DOLAMEE D5 RK3229 Android 5.1.1 4K 10bit H.265 KODI TV BOX 1G/8G 802.11 b/g/n LAN

[trebor]

Android 5.1.1 OS

Rockchip RK3229

DDR3 1GB RAM, eMMC 8GB Flash

802.11 b/g/n, 10/100 Lan

Gearbest

Geekbuying

[bluesmanuk]

Youtube review from Alex at Redskull, where he is surprised at how this plays files that he didn't expect it to and where more highly specced boxes fail.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw_p-ODz1ZI

Will be able to see on Monday when mine arrives.

[bluesmanuk]

First impressions of the D5 after a couple of hours playing.

One of the smallest boxes that I have come across.

Plastic casing and so light that it could blow away in the wind.

AC adapter a standard 2 pin Chinese but in a separate box there was a rather fancy all singing and dancing AC converter that caters for all regions and is nicely designed to do the job.

2 x USB 2.0 ports, 1 HDMI 2.0a (upside down in placement), 1 Micro SD card slot, AV port and SPDIF (small pin type, not TOSLINK) and 1 100mb ethernet port.

I didn't really have high hopes for this with it being another Rockchip box, so let's see if it met or exceeded my expectations from an out of the box experience.

About a 45 second boot up time.

Android 5.1.1 Lollipop onboard.

The nicest boot animation that I have seen and whoever designed it knows that less is more and did a nice job with 3 colours.

Navigation and notification bars present (with weather reports, which I so want to turn off)

Another variant of TV style launcher which is OK. I'm not a fan of any of them really but as far as they go, this one has a nice looking front end.

Detected my 4k TV and set it at the highest setting (4096x2160(YCbCr420)

Rooted out of the box with no prompt authorisation given to apps as they require it.

haven't used the remote yet but did find out early that if you plug in any form of wireless remote dongle into the first USB port, nearest the AC adapter) and then select connect to PC from settings then this will immediately lock the box up, so use the other USB port next to the Micro SD card slot.

Wifi connects on the 2.4Ghz channel and does so quickly (no dual band on this box)

Navigation around the UI was hampered by things hogging the limited 1Gb RAM, so installed a startup manager to prevent unwanted things from running at startup.

Even doing this though, the navigation could at times be slow and apps slow to load and slow in general operation when choosing options and settings.

Initially loaded the Play Store to update a few apps and whilst the downloading of updates was fine, the time it could take to actually install them felt like an eternity.

I had wait half an hour for 3 updates to install and then, on some others, after a very long waiting period the play sore returned errors to say that they could not be installed but with no real explanation as to why.

Took a while to get them updated. Not sure if this was a temporary issue with the Play Store or something else.

But what I do know is that either there is some issue with the EMMC being awfully slow, something still hogging too much of the memory, the firmware requiring some optimisation or 1Gb RAM just not being enough I don't now at this point.

There is a Clean memory option on the launcher that you will be using a lot and also ensure that only one app is ever running at one time, clearing any that are present in the background.

So it's safe to say that for multi tasking, this is not in a position to do that well at all.

So, on to some video testing, which at the price point is going to be the key functionality.

Turned on HDMI passthrough and the first batch of tests were with sample videos run from a 32Gb Micros SD card and using the stock players (Video Player for most and Video for formats that video player could not support).

So I ran my gamut of over 100 files of various types and with just about every combination of video and audio possible.

Very early on, something occurred to me.

When it came to video playback, this had a WOW factor attached to it.

Videos played smoothly, with no lag, jitter, judder or delay.

The colour quality, reproduction , depth, sharpness and accuracy was SENSATIONAL!!

File after file I played just waiting for something not to play correctly and it wasn't happening.

It plays files that other more highly specced boxes either struggle with or don't play at all.

One particular HDR file had my jaw dropping.

But then I did find a few issues.

The HDR file in question did start to have audio cut out issues about 30 seconds in.

I also found a few files where there was audio/video sync issues, although only a few.

But for the most part it eat the vast majority of them for breakfast and was as smooth as butter.

I shall carry out the same tests but with default audio and see if the same few issues are replicated.

But from the video playback perspective, for an out of the box experience, rather wonderful compared to a typical Android box experience.

Next into Youtube.

The bundled Google TV style Youtube performed very well. Not perfect but very good. Limited to 720p at present.

I installed the regular version from the Play Store and this was better and close to perfection. Still limited to 720p. There was some lag though on both versions that I thought was due to WiFi being a little slow and this was confirmed when I switched to ethernet (which did require a reboot of my router before it would connect).

Web browsing was OK but being used to 5Ghz WiFi it was noticeably slower in finishing the load up of pages. Nothing terrible but not great either. Even when using ethernet it seemed a little slow for my tastes, although still far better than when using WiFi.

Kodi will be next up on the list (or Amazing Kodi as it is named on the launcher).

So initially a mixed bag of tricks but from what you are going to be purchasing this box for at the price point that it is being sold at, which is playing videos, there is currently a big plus in the tick box as far as playback from local sources is concerned and the sheer quality of that playback across the board when compared to all others that I have ever tested out of the box.

I'm already salivating at the thought of a 2Gb, Dual Band WiFi, Gigabit LAN version of this SOC.

Have Rockchip finally come to the table with something good from the off?

More to come to find out.

http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-...1.html?fdsaufu

[bluesmanuk]

The Kodi Experience

The version bundled is a fork of Kodi 16.1 from August 12.

On loading there is a fork of Confluence which I really like and is pleasing on the eye.

Unfortunately Kodi quickly comes up with a message to say that something in the confluence fork is not compatible, resulting in some of the menu features having missing placeholders for test.

There are some addons already provided courtesy of TV Addons and some of these are of the illegal kind.

On the basis that there is also a Kodi Media Center option with a wizard to add 1001 more illegal addons, to find some already added at the default loading stage is BAD BAD BAD!

I actually had to load the 1001 addons just to get the fresh start addon that I could then use to give me a clean install of Kodi.

So please, vendors, stop adding crap to any default Kodi load.

If people want to use the alternative addons then they should have to use the separate functionalities elsewhere in the firmware.

Once I had a clean install, with HDMI passthrough enabled, I tested the gamut of files from my MicroSD card.

I did note that the custom Rockchip accelerator was on by default, so initially left it on.

Having tried a multitude of Kodi forks with the Rockchip acceleration on RK3288 and RK3368 boxes, it's functionality was limited, especially with regards to 4K (although testing was generally carried out on Marshmallow rather than Lollipop).

However, on this occasion, the Rockchip acceleration actually worked where it had seemed to have failed before.

I was rather impressed with the range of files that would play smoothly.

There were a few issues though.

When I played the Astra 10 bit sample it flew through it like a knife through soft butter.

But when playback ended and I played the next 10 bit sample. Kodi bombed out. Not with an error but with a grey screen and I had to force close Kodi.

When reloaded and playing the next sample file again, it was fine.

The HDR file that I mentioned before also played well, with wonderful quality (although not quite as crisp as with the stock player) but did have the same audio cut out issues after while as before.

I also noticed that videos with Dolby 5.1 were not as smooth as I would want.

Turning HDMI passthrough off in both Kodi and the firmware enabled files with 5.1 to play more smoothly, although still not quite as I would hope, albeit without the benefit of surround sound output of course.

I also found that on occasion, when playing some 4k files that for a brief moment during playback that there would be what I would describe as a max headroom moment, where a portion of video would seem to go into a brief loop before continuing. It was random but not often.

There were only a couple of very high bitrate (160mb/s files) that did not play smoothly but then realistically, nobody is going to use files of this type for daily playback. 120Mb/s however was fine, so still capable of playing some meaty videos.

There is no option in the firmware to turn auto adjust frame rate on and off and when turned on in Kodi it did not work, so this will have an impact when playing some videos, although not as much and as often as I would have expected, with the smooth playback quality that I generally experienced.

So initially a mixed bag of sorts but the bonus of the Rockchip acceleration working (or at least seeming to work) looks like quite a bonus and a step forward for Rockchip SOCs.

On the whole, playback was much better than anticipated and varied across formats too, so a bonus at this point in my book.

Pretty much most SD and HD with stereo sound will be absolutely fine.

Clearly some more to be done to get the perfect kodi experience, but looking pretty good right now.

I am thinking that a custom playercorefactory.xml might just be of use to enable use the stock player that covers more of the bases overall.


Next up will be streaming over NAS and remotely, which is where I fear we may see the limitations of WiFi and 100mbit ethernet shown up but we shall see.

For a $26 (£19) box, if you were in the market for your first 'Kodi box' (as the media seem to like calling them) experience, then right now I'd be saying that you were onto a possibly good investment, especially if your needs are for local playback from SD card or USB stick).

The streaming tests will be the real decider for general use but I can already see what this SOC has to offer, so vendors, 2Gb, Dual band WiFi and Gigabit ethernet should be high on your selling list right now.

[bluesmanuk]

Streaming

First batch of tests using ethernet. All the equipment on my LAN is Gigabit, so if you have only 100Mb, then results will vary more.

Shock horror, pretty much everything streamed with no buffering and instantaneous playback.

Only when you get above bitrates of 120Mb/s is there some buffering, although only briefly.

Pretty much played anything that I threw at it and that most people would use on a general basis.

Also tested iPlayer, which was fine and the bundled ClouudTV app, where I was able to watch streams from all over the world and for the ones that would work, they streamed fine and with no delays of buffering. It's impossible to determine just how well they will work when watching over a long period of time because of the number of external factors that come into play before a stream actually gets to your network.

So for me, streaming over ethernet gets a big thumbs up.

WiFi can't possibly be any good can it?


Well to my utter amazement, it was also pretty good.

Now the D5 is only 2 feet from my router, so again, results will vary with distance.

But whilst WiFi would struggle with anything over 50 Mb/s and buffer very occasionally with anything over 40, everything else that I threw at it was just fine.

Again, longer periods of playback may yield some flaws but that will have to be tested over a period of time and usage.

So for me, WiFi streaming performance has exceeded my expectations of utter failure to one of pleasant and wholly unexpected surprise.

AMLogic eat your heart out because it looks as if there is a new player in town and he's come with most cylinders firing.

For a box that is aimed at the lower end of the market, on first impression it would fit in at a higher level.

[scooter2014]

Add another budget box to the mix lmao... Ok you peaked my interest...

[bluesmanuk]

Add another budget box to the mix lmao... Ok you peaked my interest...

So I might have persuaded you to part with money too lol

Clarkes will be impressed.

It has surprised me.

I was all prepared to tear it apart, thinking that we would yet again have another Rockchip failure on our hands.

If somebody can come up with a box with the extra specs to give it even more grunt then they could be onto a winner.

For newbies dipping their feet into the TV box waters and spending the least amount, then I think that they may then be persuaded to give this a try and for the most part, based on my own results, be pleasantly surprised too.

As long as they know what they will and won't get and what their own external equipment can and can't do, then it is unlikely to be a great disappointment.

Less bugs to be fixed too, which should hopefully inspire a dev or two to take interest.

Looking forward to the RK3399 now.

[scooter2014]

Ok to play with still love the qbox and now that linux and Atv coming will pass on 1 gig devices for now... They are ok... Nexbox 905 was same for me first 1 gig i get and still fun because so many roms to play with. But 3229 to many locked and kinda limited.

[bluesmanuk]

The 1Gb boxes are always going to be limited for more multi tasking use, but for the reason that you would buy one of these at the very low price is for the video, where for it's specs, it does excel so far.

[clarkss12]

So I might have persuaded you to part with money too lol

Clarkes will be impressed.

It has surprised me.

I was all prepared to tear it apart, thinking that we would yet again have another Rockchip failure on our hands.

If somebody can come up with a box with the extra specs to give it even more grunt then they could be onto a winner.

For newbies dipping their feet into the TV box waters and spending the least amount, then I think that they may then be persuaded to give this a try and for the most part, based on my own results, be pleasantly surprised too.

As long as they know what they will and won't get and what their own external equipment can and can't do, then it is unlikely to be a great disappointment.

Less bugs to be fixed too, which should hopefully inspire a dev or two to take interest.

Looking forward to the RK3399 now.

I am watching you!!!!!

[bluesmanuk]

I am watching you!!!!!

[bluesmanuk]

A quick (no commentary) video with a tour of the launcher interface and some of the apps.

[bluesmanuk]

Some benchmark screenshots in the form of an animated gif, each shot lasting around 6 seconds.




Or if you prefer to download them and view at your leisure

https://www.dropbox.com/s/fkqqjjjpmr9bk35/Dolamee%20D5%20Benchmark%20Screenshots.zip?dl=0

[bluesmanuk]

If anybody that like me does a fresh start with Kodi but would like the skin that came with the bundled one, it's here in this repo zip file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yupt730elq1gcka/repository.husham.com-1.1.0003.zip?dl=0

[gearbest]

It is only $25.17

http://www.gearbest.com/tv-box-mini-pc/pp_437702.html