av1 News - Page 7 of 9 - CNX Software

January 21, 2021March 9, 2021 by Nico Dekerf - 27 Comments

Mecool KM6 Deluxe (Amlogic S905X4) TV Box Review

Back in September 2020, Jean-Luc wrote about the Mecool KM6 TV Box. This comes with the Amlogic S905X4 with AV1 support and preloaded with Android TV 10. Since Jean-Luc could not review the KM6, I offered to do this for him. It was already mentioned the box was delayed in the previous article published in September. After that, it was further delayed until January 2021. So last week I received the Mecool KM6 deluxe for review. It comes with a remote, a 2A/5V PSU, and an HDMI cable. My deluxe version has 4GB LPDDR4 and a 64GB eMMC flash. They also sell the KM6 Classic which comes with 2GB LPDDR4 and a 16GB eMMC flash. Under the moto, don’t turn it on, take it apart. I opened the box to see its internals. There were 4 screws to undo under its rubber feet. It comes with a metal plate on […]

December 28, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

Amlogic S905X3 vs S905X4 – Features Comparisons

AV1 capable Amlogic S905X4 processor has been expected for more than a year, and only now are we starting to see announcements of S905X4 TV boxes and development kits. So it may be a good time to compare the features of the new Amlogic S905X4 processor again its predecessor, namely S905X3, and see if there are other notable differences apart from support for AV1 open video codec. We’ll use data from S905X3 specifications, S905X2 vs S905X3 comparison, and a post on SDMC LinkedIn page. Amlogic S905X4 will be slightly faster due to the higher (default) maximum CPU frequency of 2.0 GHz, but most people will not notice the difference. S905X4 is supposed to support Vulkan 1.1, while S905X3 does not, but I believe this is just due to more up-to-date Android SDK, and not differences in the silicon itself. S905X4 supports Nagra DRM, a more recent version of HDCP, and […]

November 5, 2020May 12, 2021 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 5 Comments

Amlogic S905X4 Android TV & RDK developer kit ships with ATSC, DVB, or ISDB tuners

SEI Robotics has launched an Amlogic S905X4 developer kit for Android TV & RDK development under their DroidLogic brand. The devkit looks like a standard TV box, and the company also provides a choice of tuners with DVB-S2, DVB-T2/C, DVB-S2+DVB-T2/C Combo, ISTB-T, or ATSC-T. We were expecting Amlogic S905X4 TV boxes with products like Ugoos X4 or Mecool KM6 by the end of last month, but due to supply issues manufacturing has been delayed. So SEI Robotics could be a good device to get started with your own project as soon as possible, for example, to work on AV1 hardware decoding implementation. DroidLogic Amlogic S905X4 developer kit specifications: SoC – Amlogic S905X4 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor with Arm Mali-G31MP2 GPU (Amlogic S905X3 as option) System Memory – 2GB DDR4 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash Video Output – HDMI 2.1 up to 4Kp60 with CEC, HDR, and HDCP 2.2 support; CVBS (composite […]

October 19, 2020October 19, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

Intel Celeron 6305 and Pentium Gold 7505 Tiger Lake Processors Launched

Intel launched various Core i3/i5/i7 Tiger Lake processors in early September, shortly followed by more Core i3/i5/i7 UP3 Tiger Lake Embedded SoCs, so I was a little confused when Congatec launched a Tiger Lake COM Express module with of choice of processors including the usual Core processor plus an unnamed Celeron Tiger Lake processor because none were listed in Intel Ark. But a few weeks have passed, and there are now three new Celeron and Pentium Tiger Lake processors in the list namely: Pentium Gold 7505, Celeron 6305, and Celeron 6305E with the later optimized for embedded & IoT applications with a wider temperature range from 0 to 100°C. All three processors come with a 15W TDP and are manufactured using Intel’s 10nm process. As we can see from the table below both Celeron 6305 and Celeron 6305E have the exact same key features. The main difference between the Celeron […]

October 11, 2020October 12, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Enabling AV1 Hardware Video Decoding in Windows 10

AOMedia AV1 royalty-free video codec delivers up to 50% better compression than H.264 and up to 20% better than VP9 for the same video content, so streaming companies like Netflix and YouTube enabled the codec a while ago. When I play a YouTube video in Chrome in Ubuntu 20.04 and check the stats for nerds info, it will usually show the video is played with “av01.0” codec which refers to AV1, but it’s played with software video decoding using libraries like Dav1d leveraging SIMD instructions. But ideally, you’d want hardware video decoding for lower power consumption for increased battery life, and potentially smoother videos. One good news is that Microsoft has recently announced support for AV1 GPU-accelerated hardware video decoding in Windows 10. The less good news is that support will be limited to recent and fairly powerful GPUs. So for instance, if you own mini PCs with older Intel […]

September 30, 2020September 30, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 30 Comments

Mecool KM6 Amlogic S905X4 Android TV box plays 4K AV1 videos, supports WiFi 6

We’ve heard about Amlogic S905X4 processor for 4K TV boxes with AV1 support for about year, and while we’ve written about upcoming S905X4 TV boxes such as SDMC DV8919, none of them have launched so far, as silicon design and/or software development have taken a bit longer than expected, and we’re now far from the Q4 2019 launch date shown on the roadmap. But we may not have to wait much longer, as I have been offered a review sample – which sadly, I may have to refuse due to local import regulations – for Mecool KM6 TV box based on Amlogic S905X4 quad-core Cortex-A55 processor coupled with up to 4GB RAM, 64GB storage, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 6 connectivity, and running Android 10 on Android TV (Android 10.0 ATV). The company will sell two models with Mecool KM6 Deluxe and Classic editions with the following specifications: SoC – Amlogic […]

July 23, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

Dune HD AV1 4K TV Box To Run AOSP or Android TV for Android 10 on RealTek RTD1319 Processor

4K TV boxes capable of playing AV1 content are coming later this year. Many of the entry-level models will feature Amlogic S905X4 processor, but some higher-end set-top boxes will instead be equipped with Broadcom BCM7218X or Realtek RTD1319 processor with better video post-processing capabilities and often more extensive DRM support which can be important to operators. Dune HD AV1 4K TV box is coming later this year with Realtek RTD1319 media processor, and support for either Android 10 AOSP or Android TV for Android 10. Dune HD AV1 4K TV box specifications: SoC – Realtek RTD1319 quad-core Arm Cortex A55 processor with Mali-G31 GPU with OpenGL ES 3.2 API support System Memory – 2 GB RAM Storage – 16 GB flash (32 GB or more as an option) Video & Audio Output – HDMI 2.1 up to 4Kp60 with HDR support, 3.5mm AV port with composite video and analog stereo […]

June 30, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 7 Comments

Ugoos X4 Cube Android 9.0 TV Box Plays 4Kp120 AV1 Videos

AOMedia AV1 video codec has been in the works for several years, and has strong industry backing since it’s open-source, royalty-free and delivers compression similar or even superior to H.265. Some services like YouTube and Netflix have already started using AV1 on PCs where the CPU is powerful enough to handle software video decoding. But relying on software video decoding is not ideal on typical Arm-based devices, either because of battery life concerns (e.g. phones) or simply impossible because the processor won’t be able to cope. The latter is especially the case on TV boxes who are not usually fitted with Arm Cortex-A53 cores leaving hardware video decoding to a video processing unit (VPU). Since AV1 is still fairly new, most VPU doesn’t support the new video codec, and while we have seen several AV1 capable processors including Broadcom BCM7218x, Realtek RTD1311/RTD1319, and Amlogic S905X4. as well as at least […]