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July 1, 2024July 1, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 21 Comments

Amlogic S905X5M vs S905X4 – Features and benchmarks comparison

Amlogic S905X5M is an update to the Amlogic S905X4 quad-core Cortex-A55 SoC with a higher 2.5 GHz CPU clock and a new generation Arm G310 CPU that delivers up to close to three times the performance of the Mali-G31 MP2 GPU for more advanced and smoother HDR user interfaces. The S905X5M and S905X4 share the same video decoding capabilities, notably AV1 and H265 up to 4Kp75, but the new S905X5M drops support for H.265 1080p60 video encoding, only keeping H.264 1080p30. One of the new features is the inclusion of an NPU designed specifically for Super Resolution enabling video upscaling with better image quality. You’ll find the differences between the Amlogic S905X5M and S905X5 processors in the comparison table below. The Amlogic S905X5M adds some HDMI 2.1 features that deserve an explanation: QMS (Quick Media Switching) – A source device can instantly switch its content’s resolution or frame rate without […]

November 20, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - No Comments

MediaTek Filogic 860 & Filogic 360 WiFi 7 chipsets target mainstream BE7200 routers and clients

MediaTek has unveiled two new WiFi 7 chipsets with the Filogic 860 tri-core Arm Cortex-A73 SoC designed for up to BE7200 mainstream routers and gateways and Filogic 360 WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 chip for client devices such as smartphones, PCs, laptops, set-top boxes, OTT streaming boxes, etc… for up to 2.9 Gbps bandwidth. The new Filogic 860 and Filogic 360 chipsets provide more cost-effective alternatives to the Filogic 880 SoC for up to BE36000 routers and Filogic 380 clients chip capable of up to 6.5 Gbps PHY data rate, both of which were introduced in May 2022. MediaTek Filogic 860 Filogic 860 specifications: CPU – 3x Arm Cortex-A73 cores clocked at up to 1.8 GHz Network Processing Unit (NPU) – Hardware QoS acceleration and Tunneling Offload Engine for VLAN / PPTP / L2TP / GRE Networking Crypto engine (EIP-197) – For IPv4 NATP / IPv6 / DS-Lite / 6RD […]

March 16, 2022October 5, 2022 by Ray - 37 Comments

1-Stream IPTV streaming software offers an alternative to Xtream Codes

1-Stream is an IPTV streaming platform with smart load balancing that allows providers to scale their service and integrates geo-location to ensure content delivery from the closest available server for quicker load times and less buffering. One popular professional IPTV platform used to be Xteam Codes for which I wrote a detailed four-part review but they started having trouble on September 18, 2019 with Xtream Codes IPTV Panels having a legal dispute related due to piracy, despite not providing any streams, and it seems they may never come back online, as their latest update contesting the claims date from January 2021. A lot has happened during these two and a half years in the IPTV scene with many alternatives, most of them with another similar name but based on almost the same old, PHP-based vulnerable platform found in the former Xtream Codes Panel version 2.9.3, which could never provide good […]

August 27, 2020 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

Testing Hercules OTT Realtek RTD1395 4K Android STB Development Board

This is a guest post by Promwad, a software and hardware product development company with DTV & STB development expertise and know-how. Recently, they received a package from Realtek, their partner in Taiwan. There was a Realtek RTD1395 development board inside – Hercules 32-bit OTT – with 2 GB RAM and pre-installed Android 9 OS. Promwad team tested what it’s capable of and how it can be used by hardware and software engineers who design new TV set-top boxes and develop embedded software. Hercules OTT board is an Android IPTV box that plays videos of any formats with a maximum resolution of 4K. Streaming services such as Youtube, Netflix, etc. are supported via Dash and HLS. Also, the board supports other Android apps, including audio/video calls and conferencing. Realtek introduced RTD1395-based boards back in 2018. IP and cable TV operators used them in their subscriber devices. The RTD1395 chip with […]

November 7, 2019November 8, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 25 Comments

Allwinner H6 VC200-OS Processor is a Cheaper Version Allwinner H6 SoC without PCIe, GbE, Camera…

Allwinner H6 SoC has been around a few years, first used exclusively in Zidoo H6 Pro TV box, but then finding its way into other TV boxes, and some single board computers such as Orange Pi 3 or Pine H64 model B. There’s no a cost-down version called Allwinner H6 VC200-OS with most of the same features but without the mostly useless PCIe port (since it does not work well on H6), and other interfaces. I’ve gone through Allwinner H6 (V200) specifications and highlighted the ones missing or updated in H6 VC200-OS using stricken bold or bold text using information from the datasheet. CPU – Quad-core ARM Cortex A53 with NEON, hardware Java acceleration, and FPU 3D GPU – Dual shader ARM Mali-T720 with support for OpenGL ES3.1/3.0/2.0/1.1, OpenCL 1.1/RenderScript, Microsoft DirectX 11 FL9_3 Memory I/F – DDR4/DDR3/DDR3L/LPDDR2/LPDDR3 interfaces Storage I/F – 1x eMMC 5.1 flash interface, 1x NAND Flash […]

September 25, 2019September 26, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 1 Comment

Broadcom BCM7218X STB SoC Comes with AV1 Hardware Decoding, WiFi 6

CNX Software first covered AV1 open-source, royalty-free video codec aiming to compete against H.265 and succeed VP9 in 2016. I also tried the reference implementation and both encoding and decoding were really slow at that time and an AMD FX8350 powered computer would only achieve 0.36 fps encoding on a 352 x 288 video, while decoding was much faster at over 1,000 fps. This was really early work, and the final AV1 specifications were only released in March 2018, before companies like YouTube and Netflix started to publish AV1 video samples, and now I’ve noticed the former is sometimes streaming videos using AV1 codec on desktop computers and laptops. This still relies on software decoding, and most Arm platforms and entry-level level Intel computer may not be able to handle AV1 decoding, so hardware decoding will eventually be required, especially on battery-operated devices since it will consume much less power. […]

April 12, 2019April 13, 2019 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 31 Comments

Amlogic S905X3 Specifications & Block Diagram

A few days ago, we wrote about upcoming quad core Cortex-A55 processors from Amlogic with S905X3, S905Y3, and S905D3 SoCs. Today, we got a little more information with a product brief including the main features, and a block diagram. Amlogic S905X3 is described as an “advanced application processor designed for hybrid OTT/ IP Set Top Box (STB) and high-end media box applications. Amlogic S905X3 specifications: CPU Sub-system Quad core Arm Cortex-A55 CPU with Armv8-A Neon and Crypto extension, 8-stage in-order full dual issue pipeline, unified system L3 cache Arm Cortex-M3 core for system control processing Optional Arm Cortex-M4 core for always-on processing TrustZone Internal QoS based switching fabrics Optional Neural Network Accelerator – 1.2 TOPS NN inference accelerator supporting TensorFlow and Caffe 3D Graphics Processing Unit – Arm Mali G31MP2 GPU with support for OpenGL ES 3.2, Vulkan 1.0 and OpenCL 2.0 support 2.5D Graphics Processor Fast bitblt engine with […]

February 19, 2018February 19, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

VideoStrong Introduces Low Cost Version of KI Plus T2 S2 Hybrid Android TV Box with Amlogic S805X Processor

VideoStrong K1 Plus T2/S2 is an Android 5.1 set-top-box with DVB-S/S2 and DVB-T/T2 tuner that was launched roughly two years ago with Amlogic S905 quad core processor. Since then, the company has now launched variant of the model with Amlogic S912 (e.g. KIII Pro hybrid TV box) or Amlogic S905D (e.g. KI Pro set-top box) processors. But now, provided the information on Alibaba is correct, the company has launched a new version of KI Plus T2/S2 with Amlogic S805X which should be cheaper, run a more recent Android 7.1 operating system, at the cost of losing support for 4K decoding, since the processor only support Full HD (1080p60) decoding at most. Since the company updated an existing product, some specific details are wrong on Alibaba, but KI Plus T2 S2 (2018) specifications should be as follows: SoC – Amlogic S805X quad core ARM Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.2 GHz with […]