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

    Quote from clarkss12

    I have the newest "L" box with the Bluetooth Voice Remote and it is awesome in Android. I have not tested that remote with LibreELEC yet, so don't know if it functions correctly. The remote is a combo Bluetooth/IR remote, slightly better than my Xiaomi Mibox remote.

    Edit: Made a video yesterday for people that wanted to know how the Bluetooth on the Mecool box worked... But again, have not tried this remote with LibreELEC, guess I should get off my lazy butt and try it.

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    Did you try this box with LE yet? I have this box too now, but cant get it to work neither with LE or CE. When i try to connect it with Bluetooth (device is called "RemoterATV3", then it first connects and then disconnects. I thought that many people have this remote working with LE and there should be no problems. I tried a remote.conf, but when it doesnt connect over Bluetooth, then it wont help me, i guess.

    Quote from blindhai

    Did you try this box with LE yet? I have this box too now, but cant get it to work neither with LE or CE. When i try to connect it with Bluetooth (device is called "RemoterATV3", then it first connects and then disconnects. I thought that many people have this remote working with LE and there should be no problems. I tried a remote.conf, but when it doesnt connect over Bluetooth, then it wont help me, i guess.

    Bluetooth will not work as LE needs detailed BT custom coding.

    But you can try copying the following remote.conf into the "Configfiles" directory of your LE device and reboot, and see if the IR part of that remote works:


    http://wrxtasy.libreelec.tv/mecool/

    Quote from sarno

    Hi guy, i have one MECOOL BB2 (not PRO so s912/2gb DDR) that uses LE on SD through update.zip . I have try the standard dtb file for S912 IN THIS POST and precisely THIS DTB FILE but not work. The file on MEGA hosting ON THIS POST is no longer available. I have this device so i need the correct dtb if is possible. Thank you.

    I'm not sure how you install Libreelec through a zip file. I use rufus & burn the image to usb, with coreelec there is a folder with device trees in.

    I don't know if the latest Libreelec build here [8.2.4.1] LibreELEC Kodi Krypton - S905 & S912 devices also has a folder with device trees.

    I've got a Beelink Minix MXIII I, which has performed admirably for the last year or so. But it struggles with some high bitrate 4k files (70GB John Wick 2 for example).

    What would a good upgrade with gigabit ethernet port be? I couldn't care less about wifi and remotes. Just a decent stable box that can stream proper 4k from my NAS :)

    I know this is a LibreELEC forum but for someone who plays large file.

    I have Infuse on the Apple TV 4K and that works very well with a really nice interface. It plays all my movies & TV programs from my NAS box including 4K movies up to 70gb in size with no probs


    It is more wife friendly compared to Kodi devices ( i also have a Wetek Play 2 with LibreELEC )

    Quote from beatwolf

    I've got a Beelink Minix MXIII I, which has performed admirably for the last year or so. But it struggles with some high bitrate 4k files (70GB John Wick 2 for example).

    What would a good upgrade with gigabit ethernet port be? I couldn't care less about wifi and remotes. Just a decent stable box that can stream proper 4k from my NAS :)

    I have the Beelink MXlll ll which works very well but I now have more recently got the Tanix TX9 Pro with its faster Octacore S912 processor, Gigbit Ethernet port, Bluetooth and dual band WiFi. The price for the 3/32GB box is very good too so look for about US$65 to US$70 or maybe less on promotion at times. Works well with the latest LE 8.2.5.1 with UHD, HDR and indeed streams 4K HDR material brilliantly from my NAS Drive too.

    The Voork Z6 box has I am told an identical main board just mounted the other way up so if you want to install the front display panel fix for LE then you have to make sure you have the right vfd.conf file as they are slightly different for the TX9 Pro and the Z6 (see other thread specifically related to this).

    It seems like first s905x2 based device hit the market X96 max.

    Is it worth pre-odering?

    Will it be supported by LE?

    Is Dolby Vision real this time?

    Is it worth waiting for s922?

    Any other pros and cons?

    Since there is a bump in the GPU core to yet another new design - and this part of the soc has always been the most problematic with Linux porting - expect the roll out of suitable LE/CE versions to be glacially slow. the only thing that looks particularly attractive to me is the USB3 support.

    No matter what they say - the S905D is still the best version of the soc for Libreelec.

    Shoog

    • Official Post

    Amlogic have started to upstream support for their next-gen S905X2/D2/Y2 and S922 platforms into the mainline kernel but it's a drip feed of commits and I doubt the reference boards I have will be usable for some time. The DRM driver will also need some rework (which depends on funded goodwill from somewhere). Other IP like the video decoder shouldn't require much effort and the audio architecture is common to the AXG audio platform which already has excellent upstream support (so little work required there). The GPU core is also easy as the driver packaging will reuse some of my recent experimental work and we lobbied Amlogic to license mali blobs this time around so there's no repeat of the S912 mali fiasco.

    So next-gen devices will initially depend on the Amlogic 4.9 buildroot kernel and amcodec. The 4.9 kernel is an evolution of the mucking fess 3.14 kernel; only it's been further hacked around Android specific requirements and there's really nobody anywhere poking fingers at it right now since all currently available hardware is supported on 3.14. It can probably be made to function with Kodi on Linux but you can expect a new generation of badly coded bugs to be present, and it's era will ultimately be shortlived as amcodec is due for removal between K18 and K19 (and Kodi devs are not intending to have such a huge gap between the K18 and K19 releases). Next-gen devices are probably best left on Android until mainline kernel support matures.

    For extra fun there is a general drive among box manufacturers towards the AndroidTV codebase instead of AOSP and in theory this means next-gen devices with locked boot configs. There will be AOSP devices that can be used (hopefully some nice board devices) and the list will be shorter than people are used to, but less confusing choice isn't a bad thing.

    On the positive for S912 users; panfrost has now rendered the Kodi home screen for the first time (see pic above) although we're still a long way from something usable. Progress is still progress though :)

    I'm so confused. I've read too much and now I can't figure out what to get. I have an M8s pro L coming for myself, but I want to buy a new box as a present for my friends so they can play local content off a hard drive easily instead of burning everything to dvd (!!).

    But I don't know what to get. I just want a cheap box since it will only need to:

    • Play regular 1080 content (some x265 probably)
    • Play from a usb hard drive
    • Be easy to use and not annoying or slow or bad remote
    • Have wifi so it can scrape content

    It seems like every time I pick a box it has some issue, like "oh yeah this box is great but obviously wifi doesn't work on it". Or I get one that the remote doesn't work and maybe I end up needing two usb ports (one for remote dongle and one for usb hard drive) and the device only has one.

    Can anyone recommend a box? Will an S905W be good enough for this application? Or should I try and get an s905X or 912? Also it seems like a common issue that the included remotes don't work on LE, is that correct? If so, I have a few options; I could find one with an LE compatible remote, buy a cheap remote (xiaomi?) or they can have either my spare MX3 air-mouse ebay thingy or the voice remote from the M8S pro L if that works (I'm getting an A2 lite).

    Maybe I'm overthinking this and an M8S pro W is a good choice, or maybe a KM8 P?

    Apologies if this is not an appropriate place for this post, just not sure if the W will do the trick, or the X or the 912...

    Quote from CaptainLeezee

    But I don't know what to get. I just want a cheap box since it will only need to:

    Play regular 1080 content (some x265 probably)
    Play from a usb hard drive
    Be easy to use and not annoying or slow or bad remote
    Have wifi so it can scrape content

    Tried and Tested by many members over a long period.

    Tanix TX5 Pro

    Amlogic S905X 2GB/16GB

    802.11AC WIFI LAN

    About $47 USD

    Quote from CaptainLeezee

    I have an M8s pro L coming for myself, but I want to buy a new box as a present for my friends so they can play local content off a hard drive easily instead of burning everything to dvd (!!).

    But I don't know what to get. I just want a cheap box since it will only need to:

    • Play regular 1080 content (some x265 probably)
    • Play from a usb hard drive
    • Be easy to use and not annoying or slow or bad remote
    • Have wifi so it can scrape content

    Have the newer version with the voice remote of the M8S Pro L myself and have to say, i wouldnt buy it again for Kodi. It does not work out-of-the-box with Kodi from a sdcard, only the IR remote works with it and this is laggy as hell. Can only press the buttons slowly, when i am too fast, then the box responses far too late and misses some inputs from me.

    I have tried the xiaomi remote then, but this does not connect to the Box whether under Kodi or Android. After a restart i have to manually connect (with the help of the other remote) the xiaomi remote.

    Maybe you are better off, when you look for a wireless remote with an extra dongle, when you want this or any other box, where the rmote does not work for you.

    The Tanix 5 Pro looks decent though. It is maybe a bit slower than the M8S Pro L, but should be fast enough for your needs.

    Okay thanks for the comments. The Tanix TX5 looks good, I'm not seeing any in the usual spots (Gearbest etc.), are they discontinued? I have found a couple on eBay though so should be able to get one.

    It's possible that I won't even use the M8S Pro L myself now. I won't have too many issues with the remote (I have an A2 Lite remote coming) but since I have recently converted my Windows i3 machine to an LE only build it has been a joy to use. To change to the TV box requires that the windows box gets turned into a NAS box and networked to the M8S, and just introduces a whole lot more complexity into the system.

    I don't know if the Tanix would be much slower than the Pro L, I think for vanilla LE the 905X is good to go, I only got the 912 so I could mess around with the Android TV firmwares.