This odroid thing is so special that amazon doesn’t sell it!
… they have more taste than to sell via the shitbox that is Amazon.
Shoog
You asked for recommendations, we’ve offered recommendations. We genuinely don’t care how you choose to spend your money. Amazon/AliExpress/Etc has many Shenzhen market specials of varied costs that come in tidy cases with generic remotes. You could get lucky and it might even work with CoreELEC. Yea, you have to buy a case, and pay a couple bucks for shipping, but honestly, its totally worth it.
We’re not shills for Odroid, we’re giving testimonials based on our success with their boards. I used to be in your camp, wanting a decent box but being put off by the higher price point, etc of the SBCs. After trying Odroid’s offerings, I’ll never go back to generic android boxes.
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Amazon… If you are located in the US you have Ameridroid, if you are in Europe it’s full of resellers and they give 2 years warranty.
I am in Europe and it worked out cheaper to get mine from Ameridroid.
Shoog
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I did my 6-7 purchases from Ameridroid, then I discovered that it was faster and more economical to buy from KH in Korea, my next 5-6 purchases were from HK. 
edit:
I’m like in Europe. 
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I figured that once having a S912, buying a S905X3 (while dirt cheap) doesn’t make much sense as a substitute. It’ll run Matrix alright but in terms of performance it would be more of a downgrade than anything else. I should’ve bought a N2+ on release… buying it now feels like coming too late to a party that eventually/surely will end, like it ended for the S912.
I just hope Amlogic doesn’t take too long to release a true S922x successor (whatever and whenever it might be). It’s a shame Libreelec on Rockchip boxes aren’t on the same level of Coreelec on Amlogic and the Raspberry Pi4 situation is even worse.
The S912 performs quite a bit worse than the S905x3 in my experience, this is probably a consequence of it cludged graphics driver. I also think the S912 has lower clock speeds and a poorer scheduler. In tests it couldn’t better the S905x2.
The S912 was probably one of the worst chips AML ever released. The S922 is currently one of the best.
Shoog
I guess it comes down to implementation. The S912 boxes varies a lot… memory speed, heatsinks and whatnot. Maybe the best S905X3 box is indeed better than the worse S912 box, who knows.
I’d be interested to know how the S905X3 fares in Hi10p 1080P software decoding. Is it capable of it?
On the topic of the S912 being one the worst chips… that’s BS and you probably know it. The S905 (I had a Odroid C2 with it) that came before was effectively half the speed for almost anything, and let’s not forget about the S80X family that some super lowend boxes use.
edit: Take a look here: Is Hi10p playback OK with CE on NG Boxes? - #11 by jak
There goes the argument that the S905X2 is even equal in performance to the S912. It can’t handle Hi10p 1080P software decoding smoothly, let alone with margin to spare as is the case of the S912.
I don’t think that S905X3 is enough for Hi10p 1080P. I’d look at S922X, it handles Hi10p with ease.
The reason the S912 was the worst chip released by AMLogic was because they only released the graphics stack for the ancient Android Kitkat. This had to be wrapped for anything else introducing significant overheads unless you were using the Android version it was bundled with.
And yes when CNX benchmarked the S912 against the, current at the time S905x2, they returned near identical scores. AMLogic lied about the maximum clock speed available on the S912 and even had the chip report the wrong clock speed to the kernel, undoubtedly because they made inflated promotional press releases but when they tested the real world chips they were unstable due to thermal issues.
All in all a crock of shit.
Shoog
Man, if you need to dis the S912, please be my guest. But no name-calling will change the fact that the S912 is capable of Hi10p 1080p decoding and the 905X2 isn’t. The 905X3 probably isn’t either… so there’s that.
Wrapping or not, the raw performance on the S912 is more than enough do do it and deliver a smooth playback. That’s pretty good for a SOC years older than 905X2 and X3 and a so called “shitty” SOC.
I think you are missing the point people are trying to make here. Granted the S912 looked a great chip when it was released but hardware decoding and graphics driver implementation to use with anything apart from the old version of android released with it were almost impossible. There was a number of bodges made to make this chip usable with other OS’s such as Libreelec, Coreelec and Armbian. The version of Kodi will never be supported on anything higher than 18 on any JEOS for this chip.
As people have stated if you want a new and powerful chip the option is out there to use S922 in various boxes. I’m sure most people on here would recommend an Odroid N2 or Khadas VIM3 since they are fully supported boxes. If you want to go down the S905x3 route then again a Odroid C4 or Khadas VIM3L(S905D3).
I have said before on these forums you pay for what you get when it comes to boxes or boards to use with Coreelec. I still can’t fathom why people would pay potentially thousands for a 4K TV, hundreds on a Atmos soundbar and then want to spend as little as possible on a box to use with them. I have used both Odroid and Khadas boards and any issues I have had with these have been resolved quickly since developers have these boards to test fixes.
Back to your original topic if you were to buy an S922 box to replace your S912 box you would not be disappointed in the performance upgrade in my opinion.
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things that really bothers me when using s912 box is HDR display and h265 video file seek.
you need to turn on ‘switch refresh rate when start playing’ to correctly output hdr signal and when you do forward or back action on some h265 video file,the signal will jump back to sdr, sometimes the image got totally broken.
I have no s905x3 device,so I don’t know if the NG ver with s905x3 have these problem.if not,might be a worthy choice to replace s912 with s905x3
Never seen that on my c4 or vero 4k+
The S912 (GXM) and S905 (GXBB) will stuck at 3.14 kernel and this will never change. So improvement for media playback like handling of HDR is/was gone into newer kernel (Amlogic-ng). GXBB is obsolete and GXM was a “hack” implementation and it’s not possible to port it to newer kernel.
If you do not need such “new” stuff you are free to stick to S912 and old kernel.
But don’t think upgrade to newest “mainline” kernel like some other distribution do provide will help. It make the situation even more worse as because hardware support implementation of Amlogic is stopped for almost 2 years of development completely now as nobody have interest (does mean put money) into it. So there will be no full support of Amlogic in mainline in near future, at least not in our live span.
Lets not forget that the S912 is already stranded on Leia and development of that branch is stopped. As Python 3 inevitably takes over all of the addons in the next year (as NEXUS is released), the Leia build will become increasingly broken to the point of unusability for most people.
However here’s my final point on the matter, since the S912 maxes out at 1.5ghz clock (and doesn’t even make that if multi-cores are in use) and the S905x3 maxes out at 1.9ghz, the S905x3 will outperform the S912 in almost every department.
My personal experience from owning a VIM2 (S912), X96Air(S905x3) and the N2(S922). The S905x3 performs noticeably better than the S912 in everyday use but does have lags in the interface sometimes, the S922 almost never lags and is extremely snappy at everything. It is streets ahead of the S912 and will likely be the top performing chip in the market for at least a few more years.
Shoog
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Completely agree the AML S912 is worse, but if we get any Amlogic S905 X3 or X922 factory box, medium in good condition, well ventilated, good remote control, 12v power supply which for me is better than 5v. A series of shortcomings in the amlogic boxes that one wonders why they make these trinkets. Anyway it is my annoying opinion.
Its my opinion that the Odroid N2 is the only well implemented S922x available. None of the others (even the really expensive ones) adequately address thermal issues.
Shoog
So I checked and of all the things mentioned, I can get khadas VIM3 more easily. What is Amlogic A311D and how does it compare to Odroid N2? Seems it can play Dolby Vision?