no, not certified Android TV.
Ok. Thatās what I thought.
Iām wanting to get a AndroidTV certified box and right now itās either the Homatics box or the Dune Homatics box. But until I get one of these I can use my Xbox Series X for streaming apps.
And I want one to play my digital media and my choices are below.
Which box is going to have the best PQ for HDR content (HDR10+ and DV)?
X96 x10 (8gb version) - I canāt find the pro version that was mentioned above.
Ugoos SK1
Ugoos AM8 Pro
Zidoo Z9X 8k
Zidoo Z9X Pro
Dune HD Pro Vision 4k
Dune HD Premier 4k Pro
AM6B+ or if you need Android TV then Homatics box R 4K+ as itās mentioned in first post.
My own inclination would be to buy one Certified box for Android and another for CoreELEC. Android TV 14 is coming out soon and I would wait for the wave of Android TV 14 boxes. Homatics has been trying to bring Android 12 to their boxes for a year and not doing so well.
Currently, the AM6B+ is the best CoreELEC box and the only true replacement for a disk based player.
Minix dropped a cryptic update saying that they are bring FEL to their S928X-J box, but then later described it as ābackward compatibility support.ā Even if the S928X-J gets FEL support. It will take a few months to bring the same level of support.
Thereās no perfect box and the first post attempts to spell out the dilemma for you.
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This is what I was wanting to do. And even more now that you said they will be releasing AndroidTV 14 boxes soon.
I just assumed there were newer boxes that would perform better than the Ugoos AM6B+. But I guess Iām wrong. That box seems to be best CE box according to everyone.
Would it be a good idea to wait for the Minix box?
The Minix firmware will be in October. If they bring true FEL support, then the S928X-J will become the best box. If not, the AM6B+ will remain the champion. Only time can tell.
Unless, you have a pile of FEL content that you want to watch right now, I would wait a little.
Edit: The new Google TV box is launching tomorrow. SEI should follow soon.
Ok. Yeah Iām going to wait see what happens with that Minix box next month.
Iāll take look at the Google box. What is SEI? Iām new to this and still leaning.
I made a home theater room and want take advantage of the new tv and surround system. That is why Iām trying to find a box to use.
To be honest Iām not sure if my content uses FEL or not.
SEI is a major OEM manufacturer of TV boxes and makes the Homatics.
Dolby Vision FEL is an encoding found on some UHD discs that splits the image into two parts. Very few players can combine the layers which is probably why Dolby is trying to forget it. Itās one of those technologies that sounded good on paper and is a complete headache in real life. However, it does provide the best picture quality and is critical for some discs.
Look around and read up. Itās a lot to learn and no one person or site is the expert.
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One important consideration regarding the AM6+/U22XJ/2nd gen Cube, is that they use a 2017 processor/SOC (actually a 2019 revision of that SOC). CE has supported this SOC for years, and that support comes to an end with CE 21. Thereās no CE-NG 22 coming. The s922x/z will be able to use CE-NO 22, but without DV playback (very unlikely to ever change).
The AM6+ is on Android 9, and that will not change. Buy it for what it offers now, donāt expect much future development from CE or Ugoos. If you are cost conscious the 2nd gen Cube costs 1/3 the price, and offers identical video playback, at the cost of more setup steps. The Cube also offers full DRM support on the FireOS/Android side, and Magisk.
The S905x4 SOC is the most future proof in terms of software development. It will be getting AndroidTV 14 (kernel 5.15), which means itās the only available Amlogic SOC right now that is guaranteed to get DV playback in CE-NO. CE-NO is the newest build-line. Not even the s928x is certain to get a DV module for kernel 5.15 (CE-NO).
With the s905x4 you also get AV1 support. So Iād say that the s905x4 is the most flexible in terms of past and future support. It works on CE-NG, CE-NE and CE-NO (with DV support to come).
The main argument for the s922x/z is a faster SOC. The s905x4 can also do DV FEL in CE-NG, but it just got that support a couple weeks ago, so there may be some bugs to work out. However itās 95% of the way there already.
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Iām not entirely sure that support on the S922X-J will stop with CE21. In the post discussing the future of CE, Portisch wrote āIn case we will not be able to obtain a dovi.ko module compatible with the 5.15 kernel in time for CoreELEC-22.0, we may restore the Amlogic-ng builds for applicable SoCs only.ā Overall, I feel like the CE team wants to drop support for -ng, but it will not stop supporting SOCs that support FEL such as the S922X-J and the S904X4-J. If they stop supporting the S922X-J with CE21, then FEL support will also end on the S904X-J with CE21 because both depend on the -ng branch.
It seems that Dolby required FEL support in kernel 4.9 and dropped this requirement in 5.X. Indeed, there are several bugs that need to be fixed in kernel 5.X to enable FEL support even with a compatible dovi.ko module.
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Do 2nd gen Cubes do TV-LED DV like the ugoos? is it possible to install directly on to internal storage or are you running Core from a USB?
The S928X thread is locked, so unsure if this is the right place to mention I tested a X96 X10 box, and contrary to whatās in that thread, my non-Pro 4GB/32GB variant also supports DV. There are issues w/how slooowly DV videos do start playing, and a handful of HDR videos exhibiting bad artifacts.
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Plan for the worst, hope for the best. Portisch has said CE-NG is EOL a few times since then. Thereās no CE-NG 22 development on github. Whether that changes or not, nobody buying a s922x/z now should expect any updates after CE-NG 21.
In the context of CE, the Cube and AM6+ have identical SOCs, and SOC features like video & audio playback are also identical. TV-LED DV, yes.
Storage can be moved to the eMMC on any CE device, Cube included. The difference is that this still requires booting from USB, but CE is almost entirely running from RAM+eMMC.
Read about limitations & requirements here. The limitations can either be cheaply supplemented, or arguably donāt matter for typical CE use.
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Is the Homatics Box R 4K Plus still outputting fake TV led DoVi, or did the recent update affect that as well?
Wait, what?!?
Why stopping support for the only chipset that currently does it all? Except for YouTube where is content requiring AV1?
AV1 is not required for YouTube, VP9 works too.
I know. Thatās why I wrote āwhere is contentā.
Every scene release is in HEVC or AVC.
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yeah I also mentioned it previously, sure some streaming services uses it too, Iām not saying more supported codecs are bad, but as Iāve understood it AV1 wonāt never be a thing for future Blu-ray discs anyway, so remuxes will still be hevc and sure you will have those who saves their remuxes on harddrives and maybe converts it to AV1 but personally I donāt use storage for my media collection, but I still have both AM6B+ and Homatics box.
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This page shows exactly the opposite, though.
https://wiki.coreelec.org/coreelec:ce_dev_cycle
There is no more NG development but S922 is clearly listed among chipsets supported under NO.
Or am I reading the tables wrong? Or maybe you were referring just to NG updates.
yeah looks like you need to find a brand new one due to unlocking the boot loader which is bit harder here in the UK, brand new ones going for Ā£200 on ebayā¦ I can get them used etc but not knowing the which version of software its running on is a bit hard.