Choosing a S905 / S905X / S905D / S905W / S912 box guide

  • I actually have a friend with the same nickname, we studied IT together. Dzięki!

    I didn't study IT. :(

    Btw, what about auto resolution/framerate switching? Only 1080p<->4K for entire S9xx line or maybe better for S905*?

    In my builds S905 supports PAL, NTSC, 720p, 1080i, 1080p and 4K with various frame rates.

    S912 supports 1080p and 4K with various frame rates.

  • I didn't study IT. :(

    I've checked, it's not you :D

    In my builds S905 supports PAL, NTSC, 720p, 1080i, 1080p and 4K with various frame rates.

    S912 supports 1080p and 4K with various frame rates.

    Thank you. What about material with black bars removed? Some content is not ideal 1920x1080, but 1920x(less than 1080) as black bars are sometimes cropped. Anyone? kszaq ? wrxtasy ?

    Edited 2 times, last by embrion (December 18, 2017 at 6:52 PM).

  • Thank you. What about material with black bars removed? Some content is not ideal 1920x1080, but 1920x(less than 1080) as black bars are sometimes cropped. Anyone? kszaq ? wrxtasy ?

    At first I thought you asked about screen resolution which has to be 16:9 as 99% of modern TVs have this aspect ratio. As for non-16:9 videos, you can scale them as you please: letterbox, pan&scan, custom crop etc.

  • Basically my question is what triggers resolution change? When you have 16:9 video, then it is 1920x1080 so can be detected without any problem. When you have 21:9 video, sometimes encodes are also 1920x1080 (just with black bars on the top and bottom of each frame, not croped) [no problem with that] and sometimes they are croped so 21:9 will be 1920x~822. My question is will it re-add those black bars to have full 1920x1080 and automatically switch resolution to 1920x1080 as well? It worked like that one Chromebox and Wetek Core.

    Short version: will 1920x822 (21:9 movie format) also trigger resolution change?

  • I bought a Pro S905x Android 6 Smart TV BOX Marshmallow Quad Core 8GB on ebay. $30, 8 GB emmc, 1 GB RAM. Should arrive in a week. I'll install Kszaq 8.1.1 LE Kodi build, report back on the experience. So far this seems cheap for a 905x box. It also comes with a wireless keyboard.

    Well try as I might, I can't seem to get the box to boot LE. I've installed terminal emulator & typed "reboot update", as well as the toothpick method. The toothpick method appears to read the SD card slot but on reboot boots android.

    Any help is appreciated.

  • Well try as I might, I can't seem to get the box to boot LE. I've installed terminal emulator & typed "reboot update", as well as the toothpick method. The toothpick method appears to read the SD card slot but on reboot boots android.

    Any help is appreciated.

    you might have tried some of these, boot from usb, try all ports, burn image using rufus, try another sd card.

    Confirm the exact box you have, ie processor, ram different device tree

  • you might have tried some of these, boot from usb, try all ports, burn image using rufus, try another sd card.

    Confirm the exact box you have, ie processor, ram different device tree

    I tried all USB ports. When using the toothpick method I could see it was trying to mount the SD card slot & failing, when I insert a SD card I don't see that error, so I believe its mounting & reading the SD card.

    According to the splash screen its a 905x CPU, and it was advertised w/ 1 Gig RAM, so I was just using the default dtb.img file.

    I imaged the USB drive & SD card with dd on a Ubuntu linux pc, I don't do MS Windows products.

    The exact box is in the original post. It can be searched on ebay with what was in the post. I believe the forum discourages links to hardware.

  • meadrocks Don't believe the splash screen, there are fake S905X on the market using RK3229 SoC. Check system info screen in Android.

    There was no CPU info in the About This Device in android, pulled it apart, the mainboard has a part # H124_V4.42, googling reveals its a Rockchip CPU. I've requested to return it. Thanks for your help!

    Edited once, last by meadrocks (December 20, 2017 at 8:45 PM).

  • I want one of these cheap boxes to watch HD content on the TV. As I have read, there are two popular SoCs s905X and s912. The first one has native drivers and a good overall performance and the second one despite being in theory much more powerful doesn't have native drivers (libhybris is used). Is s912 more powerful even using libhybris? Is Libreelec stable enough? If in the future I convert the box in a server which SoC would be better?

    If I want to watch Netflix HD on it I need that the box supports some special technologies (L1 and HDCP 1.x). Are these technologies available throught Libreelec or I need to use Android?

    Any sugestions for a cheap box with all these characteristics and Gigabit Ethernet? I have seen some MeeCool boxes but people say they are inconsistent with the hardware used (lack of reset button, different network card without Libreelec support, ...)