Yes, in fact there was the same discussion on white artifcats in 1080i recently and someone tested with SW decoding - playback is slowed down so not an option.
Im getting a 2nd one 
TLDR: Get the Ugoos AM6B+ itās just the best option in general, especially then if you want to use DV Profil 7 FEL or 3D movies. If you looking for a media player now, just get the Ugoos AM6B+, donāt cheap out on any alternatives, that look good on paper, but don deliver the promised features.
Longer post that is based purely on my personal experiences.
Since, I now own on of every type on the list, guess I can say something to all of them.
S905X4-J is just your okayish middle of the road android tv box, on the android side of things, it works good for all stuff that is media play-back with the normal apps, you get from the google tv store. Itās not groundbreakingly fast, but fast enough, just donāt expect any miracles xD
Coreelec works fine, best go with an fast USB SSD to get the most out of it. The problem comes with the SOCs Revision d, for this reason, I would not really recommend it. I need to able to playback interlaced h264 stuff, and my SoC Rev is D, I need to go with the -ne branch of Coreelec.
For thatās fine, my TV canāt use DV anyway, so I donāt care about that. But for people wanting Profil 7 FEL in S905X4-J, better not wanting to decode interlaced h264 and VC-1 stuff. xD
S922X-J itās the somewhat older SoC, you get in the Ugoos AM6b+ Device, if you really need DV Profil 7 FEL thatās the Device to go for! Sure, you can also use the other branches on it like -ne, or -no and still have a really solid mediaplayer, just without DV. The other great development for this device was the visible cache for Kodi. S922X Ugoos AM6B Device Tree - Performance/Efficiency - Testing Needed This visible cache feature should become a standard, it lets Kodi behave much better when playing files in SW decoding mode, and make the load distribution better! (I mean, even the raspberry pi guys are doing this: Raspberry pi cache cpu0 )
It can even play 1080p AV1 SDR, in SW decoding if you need to.
S928X-J / S928X-K
Itās pretty new SoC, it will not support DV Profil 7 FEL ever, also does not support 3D! If you need any of this, this is NOT the SoC for you. The performance is a good step up from the S922x (well that was to be expected xD ) I didnāt test much on this platform so far, h264/h265 works solid on the last nightly -ne branch. Also did not see any h264 interlaced decoding problems. AV1 is hardware accelerated but I got some performance problems last time I tested it. (On the android side AV1 and AV1 with HDR10 sems to work fine) My guess it, itās pretty much the āwork in progressā SoC.
Still think itās an interesting hardware in terms of performance, I would like that amlogic would spill some information, about the Caches (L1/L2/L3?) of this SoC, and NPU part of the Chip. It might be interesting, to be able to access the NPU, to load a core that processes the image better than the android AI-PQ and AI-SR things. (Not sure if that is even possible to do.)
Iām not in the DV Profil 7 FEL business at all, since my setup does not support it, and I will continue to ignore it. I can understand the fuzz about it, and that people want to use it, so if you have the right TV with the possibility for it, do it.
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Very good information here, thank you. I own a DuneHD/Homatics S905X4 and confirm everything above. Using CE-NE works perfectly but no DV 7 indeed. CE-NG also works very well, with DV 7 but VC-1 and interlaced content get the white stripes bug. Iām quite satisfied with my setup, nothing big enough to complain.
A side benefit I get with CE-NG : The 3D/GL side of things seem to work better. While listening to music, I like the visual effects of the ProjectM addon (set it to ālowā quality rendering or itāll lag). On CE-NE, I could listen to about ~10+ tracks before getting Kodi to crash/restart at best or freeze the device at worst, requiring a power cycle. Nothing of this happens when no 3D/GL addon is being used (FishBMC, Goom, ProjectM, etc). On CE-NG, so far, no problem occurred so I guess 3D/GL support is better there.
The added cache nodes to the DTBs was for the most part debunked. How the SOC handles L1/L2 caching is baking into the SOC design. All the objective benchmarking that was done afterwards showed that there was no difference in performance.
The performance boost claims were all purely based on perceptual changes, some of which when objectively measured turned out to be no different. It was the same type of placebo effect of giving people two identical audio cables, hyping up the audio clarity of one, then asking which sounds better.
The effect of adding the the cache node to the DTB only exposed the values to the kernel.
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Using -ne does not mean that DV is gone, itās just that the FEL is discarded. In many cases, this is not a problem and the dynamic metadata, which makes DoVi better than regular HDR10, is still there.
Portisch has made a couple of fixes to AV1 hardware decoding and at least my test clips worked fine on the S928X box using CE21-ne. DoVi is also supported (profile 10 which equals to profile 8).
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But it does result in a picture that is different from the source material in many cases. I think there are different use cases for coreelec and that is completely fine. Many will rip or source files that are compressed etc and wonāt bat an eyelid at inaccurate playback so long as it looks ok. For them, or those who donāt have Dolby vision displays, then lack of FEL support is no big deal.
There are others however who want to see play media which fully replicates the disc. For people who use coreelec to play remuxes on Dolby Vision displays, I really donāt think we should downplay the lack of FEL on unsupported devices / versions.
IMHO itās a bit more subtle than just downplaying FEL support, there are other forces at play here and Iām pointing the finger to the studios. On an ideal world, youāre perfectly right, DV with FEL would give the best picture there is.
But, unfortunately, searching a bit through the web shows that a non negligible number of BluRay releases claiming to be DV P7 FEL are purely marketing BS as theyāre almost identical or barely better than their plain HDR10 counterparts. Some studios, for ālesserā releases they donāt deem good enough refuse to put the effort in providing proper FEL support for perfect picture quality, they just convert HDR10 to DV P7. Iāve seen a lot of people using dovi_tool/hdr10plus_tool plotting the histogram of some movies and not be overwhelmed by the result. BTW, the same applies to HDR10+ but less visible as there arenāt that many releases using that format on BR compared to DV.
Of course, most of the big movies will put the effort and the result will be stunning but just keep in mind that this is not all roses and daisies
Iām choosing between the AM6B+ and a mini PC for my LG G3 with a Sonos surround setup. Key needs:
ā¢ FEL video + TrueHD audio support.
ā¢ CEC control with LG Magic Remote (or a quality alternative remote).
ā¢ Ad-free 4K HDR YouTube compatibility.
Which is easier to set up and use (Kodi for local playback video Real Debrid + Torrentio)? Can I avoid needing a mouse/keyboard on a mini PC? Iāve also considered using my Xbox Series X for TrueHD but not sure if itās reliable. Any advice?
Outside Android boxes and RPi devices, you wonāt have native CEC support at all. No MiniPC have any kind of CEC support. You can of course use a CEC HDMI dongle in the middle but support will be limited.
FEL DV support outside some Android boxes in ATV or CE releases wonāt be available too.
All details here : CE-NG Dolby Vision (+FEL) for DV-licensed SOCs (s905x2, s922x/z, s905x4)
So I either suck it up and use the AM6B+ crappy remote or go with an Android Box that supports TrueHD audio, but not FEL P7 playback video and has a better remote? Or wait for a new device to release that may still not happen for years to comeā¦?
CEC is available on CoreElec so you can just use Magic remote on your Am6b+ like many others here do.
You can also program any remote you want in CoreElec so even if you donāt want to use CEC, you can still use an alternate remote vs the included one with Am6b+.
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Good to know. Is there an app I can download like smart tube or something that will give me ad free YouTube? I know it doesnāt have support for Streaming apps like Netflix. I do have ad free YouTube built in webOS via dev mode / homebrew setupā¦ but just curious if thereās an option for that on the Am6b+
Do you want a Box that can run on CE or Kodi? there is a difference.
you can dual boot Coreelec and Android, I do that and use Smartube and IPTV on it.
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There are a lot of options to achieve what you want, depending on your use case.
I can only speak for myself but all my wishes are fulfilled. I own a DuneHD Box R 4K, using CE-NG nightly, DV FEL is fully supported and CEC works perfectly too so I can also control CE with my TVās remote if I wish to do so.
My DuneHD Box R 4K sole use is to boot CoreELEC to play local content from a NAS, videos/movies/music and nothing else. I donāt give a ratās ass about AndroidTV nor any Android app nor any online content whatsoever. I donāt like the stock BT remote but I donāt care, I donāt use it! I purchased a IR remote fitting my needs (size and buttons layout) and coupled with a FLIRC USB dongle, configured with everything I need to control Kodi the way I want.
Conclusion: I have what I could call a dream setup, again for my own use, working perfectly well and granting me all the joy I could wish for for videos, movies and music
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Hey guys, need some more clarity as I havenāt made my decision yetā¦
Iām considering upgrading from my Google TV to a Homatics or Ugoos box running CoreELEC. I have an LG G3 OLED and a Sonos setup (Beam Gen 2, Sub Mini, Era 100s). The main draw is TrueHD audio and P7 FEL file support, which my current box canāt handle.
The downside is losing the convenience of the Google TV remote with built-in smart home controls for lights and other devices. Is it worth setting up one of these boxes for the audio/video upgrades, or should I stick with my current setup?
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Can you read the commands into kodi Key editor and still use your remote?
@bazzle are you asking me? I think you are 
I donāt use Kodiās key editor. With the FLIRC USB dongle I press a button on the remote (ie: Play/Pause) and map it to keyboard key āpā, āStopā (remote) to āxā on the keyboard so on and so forth. I also use ālong pressā on some remote buttons for a few things but need to be careful because depending on how long you keep the button pressed ends up with the āsingleā or ālongā press action.
For the cases where thereās no native keyboard shortcut in Kodi I map the button to an unsupported key (ie: outside the shortcuts list) and use the .kodi/userdata/keymaps/SOME_FILE.xml and map the action :
<keymap>
<global>
<keyboard>
<y mod="shift,alt">RunScript(/storage/path/to/script-name.py)</y>
</keyboard>
</global>
</keymap>
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do you mean Dolby TrueHD passthrough option? all my amlogic boxes, the older ones too can do that in CE. My Kinhang G1 does it on AndroidTV too (non configurable, tested with Netflix DD+)