Tronsmart TV Box Ara X5 in August with Cherry Trail Z8300 Windows 10

[Kyrie]

It's just a synthetic test.

It is not just synthetic test. Thatmean this box will trottle in any 3D game. Any good boxes with Z8x00 predecessor Z3735F (like Minix Z64, etc) can work unlimited time in 3D games (and unlimited LinX and AIDA64) without trottling. Tronsmart has not considered the experience of the other manufacturers (that builds Atom Z3700 boxes for the 1 year) and users comments. Eglobal makes Broadwell-U (i3, i5, i7!) boxes with passive cooling that works without throttling. Tronsmart Ara X5 is crude product. It like bad joke..

[jchoong]

Kyrie, thanks for the very detailed "torture" tests you put the Ara X5 through. However I concur with bluesmanuk's comments.

I am a light user; and no games. So, I am not going to be worried about the heat dissipation issues you cited.

For those heavy users and gamers, would a cooling fan eg the Targus chill mat (pic in earlier post) be the answer to the heat problem?

[bluesmanuk]

It is not just synthetic test. Thatmean this box will trottle in any 3D game. Any good boxes with Z8x00 predecessor Z3735F (like Minix Z64, etc) can work unlimited time in 3D games (and unlimited LinX and AIDA64) without trottling. Tronsmart has not considered the experience of the other manufacturers (that builds Atom Z3700 boxes for the 1 year) and users comments. Eglobal makes Broadwell-U (i3, i5, i7!) boxes with passive cooling that works without throttling. Tronsmart Ara X5 is crude product. It like bad joke..

I doubt that a 3D game is going to stress test the box in the same way as the synthetic tests do and as shown earlier by alwaysbless, gaming is actually quite reasonable.

So in order to really carry out a real world test you would have to show what happens when a 3D game that should run on such a device is used.

That is more of an acid test, so I'm afraid that you have yet to really show it to be a bad joke.

[Myst3r]

From the comments I see that DTS and Dolby 5.1 HDMI passthrough seems to work. What about DTS-HD and Dolby TrureHD?

Just tried with sample files from http://www.demo-world.eu/2d-demo-trailers-hd/

I have a 7.1 AV receiver but I only have a 5.1 speaker installation
On Kodi 15.1 :

DTS-HD MA 7.1 in 1080P -->Passthrough but sound in 2.0 only (no drop frame)
Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Atmos in 1080P --> No passthrough, sound in 2.0 (no drop frame)

DTS-HD MA 5.1 -->PAssthrough, but sound in 2.0 (no drop frame)
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 in 1080p -->No passthrough, sound in 2.0 (no drop frame)


Maybe it's an issue with my AV receiver.

As a remember, DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 work perfect

[Jir591]

Just tried with sample files from http://www.demo-world.eu/2d-demo-trailers-hd/

I have a 7.1 AV receiver but I only have a 5.1 speaker installation
On Kodi 15.1 :

DTS-HD MA 7.1 in 1080P -->Passthrough but sound in 2.0 only (no drop frame)
Dolby TrueHD 7.1 Atmos in 1080P --> No passthrough, sound in 2.0 (no drop frame)

DTS-HD MA 5.1 -->PAssthrough, but sound in 2.0 (no drop frame)
Dolby TrueHD 5.1 in 1080p -->No passthrough, sound in 2.0 (no drop frame)


Maybe it's an issue with my AV receiver.

As a remember, DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 work perfect

Thanks for the info. Wondering if no HD audio is a Kodi issue or the box. Can you play a DTS-HD or Dolby TureHD movie outside of Kodi?

[Myst3r]

Thanks for the info. Wondering if no HD audio is a Kodi issue or the box. Can you play a DTS-HD or Dolby TureHD movie outside of Kodi?

Default Media Player : No sound at all
VLC 64 bit : Audio : Same as Kodi (Passthrough with DTS HD, but only stereo and No Passthrough with Dolby True HD); and Video is really really bad

As I said, maybe I've an issue with my AV receiver setup, i've never tried DTS HD or Dolby TrueHD before

[bluesmanuk]

Could be a licencing issue.

All players apart from Kodi and Film and TV give pretty poor video performance.

[Myst3r]

OK I've found another (good) review of the box :

https://www.avforums.com/review/tronmsart-ara-x5-review.11964

They explain that

On the audio front, we’re still waiting for Intel to release drivers that will allow passthrough of 7.1 HD audio and, judging by how long it took them with Windows 8, we might be waiting a while but we had no issues with any 5.1 material.

In Kodi Wiki I've found :

Intel - To support HD Audio (TrueHD & DTS-HD MA) on Windows the Intel Management Engine Interface driver must be installed, it's this driver that provides the HDCP DRM necessary for the HD Audio formats to works. If this driver is not installed then the HD formats will be missing from the Supported Formats tab. In order to verify you have the Intel Management Engine Interface driver installed, follow the relevant step at Blu-Ray* Disc Playback with Intel HD Graphics FAQ

And guess what ? Intel Management Engine interface is not installed on the box.

So no HD audio yet ;-(

[bluesmanuk]

OK I've found another (good) review of the box :

https://www.avforums.com/review/tronmsart-ara-x5-review.11964

They explain that




In Kodi Wiki I've found :


And guess what ? Intel Management Engine interface is not installed on the box.

So no HD audio yet ;-(

It looks like the only W10 versions of it available for download are for Intel NUC's so maybe just a matter of time.

I might try and install it to see what happens.

[Eclecticon]

For streaming it's perfect. I'm so glad my fxxxing laptop isn't on the table anymore.

[pasteko]

Hello,

There's a new driver for the network card.

http://www.asix.com.tw/products.php?...mID=136;71;101

Windows 10 64-bit Driver

V3.18.1.0

2015-09-16

For 64-bit x86 CPU platform, Driver Signing

69.6 KB

But didn't help to make wake on lan working, I've sent an e-mail to Tronsmart regarding this function but no response.

The card supports wake on lan but there's no setting in the bios to enable this function.

Response from Tronsmart :

Hi,
Thanks for your feedback.

I'm not sure where did you see: wake-on-LAN function?

Actually, several clients of us asked such function, we'll arrange our engineers to tweaks it.

Please kindly pay attention to notice on www.tronsmart.com, if there is update, we'll post on website.

[bluesmanuk]

Hello,

There's a new driver for the network card.

http://www.asix.com.tw/products.php?...mID=136;71;101

Windows 10 64-bit Driver

V3.18.1.0

2015-09-16

For 64-bit x86 CPU platform, Driver Signing

69.6 KB

But didn't help to make wake on lan working, I've sent an e-mail to Tronsmart regarding this function but no response.

The card supports wake on lan but there's no setting in the bios to enable this function.

Response from Tronsmart :

Hi,
Thanks for your feedback.

I'm not sure where did you see: wake-on-LAN function?

Actually, several clients of us asked such function, we'll arrange our engineers to tweaks it.

Please kindly pay attention to notice on www.tronsmart.com, if there is update, we'll post on website.

Tried installing the driver but it would not install and when using the setup.exe it produced a BSOD.

[pasteko]

Tried installing the driver but it would not install and when using the setup.exe it produced a BSOD.

Don't use the setup version, just upgrade the driver manually.

[bluesmanuk]

Don't use the setup version, just upgrade the driver manually.

I had tried both but the driver would not install using either method.

[pasteko]

Before upgrading the driver I had BSOD each time I tried to change any option in the network driver, I had to uninstall the original driver before.