Few questions regarding amilog tv-boxes and libreelec

  • Hello.
    I try to get grips about the whole Amilog TV-box subject.
    I have setup of a mythtv backend mediaserver and couple of raspberries running libreelec front end in my flat and it is working great. Now I want to set up same kind of functionality to my father, who lives in different town. I could share my mythtv backend to him over internet, but that would not be a cost effective solution because of the bandwidth and tuner requirements, so I found a Amilog TV box with DVB-T2 tuner, that should at least in theory be capable of running KODI the same way I have things set up at my home.

    Main questions I have at the moment are:
    Libreelec builds don't currently support DVB tuners, am I right?
    There exists a Openelec build by some one called Alex that does support integrated DVB tuners, at least for some models?
    There are several different models of Amilog TV-boxes with different hardware. How does one identify these models?
    Should I, at least in theory, be enable to patch up some sort of image to my device, that supports the integrated DVB tuner and has reasonably up to date Libreelec?
    If I get my hands on the Openelec by Alex, and it works with my hardware, can I update Libreelec over it and maintain the DVB tuner support?
    Where I can get more information about the the different boxes, their drivers and kernel module development?

    I don't consider my self a expert by no means, but I am not a total noob either when it comes to linux development, compiling kernels, linux drivers, kernel modules etc. Most of all I am eager to learn, so I am not asking a ready made image here, just information so I can learn and in time hopely chip in.

  • Alex (sukovalex/kerber) was creating OE builds for some Amlogic (not Amilog) based boxes in the past (and maybe LE builds in the near-future) and has private access to some reverse engineered DVB driver code that is not currently available in any LE builds, but once the driver code has evolved further the code should be made public (under GPL) and we can maybe include support. There are no guarantees on when that will happen.

    Generally LE (and OE before) supports a range of DVB devices; particularly USB devices that could be used on a variety of platforms (not just Amlogic) but there are many DVB devices from many vendors in circulation (more than we can keep track of) so we cannot give a more specific answer on support unless you tell us the specific chipset that's inside a specific box.

    Edited once, last by chewitt (August 8, 2016 at 4:53 PM).