Android TV Box Support

General Discussion
1

I’m wondering if some android TV boxes can get some official OSMC love, specifically the MXQ Pro or the Mini MX.

These boxes have great hardware and have OPENELEC already, but it’s just not the same as having proper support and updates. I’ve been testing the MXQ and it runs openelec really well and supports 4k but the firmware isn’t as optimizated and currently freezes from time to time.

2

Just did a quick search

It seems MXQ Pro and Mini MX are not all the same. About 50% are AML based and 50% are Rockchip based, which is a bit weird, as I’d at least expect the same SoC vendor.

There are no plans to support these boxes for a few reasons:

  • lack of documentation / ancient BSPs which would mean we could not guarantee the experience you would expect from OSMC on this hardware
  • NDA required to access BSP and HW docs which often requires you to be a HW vendor
  • More important tasks to deal with: this is the first request we’ve had for this HW, which suggests that there’s not much interest in an OSMC release for these platforms.

If someone wants to do an initial port, I can offer some guidance, but we don’t really have the resources, nor the contacts with these device vendors to do anything.

Sam

3

If I’m not mistaken the Mini MX I have seen so far are AML with the S905 SoC.

These boxes already have unofficial OPENELEC builds, I can’t speak about hardware or vendor support but Beelink seem to stand behind the hardware more so than other Chinese manufacturers.

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I can understand supporting the MXQ Pro would be difficult do to the different boards and configurations but the Mini MX seems like a good all in one platform similar to the Odroid.

4

S905 is just the SoC, but there are many revisions to these devices. Some use different WiFi chipsets etc. If you have a contact at Beelink that can provide us with a board and DT layout, then I can take a look. I’m doubtful there’s going to be a one-size-fits-all for S905. I did some investigating in packaging multiple DTBs in a single kernel image and this seems possible. You can pad 0x7ff and U-Boot can select the right DT to load, but unfortunately this will only grant two DTBs to be packed per image.

I think we will probably just pick the most popular S905 board, which will likely become the C2. I’m waiting for them to announce the C2+, and I am hoping they do, as I believe the S905 chip revision that they have used has some problems in sillicon with Hi10. I also promised that the next release of OSMC would be for PC, so that needs looking at first.

5

Thanks for taking the time to investigate, I’m not affiliated with Beelink so cannot provide any info.