[GTALUG] glittery cheap but useless toy computers

D. Hugh Redelmeier hugh at mimosa.com
Fri May 4 13:49:48 EDT 2018


The price of this looks very attractive:
<https://www.zapals.com/nexbox-a95x-tv-box-4k-android-7-1-amlogic-s905w-quad-core.html>
- US$23.99, with free (very slow) shipping, probably no tax
- only FullHD
- 1G RAM, 8G eMMC (a little light)
- Amlogic S905w: quad core Arm Cortex A53 processor; penta core Mali 450MP 
  GPU.

There are a lot of cheap boxes meant for running Kodi and this is one of 
them.

Technically, they run Android and easily hook up to your TV.  But they 
don't run Android TV (a subtle but important difference).  Because of 
"Digital Rights Management", they cannot run Netflix at a good resolution.  
I don't remember if YouTube also limits them.

So what's left?  Unauthorized content discovered through Kodi plug-ins.  
I've never tried this.  I understand that there is a large turnover in 
plug-ins as they get taken down.

For TV use, I much prefer a Xiaomi Mi Box with genuine Android TV
(US$70 from US Walmart).

BUT.  The raw hardware for these cheap boxes is interesting.  Faster
than a Raspberry Pi.  And these come with a box, remote control, and
power supply.  Expandability and openness in general is a lot worse.

The worst thing is that all their GPUs are proprietary (and a few other 
things too) so you cannot drop an ordinary Linux on them.

I think that they all use uboot and device tree, but in an idiosyncratic 
way, adding to the difficulty.

I bought a (less) cheap S912 box that I intend to play with.  Apparently 
you can run Linux on these if you don't need video output.  I won't give 
links because I don't know which efforts are the best.


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