For nearly a year, we’ve been waiting for Android TV media players based on the latest AMLogic quad core Cortex A9 SoC, that’s been known as AML8726-M8, then M801/M802, and there’s AMLogic S802, which is the set-top box version of the SoC. M must probably stands for MID, and S for STB. Geniatech ATV1800 seems to never become available, and instead I’ve found out about two other Android TV boxes powered by S802 called Tronsmart Vega S89 and Eny ES8 that should sell very soon. The specs look great, but if you are into rather standard enclosures you may be disappointed…

Tronsmart Vega S89

The first one is Vega S89. It will be sold on Geekbuying, and has with the following specifications:

This hockey puck media player will come with a 5V/2A power adapter, an HDMI cable, and USB cable, and a user’s manual. It will run Android 4.4 Kitkat with stock home screen, support OTA function, Miracast, and DLNA. If 4K support is important to you, please note that it’s using HDMI 1.4b which limits the frame rate to 30 fps in UHD resolution. You’d need HDMI 2.0 for 2160p60 support. Price and retail availability is unknown at this point, but Geekbuying will received samples some time next week. You can check Tronsmart Vega S89 page for more pictures.

ES8 will be available with either 8 or 16 GB, and miss Bluetooth support and a micro USB port found in Tronsmart Vega S89. Price and availability are not available either. You can check Eny Technology ES8 page for a few more 3D renderings. The company sells the device on Alibaba.

The Antutu scores on an early sample of Geniatech ATV1800 was 25,000, and it goes up to over 30,000 on M802 based tablets such as Onda V975m. Rockchip RK3188 based devices only get around 18,000 in Antutu. The higher score is due to a new revision of Cortex A9 core (revision 4) that allows M802/S802 to reach 2 GHz, a much faster 6+2 core GPU, and more memory bandwidth. Another advantage with AMLogic SoCs is that XBMC support is likely to be better than for Rockchip or other silicon vendors’ ARM SoCs.

XBMC already supports Quad HD / 4K video playback using VAAPI and VDPAU on Linux, but there is not yet support for Quad HD / 4K skin resolutions in XBMC’s GUI engine, so for now you would have to only upscale 1080p skins to Quad HD / 4K resolution.

I don’t have any problem with debian, ubuntu
some frameworks as Qt4 and Qt5 with direct framebuffer access don’t have problems.
Main problem is Mali GPU driver that isn’t really good with X.Org (same problem as RockChip and any other)
And Amlogic VPU driver is pretty much push data to this pipe and you will see result result on screen (no OpenMAX,..)
And that is reason why they get 4K without any problem (zero memory copy)

But latest kernel(for new SoC) and other integration stuff aren’t open source
classic chines SOC company.

Can anyone tell me what is the best current Android box/stick that I should buy?
Should I wait for the Tronsmart Vega S89?
Mostly looking for something that can play 720p (at least) or 1080p really smoothly, via wifi if possible.
Thanks

@Marc
Products based on new SoC often have problems during the first few months, but firmware improves overtime. I’d guess you’ll be able to buy Veg S89 in March, and receive it in April.

For video playback many people complained about frame skip issue in RK3188, although there are some fixes in some of the ROMs, but not all… AMLogic AML8726-MX products are usually pretty good at video playback, but 1080p videos maybe not always play smoothly via Wi-Fi. It depends on your setup at home, and the bitrate of the video files you use. In my place, I can play videos up to 8 Mbps without problem via Wi-Fi. If you have high bitrate Blu-ray rips, then I’ve read most (all?) current Android TV box are not really able to cope even via Ethernet.

When I tested G-box Midnight MX2, I found it was pretty good, but some people have had issues, and really do not like the device. If you plan to use XBMC, check out xbmc forums.

I took debian wheezy image from somewhere I think from beaglebonehttp://elinux.org/BeagleBoardDebian
that you can easily burn on sd-card with fat(for kernel) + ext4 partitions (rootfs + kernel modules)
And I build kernel from amlogic sources.
And with standard kernel bootcmd you can point kernel to right partition with rootfs

this is pretty standard
linaro tools do it same way but with nice scripts that install kernel + modules + GPU drivers

@m][sko @CNX It’d be great if there were some tutorials &/ readymade images available to encourage people to develop Linux on these processors, given how powerful they are. (I guess though maybe they’re only ahead at the moment by releasing a quad core processor so late compared to other companies?)

I would have bought this but I can’t help thinking about the Allwinner A80 which is much more powerful and there’s also the good Allwinner community support.
Since I don’t care about the GPU the A80 is just fine for server duties.

i had a chat with the guys from your link cnx and they said next week they will inform me about selling mp-40 and that the price was $150USD which i think is over kill no way will i buy this box for that price when you dont know what kind of support they offer. also they recon in may they will have a allwinner octa core tv box

Until a unit with the S802-H chipset is available, I will not be buying.
I like the design of the eny M8 and S8, not so keen on the round s89 vega.

With a decent wifi chipset in the M8 and bluetooth(same as in the Trosmart) it has almost everything Icould wish for, but until I have seen a review and confirmed DD+DTS passthrough I will be holding off on buying.

Hopefully with the next generation of kit, we will get proper 4k with HDMI2.0, gigabit LAN and USB 3 connections.
I would pay $250 for a device like that.