At the very beginning of this year, we published an Amlogic roadmap showing Amlogic S922 next gen CPU/GPU, and S905X2 quad core Cortex A53 processors, but so far we still had limited information, and as per Amlogic own roadmap S922 was still at the definition stage, so exact specifications may have been expected to change at the time. The company showcased some exciting new solutions at IBC 2018 with three reference boards based on new Amlogic S905Y2, S905X2, and S922 processors all running Android TV 9 “Pie”. “Android TV Rumors” was apparently at the event and posted some photos on twitter. Amlogic S905Y2 Reference Board Amlogic S905Y2 processor is using the same old quad-core Cortex A53 configuration, but features a more modern Arm Mali-G31 MP2 GPU. The reference board is designed for OTT 4K HDMI dongles, and comes with 16GB storage, 2GB RAM, USB 2.0 interface, as well WiFi 2T2R, […]
MINIX NEO U9-H TV Box Gets Android 7.1 Firmware
MINIX NEO U9-H is generally considered one of the best Android TV boxes if you are after an Android experience, as opposed to a pure Android TV experience. I found the firmware solid and performing on very capable hardware when I reviewed the device in 2017 although there were a few bugs here and there for the version of the firmware I tested. The device is still the main TV box model sold by MINIX, but so far, you had to run the older Android 6.0 OS. The good news is that you can now upgrade your box, if you wish to do so, to a more recent Android 7.1 operating system. There’s no specific changelog for the release, and you can find Android 7.1 for MINIX NEO U9-H on MEGA.An important caveat is that it’s not an OTA update, so you’d have to use USB Burning Tool – also […]
Tanix TX3 Mini L Amlogic S905W TV Box with 2GB RAM Sells for as low as $16.99 (Promo)
Last year, it was relatively easy to find promotions for ultra cheap TV boxes selling for under $20, but with the price increase of flash and RAM chips it has become harder to find. GearBest has now launched a promotion for Tanix TV boxes, and you could get Tanix TX3 Mini L model with an Amlogic S905W Processor and 2GB RAM for as low as $16.99. The trick is here is that price is only for flash sales with 5 pieces selling for $16.99 at 9:00 UTC until the end of the week. You’ll apparently need to use coupon GBTXL to qualify for the discount. Note that Flash sale can be frustrating since you’ll be competing with other customer, one trick that may work to get ahead is the add the device to the cart before 9:00, then click on check out at exactly 9:00. If you miss out the […]
Xiaomi WEMAX ONE Android Laser Projector Features Amlogic T968 Processor
We’ve previously covered some entry-level mini Android projectors like Rikomagic R5 or Nebula Capsule, but Amlogic T968 powered Xiaomi WEMAX ONE ultra short throw Android laser projector is a different beast entirely as it sells for $1949 shipped on GearBest. You can lower the price somewhat ($20 discount) with coupon IT$CN33WMX. Xiaomi WEMAX ONE (FMWS01C) projector specifications: SoC – Amlogic T968 quad core Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.8GHz with Arm Mali-T830MP GPU System Memory – 2GB DDR3 Storage – 16GB eMMC Flash Projector Details 0.47 inch DMD Resolution – Full HD ( 1920 x 1080 ) with support for HDR and 4K resolution somehow Light source – ALPD 3.0 (Advanced Laser Phosphor Display) Brightness – 1688 ANSI lumens (Claims of 7000 ANSI lumens in GearBest and other websites in English appear to be false) Color gamut – NTSC 80 – 85 percent Central contrast – 2500 : 1 – 3500 […]
Amlogic T968 Processor is Designed for Smart 4K UHD TVs and Smart Projectors
Amlogic S-series processors are the most well-known processors by Amlogic with parts like S905X or S912, but the company is also offering other families with the new A-series for smart audio applications, and T-series processor for televisions. The latter have been around for a while, and also include HDMI inputs and digital TV tuners. We hear less about them since they are embedded into more expensive devices like Smart TVs or Android projectors, although in some cases they get into TV boxes with HDMI such as Alfawise H96 mini TV box powered by Amlogic T962E processor. Today, I’ll have at one of the top TV processor from Amlogic: T968 with four Cortex A53 cores clocked at up to 1.8 GHz, and an Arm Mali-T830MP2 GPU. Amlogic T968 processor key features and specifications: CPU – Quad core Arm Cortex-A53 processor clocked at up to 1.8 GHz GPU – Arm Mali-T830MP2 GPU […]
Linux 4.18 Release – Main Changes, Arm and MIPS Architecture
Linus Torvalds has just announced the release of Linux 4.18: One week late(r) and here we are – 4.18 is out there. It was a very calm week, and arguably I could just have released on schedule last week, but we did have some minor updates. Mostly networking, but some vfs race fixes (mentioned in the rc8 announment as “pending”) and a couple of driver fixes (scsi, networking, i2c). Some other minor random things (arm crypto fix, parisc memory ordering fix). Shortlog appended for the (few) details. Some of these I was almost ready to just delay to until the next merge window, but they were marked for stable anyway, so it would just have caused more backporting. The vfs fixes are for old races that are really hard to hit (which is obviously why they are old and weren’t noticed earlier). Some of them _have_ been seen in real […]
Amlogic Open Source Video Decoder Driver Coming Soon for S905, S905X and S912 Processors
Allwinner processors aren’t the only ones getting an open source hardware video decoding / encoding support in Linux, as Maxim Jourdan recently submitted a patchset to Amlogic Linux mailing list adding a video decoder driver to some Amlogic processors. The driver is written around the V4L2 M2M framework and currently supports MPEG 1/2/4, H.263, H.264, MJPEG, and (partially) HEVC 8-bit codecs. The driver has been tested with FFmpeg, GStreamer, and Kodi, and currently works on S905 (Meson GXBB), S905X/W/D (Meson GXL), and S912 (Meson GXM) processors. Those processors also support HEVC 10-bit, VP9, and VC1 codecs, and while those are implemented yet, they should be in the future. A separate commit adds support for “Overlay plane for video rendering” which support various YUV layouts and a non-alpha RGB32 layout, and will be useful for Kodi and LibreELEC ports. I came to learn about those two patchsets thanks to Neil Armtrong […]
Amlogic A311D Media Processor Features Cortex A73/A53 Cores, an Arm Mali-G52 MP4 GPU
As far as processors are concerned, it’s been pretty quiet in the TV box space in this year with for example, devices based on Amlogic S922 yet to launch, and new TV boxes are normally launched with processors such as Amlogic S905X/Z/W or S912, as well as Rockchip RK3328 or RK3229. But this morning, I’ve been informed that Amlogic is working on a more powerful media processor based on info from buildroot release notes Amlogic A311D is an hexa-core processor featuring four Arm Cortex A73 cores, two Cortex A53 cores, and an Arm Mali-G52-MP4 GPU. Amlogic A311D specifications known so far: CPU – 4x Arm Cortex A73 @ TBD GHz, 2x Arm Cortex A53 GPU – Arm Mali-G52 MP4 Memory I/F – DDR3/4; LPDDR3/4 Storage I/F – eMMC, SD/SDHC/SDXC Video Output – HDMI Tx up to 4K2K @ 60 Hz with CEC & HDR support, CVBS Video Processing Unit (VPU) […]