ACEMAX M12N Smart TV Box Amlogic S912 Octa Core

[trebor]

Maybe part of some new protection/drm call it what you will to stop copy/capture ?

[bluesmanuk]

Maybe part of some new protection/drm call it what you will to stop copy/capture ?

Yes it could well be and would be a great shame if it was.

[trebor]

I am sure that with time that shame will become a hair pulling challenge for someone

[trebor]

Ran a barrage of stress tests non stop for am hour and where on some boxes you might be able to fry an egg afterwards, this thing could make ice.

It just doesn't flinch when it comes to heating up, so the design is spot on as far as heat dissipation is concerned.

Yes I found the device I have kept its cool just warm on the outer if you put a big slab of thermal pad you could nearly keep beer cool (well maybe not).

[bluesmanuk]

There is a poor dev out there with an S912 bullet with his name on.

[acemaxtec]

Had a little play with the box.

23 second boot up time.

Not tooted.

Kodi pre-installed from a July 'dirty' build

When you start Kodi you are presented with am option to install 3rd party Kodi addons rather than have them automatically installed, so you can opt for a clean Kosi start,

If you do choose to add them then it used the TV addons wizard to populate Kodi.

If you choose not to then an added option is added to the confluence menu, called addons, where you can then install a number of repositories based around selecting a choice of regions (Asian, Australian, Brazilian, Canadian, French, Germany, Spanish, Thai, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnamese).

Has what appears to be a unique launcher (or at least unique to me) which is clean, although not going to stay for me.

No notification or navigation bar as with the TX5 Pro.

No issues with apps downloading from the Play Store that I could see, so on the surface, compatibility should not be an issue like is was with the TX5 Pro.

Basic selection of apps as seen on the TX5 Pro with the addition of Showbox and a Chinese TV station app called Bang TV (not not that kind of channel) which works rather well. Just have to learn to speak Chinese in order to fully enjoy the content.

Ran the OTA update app and just said checking, please wait, so not sure if this is an indication of it not connecting or not.

Standard Youtube app, which I tested with a couple of 1080p test videos and whilst not perfect, was close to it. No 4k selection option though.

Ran a few test files through Kodi from an NTFS formatted USB stick with HDMI passthrough and there is clipping every 10 seconds or so with AC3 and DTS audio.

Quality of image in terms of colour depth and vividness was superb though and the best that I have seen since the Orion Meta, so this may indicate that the superior GPU is working well.

Flew through 10 bit files that I used (tested up to 160Mbps)

Auto frame rate not working though and nothing in the settings to turn it on, so that will affect the playback quality for some videos.

No HDR setting either.

Was interesting to see how the 8 cores were working in Kodi. With some files the CPU was hardly touched and with others a couple of the cores were hammering at 100%.

Settings option looks very odd to start with and has it's own interface although most standard settings can be accessed through the standard menu.

Wireless and Ethernet can be switched on and off independently (turn on WiFi and ethernet automatically gets switched off and vice versa).

Ethernet working well, even for just 100Mbit and WiFi on the 5Ghz channel is fine for me.

DO NOT touch the screen rotation option. I found that an app suddenly rotated and when I went to turn the function off, it rotated the screen and there was no way to get it back, so had to do a factory reset. - Update. Found that you have to use the supplied remote to turn it back but there is no way to prevent apps from rotating, even when you ask settings to stay in current orientation and there are a lot of apps that I have found that will rotate at will.

Bluetooth working well.

Initially concerned to see that there were only 4 choices on language but you have to go into general settings to set your region.

Rather than On of Off, some settings are now Open or Close.

HDMI CEC seems to work to a point. I have the M12N on HDMI4 but the TV is displaying it on HDMI 2.

Antutu scored 25786, and whilst I don't take much notice of such scores, this one did rather surprise even me (subsequently ran another and got 37944).

Sleep and Power off seem to essentially do the same thing, which is send the box to a virtual power off mode, such that a peripheral like a USB flash drive is also switched off therefore drawing virtually no power, which is good because I see too many android boxes that even when powered off still have the flash drive light on.

After a factory reset the box seems to do nothing at all and was at a point where I thought that it was bricked, so ran the SUB burning tool, fired up the stock ROM only to find that it doesn't see the box. The reset button is in the AV port but no matter what I tried, rather than go to bootloader the box just kept turning on as normal, so not sure whether a new tool or different procedure is required or whether I have a faulty reset switch.

Box does get like warm on top but nothing more than that, which should indicate that the metal housing is doing a good job of dissipating heat.

the remote works but you do have to point it directly as the IR sensor and it also switches on my Youview box without me wanting it to, so it's going straight back in the box forever.

So initial impressions from a couple of hours testing are reasonably good.

There is clearly work to be done but as an out of the box experience I have seen a whole lot worse.

Much more to come.

many thanks for your tesing , bluemanuk, and following is the new software with rooted

https://mega.nz/#!xwVlUQCQ!str9Nd48_Tb3h-_yOxMuQasowKj8JO-jlF1XyTq4PeQ

[acemaxtec]

and for the rom that you can unpack, and make customization, we will message you when ok. thank you.

[acemaxtec]

There is the sae issue with this as there is for the S905x with regards to screen recording apps.

Those that do work only produce green screens and many more don't work at all, with overlays not being accessible, where even though they are present, it's asif they don't exist when you try to access the on screen controls and where the actual cursor placement to activate a control is on the other side of the screen.

Screenshot apps suffer similar issues having not found one to work out of half a dozen tried so far.

try to use the screen record app with the IR remote, i/o usb mouse or air mouse....

[trebor]

Hello Acemax will they be introducing/fixing/adding, upper/lower notification/task bar that is missing ?

Using USB keyboard Enter will not complete some functions must use onscreen/ to complete.
Cheers

[slikmik]

i have been testing these all weekend very good/fast box, the only problem is when amlogic codec enabled in kodi /video/hardware acceleration it crashes kodi, when unticked all fine

[bluesmanuk]

many thanks for your tesing , bluemanuk, and following is the new software with rooted

https://mega.nz/#!xwVlUQCQ!str9Nd48_Tb3h-_yOxMuQasowKj8JO-jlF1XyTq4PeQ

Thanks

I'll put it through it's paces if I can get the Upgrade tool to recognise the box.

[bluesmanuk]

try to use the screen record app with the IR remote, i/o usb mouse or air mouse....

I did try that last night but had the same results.

[bluesmanuk]

i have been testing these all weekend very good/fast box, the only problem is when amlogic codec enabled in kodi /video/hardware acceleration it crashes kodi, when unticked all fine

This is the case with all the latest AMLogic boxes.

With Kodi dropping specific support for AMLogic boxes, the future for hardware accelerated playback is unknown.

Hopefully AMLogic will come up with their own fork but until then ......

There are still many video types that will play fine with the codec enabled but just not all.

Keep an eye on SPMC too as that may be the best way forward at the moment.

[bluesmanuk]

many thanks for your tesing , bluemanuk, and following is the new software with rooted

https://mega.nz/#!xwVlUQCQ!str9Nd48_Tb3h-_yOxMuQasowKj8JO-jlF1XyTq4PeQ

Still has the same unpack error with the customisation tool 2.0.8

[bluesmanuk]

many thanks for your tesing , bluemanuk, and following is the new software with rooted

https://mega.nz/#!xwVlUQCQ!str9Nd48_Tb3h-_yOxMuQasowKj8JO-jlF1XyTq4PeQ

I'm not able to flash any firmware.

Going through the same procedure that I use for other boxes such as the TX5 Pro but the burning tool just won't recognise the box.

Using same cable, same PC, same USB port.

The reset button accessed through the AV port clicks in as you would expect.

Uninstalled and re-installed burning too including trying versions 2.0.7 and 2.0.8.

Can flash the TX5 Pro without issues whatever versions that I use, so either there is a different procedure, different software is required or there is an issue with the box.