably don’t want to upgrade, but if you haven’t already that’s a better deal. There’s one caveat however. It’s only available in the US at Walmart, so if you leave in another part of the world it’s not easily possible to order one, except going via a US forwarder. The good news is that you can now purchase it on GearBest for $55.99 with coupon GBMIBOXS (Note: they only have 1,000 pieces at this price). Xiaomi Mi Box S specifications as a reminder: SoC – Amlogic S905X quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.5GHz with penta-core Mali-450MP GPU System Memory – […]
H96 Max X2 Amlogic S905X2 TV Box with 4GB RAM, 32GB Storage Sold for $49.99 (Promo)
We’ve recently started seeing TV boxes based on the latest Amlogic S905X2 processor that offers slightly better speeds, USB 3.0, and several other improvements over Amlogic S905X. Models we’ve covered before including Beelink GT1 Mini, and X96 Max which started selling for under $50 with 2GB RAM and 16 GB storage at the time of the announcement. With competition and the holiday season coming soon, prices have started to come down, and you can now get H96 Max X2 TV box with 4GB RAM, and 32GB storage for $49.99 shipped on Banggood. H96 Max X2 specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X2 quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 2.0 GHz with Mali-G31 MP2 “Dvalin” GPU System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 Storage – 32GB eMMC flash, micro SD card slot up to 32GB Video & Audio Outputs HDMI 2.1 output up to 4K @ 75 Hz with HDR/HDCP 2.2/CEC 3.5mm AV port (composite […]
Embedded Recipes 2018 Videos and Slides Released
Embedded Recipes 2018 happened in Mozilla building in Paris, France on September 24 & 25, where developers talked about “open source solutions in the embedded world: developer, contributor, tools, platforms…” We previously mentioned the event in a post about an open source video decoder driver for Amlogic S905, S905X and S912 processors with BayLibre scheduled to talk about their work there. There’s now released slides and videos for the event for all sessions including: SoC+FPGA support in 2018 by Marek Vasut Shared memory and telemetry by Yves-Marie Morgan Updating an embedded system with swupdate by Charles-Antoine Couret Finding sources of latency in your system by Steven Rostedt Io(M)T Security: A year in review by Rayna Stamboliyska Using yocto to generate container images for yocto by Jérémy Rosen linuxboot by Jean-Marie Verdun and Trammell Hudson End-to-end software production for embedded by Guy Lunardi WooKey: the USB Battlefront Warrior by Mathieu Renard, […]
Linux 4.19 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architectures
With Linus Torvalds taking a leave from the Linux kernel project, Greg Kroah-Hartman was the one to release Linux 4.19 last Sunday: Hi everyone! It’s been a long strange journey for this kernel release… While it was not the largest kernel release every by number of commits, it was larger than the last 3 releases, which is a non-trivial thing to do. After the original -rc1 bumps, things settled down on the code side and it looks like stuff came nicely together to make a solid kernel for everyone to use for a while. And given that this is going to be one of the “Long Term” kernels I end up maintaining for a few years, that’s good news for everyone. A small trickle of good bugfixes came in this week, showing that waiting an extra week was a wise choice. However odds are that linux-next is just bursting so […]
Comparison of S905X, S905X2, and S905Y2 Processors Specifications
We’ve known the main features of Amlogic S905Y2 and S905X2 processors namely an upgrade to an Arm Mali-G31MP2 GPU with OpenGLES 3.1, and support for USB 3. since last month, and TV boxes launched earlier this month with products such as Beelink GT1 Mini or A95X Plus. But we were still missing some parameters like the manufacturing process, max CPU and GPU frequencies, and so on. We now have all this information and some more thanks to an S905X/S905X2/S905Y2 comparison table released by SDMC a few days ago, and likely coming from Amlogic themselves. There actually more differences than I expected. Going from top to bottom in the comparison table above, the new processors feature an ultra-low power MCU core to be used for wake-word detection, and possibly other features. We did not get CPU frequency numbers per se, but since Amlogic released DMIPS values and Cortex A53 core scores […]