New toy: MK808B Android TV Box

[digitalwanderer]

Picked up one of these MK808B thingies for my wife's TV for her birthday along with a little mini-remote thingy and a cheap 32MB microSD and it's been a really nice little multimedia playing solution for her TV. Thing is I still don't have it set up very well, and it is just sort of annoying-as-hell and a blast at the same time to try and setup and play with, if y'know what I mean.

Out of the box it works well at playing anything off the stick just like it would on my PC; avi, mp4, mkv, she'll play anything I toss at her. The problem I'm having now is tying it in to my network so it can stream content off our PCs, I think I'm trying to find a way to tie the 'droid into win 7's homegroup rather than do the sensible thing and just set up a server on my PC...but again I'm having lots of fun getting confused and messing with it so it's all good.

I've flashed the thing 3 times so far; put a custom copy of Jelly Bean on it and then took it back down to a custom 4.04 just for giggles. Incredibly easy to play with, and lots of info out there about it, just figuring out how to make it do what I want now. I have a feeling it'll be pretty alright when I get done with it.

I wasn't expecting much when I first ordered it, but damn it packs a whole lot into basically a dongle! Fun toy, would recommend.

 

[Malo]

Try XBMC for Android on it.

 

[digitalwanderer]

Will do, thanks.

 

[Mariner]

I don't think XBMC running on RK3066 has support for hardware video decode yet, does it? I've got an RK3066 tablet (which I never seem to use!) and last time I looked, this wasn't supported. You can configure XBMC to run an external player with hardware decode support, but you lose some of the flexibility in this case.

Of course, XBMC decode support may have arrived since I last checked!

 

[Pressure]

I hate to ask but why didn't you buy one of the hundred dedicated media players, like the Boxee, Roku, Apple TV and so forth?

I would be shunned out of the bed and on to the couch for such a present heh.

Can it run Plex?

 

[Mariner]

I hate to ask but why didn't you buy one of the hundred dedicated media players, like the Boxee, Roku, Apple TV and so forth?

I would be shunned out of the bed and on to the couch for such a present heh.

Can it run Plex?

Why would you buy one instead of a dedicated device?

Lots of reasons. It's much cheaper and much more flexible (for the geek!) than the bespoke devices (you can even install full linux distros). In comparison, the dedicated players are locked down so tight that you are limited in what you can do with them.

It all really depends what you are looking for. The dedicated devices will provide good functionality with deliberately hardwired limitations but the minimum of effort. The Android TV sticks/boxes are hugely flexible and capable - if you're willing to expend the effort getting the setup right. And they are ridiculously cheap. :smile:

At the moment, it's just a pity that full support isn't there for the RK3066 devices in XBMC. A quick search indicates that beta libstagefright support for devices with these chips is now available. Once this is stable and integrated in a main XBMC release, it will be much easier for the casual user to set them up as well. I'd also imagine there is the possibility that an OpenELEC version will become available in due course for the absolute novice.

Plex is pretty much based on XBMC so I'd assume that the level of support for RK3066 devices will be around the same at present i.e. at beta level.

 

[tuna]

I use a RP with raspbmc. Works pretty good so far, the only thing that does not work is downloaded Korean and Jap tv-programs in .tp and .ts containers.