X96Air TV Box Review - Android and Armbian S905X3 like Odroid C4/Attention, No More Armbian Support!
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- Опубліковано 29 вер 2024
- X96Air TV Box Review - Android and Linux (Armbian)
!!! No more Armbian for this box !!!
For Armbian support, buy an SBC that is supported.
My wifi was at 2.4Ghz. That's why 4K60FPS didn't work well. With Linux I'd have noticed that immediately. Greetings.
I have the T95Max plus with 4gb/64GB S905x3 also is there any other OS or Android roms I can run on my box? I've been looking only thing ive ever been able to run on it is EmuElec and I heard I can't even do that now since the one single update my box got it still runs android 9 I think
These TV Boxes have an unbeatable price/performance ratio.
The S905X3 is so cheap because it is very close to releasing an update.
I will wait another 2 months to buy the new S905X4 with AV1 codec support.
I'm also looking forward to the S905X4. I hope/think Hardkernel is going to make an Odroid C3 with it. Would be a great SBC. These SoC's have become unbeatable in their power consumption and heat characteristics. I love SBC's that consume very little, and don't need extra cooling. Only Amlogic that pulls it off these days. Greetings.
Скажите пожалуйста, пробовали ли установить openmediavault и получилось? У меня не вышло, что только не пробовал, весь инет наверно перешерстил, поболлшей части забугорные форумы и мануалы, везде одно и тоже.
Нет. На этой коробке не пробовал. Я отдал их двоюродному брату. Так что не могу проверить. Я не знаю, работает ли armbian-config softty на изображениях balbes.
Может попробовать это. forum.openmediavault.org/index.php?thread/22908-omv4-on-arm-boards-kind-of-a-how-to/
@@NicoDsSBCs в софти уже нету omv Гляну вашу ссылку, спасибо.
Hi NicoD thanks for your video, is wifi working good in armbia? Because if it works good i will buy it. Tell me please
Hi. No, it's not working for all X96Air boxes. Many use different hardware for the same type. And there's no official Armbian support for this SoC. It's just a few who try to keep amlogic support going for tv-boxes. They have great SoCs. But biggest problem is that eMMC is priority vs SD. Means if there's no boatloader on eMMC it's bricked. So I wouldn't advice to install armbian to eMMC either. See for Rockchip tv boxes on tv-box subforum at armbian for better suported types.
Better to buy a good SBC if you want good official armbian support. TV-Boxes are a fork project maintained by one guy.
SBCs have the full Armbian dev team behind. So more chance of things working well. I'd go for an RK3399 like NanoPi M4V2. My favorite, the one I'm using now. Best I/O of all SBCs and good cpu performance. Mainline getting close to being a desktop replacement. Legacy is there.
TV boxes are great for their media capabillities. If we can make armbian run on it for light tasks then that's a plus. But don't buy it just for that. It'll save you a lot of time trying to get things working. Greetings.
hello, wifi as well as full gpu acceleration work? beautiful work excellent
No idea. I gave away this box and on another S905x4 I only run Android for gaming.
The maintainer of Armbian for tv-boxes has given up his support for Amlogic devices. So it isn't adviceable to buy this for running Linux. Better buy an Armbian supported sbc.
Problem with tv-boxes and Linux is that the producer uses different components for the same model. So having everything working is a game of chance.
Greetings.
Post video from install firmware on this device
Hey Nico, I have other question: you tried Box86 on this Tv Box? I follow Pi Lab's channel and I'm very interested on this project.
Hi, there are no linux graphics drivers for this box yet. Box86 needs that, so for now it will not work. Greetings.
Hi Nico, my new X96 Air does'nt start, after the blue x96 Air logo apears, it stops with the message
'Media Box Launcher keeps stopping' and it's inpossible to get any farther.
Is there any solution to get to the standard opening screen as shown in your video? THX
Hi. Take a look here. Greetings.
www.getdroidtips.com/stock-firmware-x96-air-tv-box/
Hey Nico, you need octopus app or similar to play android games with keyboard and mouse. One quick question: no sound output in armbian with the av connector?
Hi. I had installed octopus, but I didn't find how to get it to work. It constantly complained about things, and asked me to watch commercials, which I didn't want to.
The av connector also doesn't work yet in Armbian. We'll have to make a seperate dtb file for the x96air so these settings can be adjusted for this box.
I'll check again later to make mouse and keyboard work, there should be a free app for that. And maybe see if there's games that support keyboard and mouse. That's also why I hate Android, I don't have a smart-phone, and to use it with mouse and keyboard is such a bad experience. Greetings
Greetings, Nico. For future SBC or STB, could you measure the power draw too? Thanks.
Hi, I normally do that, but every video there's one thing I forget. I don't have the box anymore, can't measure it. I gave it away to a nephew. Greetings.
Slightly confused, a small write up would help a lot. According to the video at 6:37 you are installing "Armbian_19.11.3_RK3399-tv_bionic_current_5.4.1_20191213.img.xz" image. That image is for the Rockchip 3399 and not the Amlogic S905x3 chip which is used in the X96 Air TV box.
Geeting from Vietnam, NicoD. I accidentally flash armbian on emmc of my TX5pro 2019 ( s905x2). Do you know how to re-flash Android TV back on emmc, I've aldready had ATV 9 image made by @daivietpda
Lot of info
NicoD, we URGENTLY need a new video, how to change language back to English from Chinese/Korean etc. I don't know what I did but it is now in Chinese, I'm Googling ;-) (only kidding for the new video, will work it out )
Thanks NicoD, but files "s905x3boot" is not working in the lastest version ( Please adjust the color to normal)
can i safe flash new armbian version rk+aml+av(aarch64 v8) on that to avoid brick device?
Is there one of these Armbian installs for the X96 Max +?
Is this SBC support AV1 codec ?
No, the Mecool KM6 has AV1 codec. Anything with the S905X4. Greetings.
@@NicoDsSBCs Thank You.
So Linux is possible but quite limited, to summarize? I'm kind of lost on what aspects of the OS experience you would be missing out, I'll have to watch that part again. Would be great if you did more videos about this TV box if new interesting stuff to do with it comes up. Just bought one and is in its way!
Hi, for all productivity tasks Linux is good. Only fancy gaming and high res video is not possible. This will be possible in the near future.
I gave away my tv box to my nephew. He can do a lot more with it than I. I don't use Android. And I've got +30 SBCs to play with. If he's found cool things I could ask to bring it and then make a video. He's more into Android and setting that up. Greetings.
@@NicoDsSBCs sounds like it would do perfect for a portable mini PC then!
@@mgg7756 Yes, you could use it for that. You could buy a usb cable for it and run it on a power bank. It consumes nothing and would last for hours. I use an SBC with a faster SoC made by the same company for that. The Khadas VIM3, amazing performance for very little power consumption. Greetings.
@@NicoDsSBCs really interesting. Thanks and keep up the good work.
Just realized the one I've ordered is the x96 Max plus (s905x3). More or less the same I guess
Hello
I am interested to have armbian on this box but found nothing to make it work
Do you have any links for dtb and image file?
Many thanks
No. There is no more Armbian support for Amlogic TV boxes. I wrote it in the video title and discription.
The person who did all the work got tired of it since he wasn't being supported by any manufacturer or user. Check the tv-boxes club on the Armbian forum for more info. I've not kept up with it the last months. Maybe there's somebody else keeping up with it, but I don't know. If you really need it, see to find older images from balbes150. There you can get it to work, but do not update/upgrade or things might fail. Greetings.
how to get android on Pi?
Hello Nico!! Do you have de old version of 19.11.3? Becasue I tried to find the old version and I coudn´t get It...
No, I don't have any old versions. I gave away this box to a friend. So I'm not aware on software for it. Greetings.
@@NicoDsSBCs Thanks for answer! I will try with other versions.
How do you open the boot partition in windows? I can’t open the sd card on Windows 10
Also, when I use ext2fsd to open it, there is only a bunch of folders, one of them is boot but no .ini files on it
what do you think? is better rock pi4 or raspberry pi 4 than this tv box?
Performance wise both
Thanks NicoD this is a GREAT little box I!! Very impressive and amazing for the price. Great review as per usual I'm always amazed at how much knowledge you have on these SOCs and the SBCs that use them. Thanks. How did you find out about this box and did you know in advance it would boot Armbian ? I know I'm curious but it is amazing the things you come up with, always very interesting NicoD.
P.S. Perhaps you could include the file names and what you have to change on the SD card before trying to boot Armbian in the comments?
Hi Jerry. I follow the news about new SoCs. I'm actually more looking forward to the S905X4.(And more to the RK3588) But that's not out yet. On 11/11 it were big sales. I often look thru the TV-Boxes on Ali, but never bought one. Now the price was too good not to buy it. I was too curious to this SoC. I first wanted to desolder the ram and eMMC and put it on my khadas VIM3. But now I don't want to destroy the tv-box and risk the vim3. I'll add the dtb name to the discription. Greetings.
I bought one yesterday, arrives in a couple of weeks. I'll probably be rewatching this video a few times again ;-). I saw some reviews that say the Ethernet card is slow and that it gets hot - mine will be mainly for Android TV / Kodi (Xanax) / Plex and all the Cinema/TVShows/Movie APKs, I'm looking forward to it!
Hi Jerry. Indeed, the ethernet is only 100Mbit/s. I show that on my wardrobe. I don't have ethernet in my room so didn't test. I've got to move everyth!ing downstairs to test ethernet. With a cheap USB gigabit ethernet adapter you can give it GbE.
I gave away mine as newyears present to my nephew. It fits his needs a lot more. He watches netflix and plays games in Android. He also plays on the stock market. With Android there's some apps for that. So I installed those for him.
It does get 86°C maxed out for about 45 minutes. That might seem high, but when used as tv box there's almost no app that uses the CPU to the max constantly. So I see no problem there. The raspberry pi's overheat a lot more while not in a case. I bought mine since I had such a great deal. I hope yours was a good deal too.
In my limited experience with Android, this was the best I've seen. A fully installed Android with the google play store, UA-cam and Netflix apps. Tho I didn't have much patience to learn to know Android well.
It was with pain in my hart I gave it away. I'll probably buy a S905X4 soon to replace it. Good luck with it, I hope you'll like it. Greetings.
@@NicoDsSBCs thanks. I have a Devolan Hub (via electricity cables) between ground floor and TV room and it works well with Apple TV etc so it probably won't affect me.
You're a nice uncle. When you see the X4 come out, ,send me a mail and I'll have a look, perhaps I can one for you and one for me!
Jo says I'm being stupid and should buy an Nvidia Shiled TV PRO but can't find stock,, that is why I bought the X3. My MiBox works fine but it is very slow with Kodi.. As I said, I'll be watching your Video again and again when I get mine, in the mean time, let me know wen you see the X4! Cheers
@@rocteur The first S905X4 has come out. There's no huge difference with the S905X3, except it's got AV1 4K60fps decoder. It runs Android 10, and has a little bit faster CPU. But it's best to wait for the cheaper brands to bring it out.
Of course the NVIDIA Shield is a lot better for Android. It is a lot more powerful than any other tv-box, and a lot more expensive. But it is also a closed source design. You can only run their Android on it, no Linux or anything else. For you it might be a good choice. I don't like it when I can not run what I want.
I'm hoping some good new SBCs will be released the coming weeks/months.I'm waiting for the RockPiX what will be a good X86. And I think there will/should be an Odroid C3 announcement with the S905X4 I hope/think. Greetings.
Ive considered getting either one of these or an rk3399 tv box to use as a thinclient.
Hi. I love the rk3399 SoC. I use the NanoPi M4V2 as main desktop. But it needs a lot of cooling to not overheat. For that the amlogic SoCs are a lot better for a tv box. Even the S922X which is much faster than the RK3399 needs less cooling than the RK3399. Greetings.
Is possible to install armbian on emmc?
Yes. But then you loose Android and all the functionallity of it. There's a .sh file I think in the root of armbian to install to eMMC. Read the instructions on the Armbian forum-tv boxes-aml...
@@NicoDsSBCs but I can revert and install Android after right?
@@marine1718 It is possible you might brick it. It is possible to reinstall android. I haven't done it, but I heard of people bricking their box with it. That's why I didn't take the risk.
@@NicoDsSBCs i bought a diferent box with s903x3 and 4gb of ram for 30€ when it arrives I will try it
86 c and no throttling nice little tv box 2 or 4 ram 16 >64emmc base 32 € not bad decent find and good bang for the bucks for that analogic device
Hi William. I do like it a lot. I didn't need it, but couldn't resist with those specs. The eMMC module alone is almost worth hat much. I first thought to use it as donor board to take the ram and eMMC off and solder to another board. But now I like the box/SoC too much for that. I could take it with me on my trips. Incredible low consumption, well protected and no overheating. More than enough to watch movies and browse the internet. Greetings
原生X96 air tv box安卓9.0机顶盒S905x3电视播放器Netflix谷歌8K
¥259.00
淘宝价
¥254.00
店铺促销
4+64GB 双频WIFI+蓝牙
4+32GB 双频WIFI+蓝牙
2+16GB Is it this one?
Yes it is. Mine is the 4+64GB model. No idea what that price is. Greetings.
@@NicoDsSBCs 230RMB，32.83美元。中国广东制造，外贸产品质量不错。比小米国际性价比，230RMB, $ 32.83. Made in Guangdong, China, the quality of foreign trade products is good. Better price than Xiaomi International