It is not all roses and daisies with TOX3 as it is delivered with a questionable quality TSL-1681 OEM 5V 2A power supply. No adequate mains filtering and very basic design. I did not trust it, opened it destructively to find my suspicions were justified and replaced it for a well filtered non EMI emitting self built shielded one.
An old 5V 2A SMPS from a Wetek Hub also worked out OK (just tried it out after checking voltage, current and barrel connector size).
Iām on the hunt for a new device for local playback of Blu-ray rips (P7 FEL + TrueHD) planning to switch to Kodi + CoreELEC for playback on my LG G3 OLED paired with a Sonos surround setup.
Hereās where Iām at:
ā¢ The AM6B+ seems solid and checks most boxes but feels a bit dated.
ā¢ The Homatics Box R 4K Plus looks promising, but itās stuck on Android 12 Beta and is reportedly slower.
ā¢ Iām covered for AV1 playback, ad-free YouTube, YouTube TV, and other streaming apps through webOS, so thatās not a priority.
Are there any new or upcoming devices in early 2025 that are worth waiting for? Preferably something future-proof, performant, and well-supported.
Appreciate any suggestions or insights!
I corrected your post, feel free to edit the way you want. But no mention of banned addons or repos in this forum.
Currently no any newestā¦
But sometimes, the newest ist
one/two step backwardā¦
I think the general consensus is not to expect FEL support on any upcoming devices. Just get the AM6B+. It works great and is fast enough navigating around the UI not to be an issue.
Be aware of that S905X4-J in rev d (e.g. HD Dune Pro Vision 4k) has issues with playback of H264 1080i (white artifacts) in combination with kernel 4.9 (CE-NG) which in turn is the only version still supporting DV FEL as in later kernel version 5.x Amlogic dropped support. So you will either get 1080i playback working properly with CE-NE or DV FEL with CE-NG but not both. Thanks to @YadaYada for this information.
Thanks goes to Blakey for having figured that out.
This is with HW acceleration right? Does 1080i playback work probably if H264 is done on software?
Yeah, the issue isnāt present when using software decoding. @Astrotrain it may be good to clarify the first post saying that interlaced VC-1 and h264 video requires software decoding on the s905x4 rev d (not rev b). I had thought that non-interlaced VC-1 hardware decoding worked ok on any s905x4 SOC version?
Or was the issue that non-interlaced VC-1 hardware decoding worked on both s922x and s905x4 (all revās), but that the AML VC-1 decoder interlaced it resulting in clarity loss, and only the s922x was powerful enough to software decode VC-1 in most cases?
The issue with the VC-1 video codec is driving me crazy. Been testing days on different media players with āNEā and āNGā.
I have been testing Band of Brothers season 1 episode 1 and I have only been able to get the Ugoos AM6B+ and Ugoos SK1 to actually play that pesky codec without any issues.
I tested the Dune HD Homatics Box R 4K Plus and Dune HD Pro Vision 4k, but using the Amlogic S905X4 SoC. Neither one could play that video without severe issues.
Have NOT tested any of my older S905X4 boxes to see it they play that VC-1 video codec.
I always used Emby for my player and it transcoded that codec, so it was not an issue.
Finding a media player that plays those VC-1 videos without issues is hard to find. I have a lot of Blue-Ray rips that have that video codec and I really NEED a device to play that codec.
well you say that the Ugoos AM6B+ can play that so problem solved? other one is the Nvidia Shield that does play VC-1 on hardware level.
I have not tested on my 2017 Shield. It has been retired for a long time.
This is known, VC-1 needs to be done in software, which only works smoothly on the faster S922X socs.
S905X4 isnāt powerful enough to software decode VC-1 to avoid the Kodi interlacing bug.
Presumably the s905x4 rev b can hardware decode VC1 smoothly without artifacts, but the video gets interlaced. Thatās not the end of the world, most people probably wonāt notice the difference unless looking for it.
There are a lot more options that the Shield and AM6B+ for VC1. The s928x and a311d2 can software decode it just as well.
I am starting to build my new Home Theater. I used to run a custom HTPC with Kodi and was able to play my 3D movies that I used MakeMKV to make. Then 4k came out and I was able to still use Kodi. Then HDR and DV started to become more mainstream and that is where the cliff came. I can do one or the other, not both.
So my goal is to have a device that can run 3D-MVC mkv rips, and DV7/HDR10+ rips, and stay in Kodi. (I love the interface, custom skins, animated movie posters, etc.)
I was looking at a Zidoo Z1000pro, and hardware wise its about the same as my Z9X, which works, but it uses ZDMC which is a custom Kodi that uses an external and is also somewhat slow. There is a lag in the menus and it just seemā¦ off? Not sure how to explain it. Someone in the AVS forum mentioned the Ugoos AM4B+ which seems very promising, and the more I look around, the more I find options.
This bring me to the question at hand. Will the Dune HD Max Vision 4k work with coreELEC? I can get a really good deal on one, and the formfactor matches whatās in my rack.
Iāll be pushing a JVC NZ7 Projector, and all my media is stored on 3 500TB NASās running Debian 11 with native SMB/NFS shares and a Docker cluster.
Thanks for your input!
-RS
Is the s905x4 beefy enough to SW decode HW264 1080i? If yes, how can I get Kodi to apply SW decoding to only this video format?
you want the Ugoos AM6B+ for your needs, no you canāt run CE on that Dune box and itās also worse hardware than the AM6B+.
Perhaps also mention a little disclaimer with this advice: Please note, DV FEL (aka DV profile 7) only works with the NG build and will not be included with future CE releases (viz CE 22).
My Beelink GT1 Ultimate finally died but to be honest it is really a mess to find out another good budget box. Most of the boxes pinned in the threads are at least $100.
How good is the TOX3 (Woopker tox3 tv box amlogic s905x4 tvbox android 11 4gb/32gb 2t 2r 2,4g/5g wifi 1000m bluetooth unterstĆ¼tzung av1 4k set-top - AliExpress) compared to the Beelink GT-1 Ultimate?
Any other suggestions around $50? What do you guys have?
The Beelink GT1 Ultimate has an Amlogic S912 SOC, Tox3 uses an s905x4
S912 - 8 x A53 CPU cores
S905x4 - 4 x A55 CPU cores
The s912 has ~15% better multi-core performance, and the s905x4 20-40% better single-core performance. Thereās more than just CPU though, the s905x4 is a couple generations newer.
S922X - 4 x A73 + 2 x A53 CPU Cores
The S922X has a ~250% single-core and ~60% multi-core advantage over the s912.
If price is a big factor, new 2nd gen FireTV Cubes (s922z) still pop up on eBay for $40-80. It does have to be new to unlock it to run CE. And youād likely want to include a USB hub with ethernet. Even with a 300Mbps connection, the Cube still loads & streams video as fast (even a little faster) than the s905x4 using a 1000Mbps connection.
Iām not sure, I donāt use the s905x4 for much other than debugging. The Homatics R 4K Plus thread could answer that.
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