Vidon.me AV200: the revolution or evolution of Android players or what can come out of XBMC if you add DVDFab to it?

How many people remember the “golden age” of media players, when everything that was needed was realized, and the future seemed bright and cloudless?
It was presented to us by media players on the legendary Sigma Designs SMP8642 / 8643 chipsets.

But, as you know, all good things end sooner or later. The tendency to tighten the screws in relation to piracy of unlicensed video viewing has led to the emergence of castrati improved versions of chipsets, in which the possibility of playing Blu-ray copies from the menu, which was so loved by connoisseurs, was carefully thought out. Those who managed to jump on the step of the outgoing train, bought the latest copies of full-fledged players, albeit sadly, down, looked at those who were late and had to buy modern models, the advantages of which can be noted only support Blu-ray 3D, more precisely Frame-packed output one of the playlists, and to fight with the alteration of hospitals like Pioneer, which through the stump-deck could be made to show the Blu-ray from USB and (if the planets are in one row) even over the network. And there were no prospects, nothing even suggesting that the situation would change ...

Until the information about the strange symbiosis began to appear: Android, XBMC, ... DVDFab (!). All of us favorite Chinese brothers were able to lead away from the true path to conclude an agreement with the guys from DVDFab, who are known for their software, aimed at removing the protection from both DVD and Blu-ray. What was promised and what was the result? Read about it after the kata from the user who got into the first 600 lucky ones who bought the Vidon.me AV200 media player!

So, the main stated killer feature of the player is playback of copies of Blu-ray (both structure and ISO) with a full menu + support for Blu-ray 3D (looking ahead to say that the manufacturer clearly hurried with this). After studying the forums, having read reviews from users who bought pre-release versions of the AV200 (and his younger brother AV100), I decided that I should see it with my own eyes! Having passed a small quest worthy of a separate post, at the end of May the player was ordered and paid for. And now, a month later, the post office of Russia Belpochta notified me that the long-awaited package could be received ... but after the holidays (not only the mail does not like to work). In the morning, having run into the department, once again surprised at how modestly the Chinese send their departures ($ 15 with real $ 120 for the action), took a weighty box and skipping home to the TV!
')

Specifications (from the manufacturer's website)

Basic:
CPU: Cortex ™ -A7 Quad-Core 1.3GHz
GPU: SGX544mp2 Eight-Core
RAM: 2GB DDR3
Storage: 8GB
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b / g / n
OS: Android 4.2

Interfaces:
USB: High speed USB 2.0 host x 3, micro USB x 1
Ethernet: RJ45 × 1 (10 / 100M)
HDMI: Standard HDMI1.4 × 1
Card reader: SD / SDHC × 1
Audio output: 3.5mm x 1
Optical output x 1

Equipment

In a neat white box with the manufacturer's logo there was a player in the film, a power supply unit (universal, 110-240V, but for some reason with an American plug and without an adapter), a remote control (without batteries) and - surprise-surprise! - HDMI cable.

Considering the hardware does not make sense since it is almost completely identical to other Android players on the AllWinner chipset (for example, the recently reviewed iconBIT Toucan Stick 4K on the screen). The most interesting is software.

Connection and first start

Without thinking twice, I first connected the player to the AV receiver and inserted the plug into the socket, the player immediately turned on (not the most pleasant feature, if you sometimes turn off the electricity) and its full load took about 30 seconds. After contemplating the manufacturer's logo, we were greeted by a colorful tiled interface.

The section with the variety settings was not pleased, there is no Russian in the selection list yet, you can adjust the video (and the resolution and frequency are fixed) and its zoom, select the sound output method (connected to the receiver via HDMI or optical output or to a TV with signal decoding), adjust network and go to advanced settings (there we see the standard Android 4.2 interface, you can, for example, remove useless applications like Skype or Facebook - which I did).

Even though the main menu itself has sections Music (Music) and Video (video), there is no sense in them. you can add there only links / shortcuts to installed applications (file manager, etc.). The main section can be considered the leftmost, with an immodest name, Vidon.me. After clicking on it, we launch XBMC (at the time of testing it was version 13).

Xbmc

The interface is standard for XBMC, but we were not pleased with Russian again. Oops!

In the settings there is a promising Blu-ray submenu, where you can select the Blu-ray playback mode (2D or 3D) and the player region (really works).

It is time to check for the sake of which everything was started, namely: Blu-ray playback. Quickly creating a link to the network folder (the player supports NFS and SMB, for obvious reasons, I was not interested in DLNA / UpNP - although they are working) began to launch Blu-ray folders ...

The first disk launched almost instantly loaded the menu and inspired hope for the same work with other disks. The disc was musical with complex HD-tracks and here all the flaws of the old SDK (Android 4.2) appeared in all its glory.

Sound

DTS-HD MA 5.1 192 kHz reached the receiver at 96 kHz (DTS-HD MA 7.1 96 kHz reached as it is), secondly, PCM 2.0 192 kHz was played on the receiver with dips in sound and at 44.1 kHz - i-ay! - the player does not support 192 kHz at all!).

Video

Someone in the subject, knows that for smooth playback, it is critical to match the frequency of the original video with the frequency at the video output. But in the player we are limited to frequencies 24 (purely 24, not 23.976!), 50 and 60 Hz. Therefore, the video from 23.976 noticeably twitches, regardless of the selected frequency.

3D

Having run through the Blu-ray 3D ISO files, I discovered that in the Blu-ray mode, the menus are launched in 2D mode (the XBMC setting -> Blu-ray is not affected). If the disc is 2D / 3D - we see the menu, if the disc is only 3D (3D-only) - a warning that we do not have the necessary equipment. But how so? That's how! At the forum, support vigorously replies that we need to launch the main playlist and we will have the correct 3D. Indeed, with this method of launching 3D, it is displayed at 48 Hz and the TV gets the correct and full 3D picture. But the sediment remained!

Compatibility

Further verification showed that not all discs are played, and there is a certain dependency, if the disc does not start from the menu, then it does not start in normal mode (Blu-ray 3D ISO is most unpleasant - dynamically mount them to get to the largest file can not). Most of all, the player loves disks from Universal - everything that was available was launched. There were no direct dependencies with the rest: something started, something didn't. Approximately 3/4 of the disks start up normally and even slightly faster than on the reference Dune HD Base 3.0 (SMP8642 chipset).

Conclusion

This article was conceived as a review. Many minor points in the operation of the player were not considered, but I am always ready to respond both in the comments and by complementing the article.

According to my subjective feelings in this video player is clearly damp in the soft part, although the main disadvantages are associated with the outdated Android 4.2. For example, problems with video (auto-frequency) and sound (192 kHz support) are solved in Android 4.4 and according to the manufacturer, work on such firmware is already underway. The player vaguely resembles one of the first players on the Realtek 1186 chipset - XDS1003D, which at the start had much less stability, but was brought to mind within a year.

Nevertheless, the support of the Blu-ray menu in Android (or, more precisely, in the special XBMC build) was pleasantly startled. For comparison, the XBMC 13 build was used under Debian with the latest libbluray library and, it should be noted that the AV200 turned out to be significantly omnivorous. The collaboration with DVDFab clearly benefited him! (but will the changes be ported somewhere?) Thanks, Vidon.me and DVDFab - you gave me hope back! The hope that the development of personal media players did not stop, did not go in the opposite direction! Let now on the new ARM (and after all the new chipsets from Sigma Designs are also ARM, and not MIPS) rails ... Good luck!

Updates

07/08/2014

After writing the article, the manufacturer released an updated version of XBMC 1.1.0.2, in which omnivorous relative to the Blu-ray menu was enhanced. I checked about a hundred discs, started with menu 84 (1.1.0.1 - 56). So the work is being done and there is hope that it will be even better! The most important thing is not to forget about KitKat.

07/14/2014

The manufacturer announced the third version of the player, calling it VidOn Box. Release date: end of July 2014 (coming soon!). Preliminary specifications (in brackets of the AV200 specification, if they differ):
CPU: Allwinner A31s ARM Cortex ™ -A7 Quad-core (Allwinner A31 ARM Cortex ™ -A7 Quad-Core 1.3GHz)
GPU: SGX544mp2 Eight-Core
RAM: 1GB DDR3 ( 2GB DDR3)
Storage: 8GB
Wi-Fi: 802.11 b / g / n
OS: Android 4.4 (Android 4.2 )
Visible attempt to reduce the cost of construction due to the simplified version of the A31s and only 1 GB of memory. A plus can be considered Android 4.4 support out of the box, but I do not presume to predict what will happen when the AV200 gets the same support (if it does). In principle, the A200 will then remain top-class ... In general, something tells me that the Box is like an updated version of the AV100, and the AV200 will be replaced by another model and obviously it will not be Box. Let's see, we'll see. If Box is worthy of a separate review (yes, I’m a maniac and I made a preliminary application for the VidOn Box), I’ll write it - otherwise I’ll just update this post.