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Selecting and configuring Android Media Center

Introduction


I would like to share the experience of choosing and configuring a media center based on Android consoles. Now there are a lot of them, they are all somewhat different, but in some ways they are similar. When I saw a working system, many of my friends confessed that they themselves had thought about something, but were afraid of difficulties. In addition, in the forums where I sometimes talk, I had to see angry posts of those who, not knowing what they were facing, bought such a prefix and were very disappointed with it. So, I hope that this article will be useful to you.

Who is this article for?


Designed for those who, in principle, owns devices based on Android, but never used them to connect to a TV and organize a media center. The presence of "direct hands" is not a necessary condition, it is enough to have the skill of sticking the wiring to the appropriately sized connectors.

Recommended Equipment



Prefix selection and purchase


Why not Intel x86


The main considerations are the price and noise.

If you have money for Intel NUC, perhaps this is a good choice, but you will pay 3-4 times more than the prefix on Android. Nettop PC on Intel Atom is too thin, and they cost more than 1.5-2 times. As soon as you threaten something more serious, active cooling almost always appears, which means constant noise during operation.
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From the point of view of the operating system, in most cases Windows is too cool, you will not use 1/10 of the capabilities of this OS. Different Linux builds are usually too difficult for those who initially do not understand them.

Android now gives a simple and convenient UI (and you can choose a desktop wrapper from thousands of available, for every taste), while it is sufficiently undemanding of resources. Almost any smartphone user has sufficient skills to work with android console. After the appearance of stable full-featured XBMC / Kodi assemblies for this platform, it became, in my opinion, the best option.

Use your existing devices


Some of the life hack can be considered the use of your existing hardware on Android. If your phone or tablet has an HDMI (or mini / micro-HDMI) output, the device has a good processor, has a normal amount of RAM, the USB connector can work in OTG mode, then most likely, you can use this device to organize a media center.

On the other hand, is there really no better use for such an excellent device than lying next to a TV with wires? Most likely, it makes sense to think about this recycling of tablets with a broken screen, a dead battery and other damage that is costly to repair. The main thing is that Wi-Fi works well there.

About the form factor TV-Stick or "whistle"


It seems to many that it is great to have a very small TV set-top box and stick it straight into the TV. Some of these "whistles" or "flash drives" are made immediately with the HDMI connector in the case.

classic representative of this species

Their main purpose is to break out of your TV set with maximum damage for all associated equipment. In the picture they look great, but for our case they are not suitable:


In most cases, such a whistle will be useful for those who are interested in the first and main streaming, but here the absence of RJ45 and the disgusting quality of the work of the integrated Wi-Fi will be a big disadvantage.

Form Factor Set-top Box - our choice


Actually about him we will continue to talk. A small box the size of an external hard drive. Here is a representative representative of the MXIII, for the moment of writing the article, produced under various brands and in various boxes, the image is more or less a standard model.



The convenience of this form factor in the presence of the required number of connectors, while maintaining the minimum size.

The choice of consoles in the electronics store in Russia


Now such consoles and "whistles" can be easily bought in almost any electronics store. Unfortunately, many today are morally obsolete (old processors, little memory, etc.). As a plus, you can only note the low price and the opportunity to start using the purchase immediately, without waiting for delivery. If you do not need to do everything immediately, I recommend buying Chinese equipment in China and, after waiting two or three weeks, get a more modern model for use.

Choosing Consoles on Aliexpress


At the moment, consoles of this type on Aliexpress are sold a choice of several thousand . All of them are about the same, they are all poorly described, they all have various disadvantages, so you need to look at those declared characteristics that interest us.

What makes sense to pay attention when buying:





What does not make sense to pay attention:





Customization


So, you, at last, hold the device chosen by you in hands. How to make it work and at the same time pleased?

Physical connection


Location


As with any device with passive cooling, the TV set-top box is better not to be clamped on all sides and have an influx of cold air. On the other hand, it is almost never heated much, so there should be no particular problems with its placement. Think about how you will turn it on and off (there must be access to a button on the case), in addition, sometimes you may need to unplug the power supply.

Network


As I mentioned earlier, one of the key shortcomings of all Chinese consoles that I have encountered is the unstable operation of the Wi-Fi module. Often this is due to the poor design of the antenna, which is especially true for devices where it is stored inside the case. In such cases, craftsmen solve the problem with different hacks. Unfortunately, often there are difficulties with the work of the module itself, and this will not be fixed. This will not be a big problem for those who do not use the network capabilities of the console. But as soon as you want the stable operation of streaming services or start actively using torrents, a high-quality network becomes necessary.

On the other hand, all consoles that came into my hands with the ability to connect via Ethernet are pleased with the stable operation of the network. From here I conclude that it is most convenient to use a set-top box with a Wi-Fi router or access point. Since, most likely, you will want to connect other devices to this router (I have it loaded with gaming consoles and a printer), this decision will not be unjustified, and the price of a cheap access point will make the overall budget a little more difficult.

Tip: set up a static address for your device, this will facilitate further work with it.

Video


Definitely HDMI. I recommend high-quality wires to avoid the need for constant replacement (cheap ones often break), with support for at least the HDMI 1.4 standard. The shorter the wire, the better, but avoid situations where it will be taut.

Sound


At best, you’ll stream the sound to your TV or receiver using the same HDMI cable. In some consoles there is an optical output S / PDIF, in principle, you can use it. The worst variant in terms of sound quality is the analog output, since you will not hear anything good in this variant.

Data store


I recommend using an external hard drive. Given that now you can easily buy disks for two and three terabytes, you can have quick access to your entire media collection. The disk must be formatted with exFat to avoid problems with large files, such as BD Remux, that FAT32 cannot support. Many devices will start having problems with NTFS, so it's best to avoid this format.

Network storages work quite adequately, but from the point of view of convenience of working with them with Android, the connected external disk is significantly inferior.

At the moment, I have not seen TV consoles on Android with USB 3.0 support, but, on the other hand, USB 2.0 can cope quite adequately.

Input devices and controls


For comfortable work, you will need a keyboard. The Android on-screen keyboard, of course, can adequately handle most tasks, but it closes the half-screen, which is not always convenient. You will use the keyboard quite often - you need it to work with the browser, search for media content on Youtube, etc. etc.

In addition, you will definitely need a mouse (at least double-key) or a touchpad. On the infrared control panels make the "mouse" mode, but the features of this method of communication make it extremely inconvenient to use. Once you have connected a mouse to the console, you can safely lose the remote control - you hardly need it anymore.

Almost advertising

I have all the input functions on the Mystery MSR-113 device, which is a combination of a universal remote control, keyboard and air mouse. With the help of such a combine it is easy to control all the equipment of the media center and not to look for ten different consoles in different places.

Software setup


Shell (launcher)


Usually, the Chinese come with some kind of their own specific shell. Its advantage is that it is easy to control from the infrared remote control, as it is built on "squares" and, accordingly, navigation can be carried out using the "arrows" and the "ok" button. For MBox-like consoles, the launcher looks like this:

MBox Launcher

In all other shells for navigation will need a mouse. In principle, Nova Launcher is well suited for the tasks of this device, but I think everyone has their own preferences on this topic.

Xbmc


There are a lot of articles written on the XBMC settings theme, so I hope you can figure it out for yourself. I note only the features of working with Android.

Do not update XBMC yourself , do not put Kodi. Most likely after that it will stop working correctly. Most likely, a special assembly optimized to work on this hardware is supplied with your device. The rest of the problems should not be. If you still have updated version of XBMC and now want to roll back, look for specials. build for your device (for the amlogic s802 platform, these are builds from Oman) or rewrite the entire console back.

Sound setting

If a / v receiver is connected and you want to play not just stereo, but 2.1 or 5.1 sound, you need to specify this in the settings. Go to the settings menu XBMC System-> Audio Output . Set the Number of Channels to the desired value, set Keep Audio Device Alive to Always .
If you have a DTS or AC3 receiver in the same menu, enable the Enable passthrough option and the capable receiver and / or DTS ableable receiver options , depending on the technology you are using.



Additions and themes

All the themes and plugins for XBMC worked correctly for me, but some very heavy topics like Confluence Customizable Mod slowed down a bit. If you are not comfortable with the standard theme, try reFocus.

Context menu

Unlike computers running Windows, the right mouse button in XBMC works like a “back” command, and does not open the context menu. The context menu, by default, works by pressing the “c” key on the keyboard. You can change the key mapping using keymap files in the XBMC folder or using the special add-on Keymap Editor .

Access to external drive

When adding folders to the library on a hard disk, the easiest way to reach them is through a not very obvious way root filesystem-> storage-> external storage-> sda1



Other useful programs


What may come in handy from the software.


Android settings


In principle, everything will work without additional settings. Most likely, the Ethernet connection will be considered as your program for connection taking into account traffic, so do not forget to remove “download only via Wi-Fi” and similar checkboxes in all settings.

Firmware upgrade


Finally - about updating the firmware. Do not update without need. If you really want to update - save all the settings. Think about whether you need to be updated. Something will definitely go wrong, and you will have to “dance with a tambourine” for a long time.

Some devices come under the slogan of having an OTA update system in them. This Chinese OTA does not work and it is better not to use it. You need to download the firmware yourself, through the site freaktab.com dedicated to Chinese devices.

Principle of renewal


  1. Download firmware
  2. Extract the contents to the root of the microSD card
  3. Gently insert the card into the appropriate slot of the console. It does not fit snugly to the case, so be careful - do not insert the card "past". If you get it right, there will be a characteristic spring click.
  4. Remove the power cord. Insert the power cord.

Next you need to put the console into update mode. These actions are specific to different models, using the example of the MBox MXIII as an example:

  1. Toothpick click on the button located inside the audio jack and hold it.
  2. Press the console power button
  3. Release the button inside the audio jack.

The update process has begun. After the upgrade, you will have to reinstall everything, Titanium Backup should help a lot.

Conclusion


I would be glad if you like this article, waiting for your suggestions for improvement and suggestions if you would like to know something else.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/376133/

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