CHUWI HiBox Mini PC Android 5.1 + Window 10 Dual OS 64bit

[m6tth3w]

As it is pretty much a sealed box a few vent holes bottom and side would help.
Not sure about the 3 pin connector you mention.

As its tight for space in that box.
A few holes in the Under side, sit atop a laptop cooler or fan run from USB port would be easy.

Thanks for your answer. That usb powered fan is a nice idea, actually, before you mentioned, i haven't even seen any of it, but now that i searched for it, i found quite a lot model.

Yeah, the box is a bit tight, i was thinking on making some modification on it. On the bottom some cutting-out and apply some filter for dust, and the above side a fan that sucks the air out of the box, though i don't know how much air could that way get out of it because of the board. Or something like that.

I think first i will be monitoring if it is necessary at all in the casual usage, and if needed i'll make some tweak like that.

Thanks your help and idea.

[bluesmanuk]

Another option is to do what I do and that is to insert the wall mount plate part of the way in such that the box is able to stand on top of it and therefore give some space for more airflow underneath

[bluesmanuk]

With Chuwi support being pretty much non existent and no sign of any Android development. I decided to see how well Librelec would perform but because of the way that the BIOS works, Librelec will not boot if installed directly to the internal storage.

[bluesmanuk]

For those that don't need or want Android on the box and wish to remove it and give the available space to Windows, this general guide will help.

http://forum.chuwi.com/thread-1654-1-1.html

Once done, also run the SwitchNOW application from the desktop shortcut and select disable.
This will prevent the dual boot OS choice option from appearing at boot time.

[bluesmanuk]

After ridding the box of Android and reusing the space for Windows, I decided to give Librelec another try, using the Kodi 18 - LibreELEC Testbuilds for x86_64 from over at the official Kodi forums, courtesy of Millhouse.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=298462

It runs superbly.

Anything that the SOC supports runs flawlessly and I even found that 4k@60fps files were playing smoothly, which is the first time that I have found that on any Intel box, despite not being supported.

CPU usage was also very low, with 2 cores averaging little more than 20% use at any one time and the other two pretty much consistently below 10%.

Audio passthrough was flawless and both Dolby and DTS work without a hitch.

I don;t have a receiver capable of more than these 2 formats but was also pleased to see that any advanced audio formats such as TrueHD, DTS HD, Atmos etc were down mixed to either Dolby or DTS, so no silent or screechy experiences from lack of high end audio support.

There are only 3 potential issues at the moment.

WiFi and Bluetooth are not seen, so this would indicate that the AP6234 is not yet supported and whilst USB sticks/drives were detected and could be used, the SD card slot wasn't seen.

So as long as you use ethernet (which works extremely well, with 0 buffering from anything that I used/streamed,) and can do without Bluetooth for now, then it is an excellent way to obtain a quick booting, super fast and reliable media player experience with the least amount of bloat.

The Millhouse builds are a continually evolving thing, with very regular updates and improvements, including constantly being at the cutting edge of Kodi, using the latest 18 (Leia) builds, so always worth keeping an eye on them to see where they are being taken.

They work across a wide range of x86/64 Intel hardware SOC's too.

Next up, a resize of the partitions, using 8Gb or so for Libreelec and restoring Windows to the remaining space to enable a dual boot system.

[bluesmanuk]

Used Gparted to reduce the Libreelec partition to 8Gb and formatted the rest as NTFS for Windows.

Then used Macrium backup to restore the Windows partition image that I had made to the new space.

The tricky part came when trying to get the selection option for dual boot, where none of the usual boot menu restorers and editors would work.

But whilst I had previously disabled the Android/Windows dual boot launcher, the BIOS seemed to restore it and with a little use of Grub2Win (although I'm not sure ifit actually did anything specific), the original launcher selection works as before but instead of Android, that element now boots into Libreelec.

So now I have the best of both worlds.

Libreelec for the media needs and Windows for general PC based usage.

[gefattern]

Hi to all ,

what i want to know , is it possible to flash another TVBox with this or any other Windows TVBox ???

never heard about that . If possible why still a Pc , would be nice to know .

nice Day

greetings

gefattern

[bluesmanuk]

Yes it may be possible, especially with regards to the Windows element because even if some of the hardware is different then it's just a case of updating the drivers.

The problem you will find with Windows however is in regards to the activation because on many mini pc's the activation key is held in the hardware,so you will likely end up having to pay for a new licence, unless you can persuade Microsoft that the move to new hardware is legitimate, which based upon the licencing deals that come with these boxes may well be remote.

Android is likely to be a problem because of differing hardware, although I suspect that something such as Android X86, which is now up to Nougat RC1 will run much better if you wipe the existing Android partitions and install from scratch.

[gefattern]

Hi bluesmanuk ,

Sorry i think it was a missunderstood , i want to know if i can use the Chuwi to flash my UT3 with latest Rom .

That is what i wanted to ask , sorry . Like flashing with Pc .

nice Day

greetings

gefattern

[bluesmanuk]

Hi bluesmanuk ,

Sorry i think it was a missunderstood , i want to know if i can use the Chuwi to flash my UT3 with latest Rom .

That is what i wanted to ask , sorry . Like flashing with Pc .

nice Day

greetings

gefattern

I see.

Yes, it's essentially a standard PC, so you could use it to flash other boxes.

[gefattern]

Hi bluesmanuk ,

Thanks for Info .

nice Day

gefattern

[bluesmanuk]

Ran the latest 84 bit live builds of Android X86, both Marshmallow and Nougat from a USB stick and both work fine in terms of general Android performance.

No WiFi, Bluetooth or HD audio output though, and display settings options are very sparse, so limited to some extent.

Nougat is rooted, although superuser permissions have to be granted each time an applicable app is used.

[bluesmanuk]

Booting into Libreelec using the Android/Windows OS switcher.

[bluesmanuk]

A note for anybody using Libreelec on this box, and quite possibly any other Cherry Trail variety that uses Alsa audio, with the latest 4.13 kernel, audio is broken.

This (#0903) is the last build that works.

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=298462&pid=2642042#pid2642042

I'm sure that a fix will come along in time as development on the new kernel matures.

[cartucho16]

@bluesmanuk could you point to a good tutorial to install Libreelec in the Chuwi Hibox (keeping Windows 10)

Also I want to ask a question:

This box have HDMI-CEC? Because is written in all description of the product but my TV don´t detect any CEC source (windows or android is the same: no source).
There is any way to turn CEC on in this device?

Thanks in advance.