Review: Amiko A3 and other Android boxes

[2stein]

but one never knows what the future will bring us.

that's what i'm hoping for... the solo 4k with it's arm processor would be an ideal hw platform... hope, some innovative guys will put android on and integrate the e2 bicycle somehow.

[steve1978]

I am confused why did you have to bite your tongue? Do you think the Vix changes with every release? Because from a user perspective there is no difference from Apollo through to the current generation, all this is said with no disrespect to any Vix developer, the Vix team changed the satellite industry fom a Dreambox dominated one single handedly.

I have been a member of the forum since May 2010. I was one of the first with a duo and one of the first forum members. I remember VIX v1 and the image has progressed nicely through the years however in the last two years I have seen no difference through every release. The addition of auto bouquet maker and cross epg where a welcome but other than that there is no real difference vix version 1 was excellent as is current version. I upgrade my version probably once a year and notice no difference. Maybe I am missing something??

The android boxes is the next evolutionary step. You say you can't mix MM and DVB...? What do you think sky and Virgin are doing? Sky box sets and Virgin with the VOD and I player services, no it's not as good as kodi but it's the same end product, VOD.

In five years I have had a duo, uno, and a duo2. I still have two of those boxes now. Today I made the decision to sell these and purchase a wetek to go with the amiko. I am sure in a few years time I will have moved brands a couple of times but I am sure that they won't be e2, I will be sticking with android stb for the foreseeable future.. Vu... Please bring out a android box!

[pac2000]

Just One Example Of Development Is The Service Name Picons, Instead Of Reference Picons... When I First Got Into E2 Boxes, Getting A Complete Set Of Picons Was A Nightmare... Taking Hours Of My Time To Make Up The One's That Where Missing... Now, I Just Get Osram's And Copy And Replace Over With MK's... Taking Seconds... When Channels Change Transponders/Frequencies, Provided The Names Stay The Same, All My Picons Remain Perfect...

Another Is The Pin Code For All Menu And Context Menus... This Allows Me To Customise The Image For My Kids, So Their Boxes Can't Change Or Delete Anything... But Can Access Sat/Cable, As Well As My Quad+'s HDD's And My NAS...

In Addition, Native E2 Recordings Can Rewind And Be Fast Forwarded... As Well As Stepping 20 Seconds, 1 Minute And 5 Minutes In Either Direction For Both Native Recordings And Downloaded Films... Seeking On Android Is A Nightmare, E2 Is Perfect... I Did Have Andriod Boxes To Backend My Main E2 Box, But Decided To Go E2 Native All Round The House...

With The Broadcom SoC, Each Tuner Can Be Watched, Streamed And Recorded, At The Same Time, Without Using Further Resource... This Is By Design... Android Cannot Do This...

If I Wanted, I Could Of Built A Multimedia Server PC, With Tuner Cards, But A PC Requires Huge Amounts Of Power, And Would Need To Be On All The Time... But That Is The Perfect TV/Multimedia Box... But To Get A Really Good One Costs A Large Amount Of Money(I Know, I've Got One)... The E2 Boxes Are Very Low Powered... And Are Relatively Cheap These Days...

Most Content Will Play On E2 Too, And For The Odd File, I Just Convert It On My 24 Core, 36Gb PC, Which Takes No Time At All...

Anyone Who Compares Android To E2, Doesn't Know What The E2 Boxes Can Really Do... And Are The Same People Who Think Phones And Tablets Will Replace PC's...

I For One, Am Very Grateful For The Extremely Stable, Professional, High Quality Vix Images...

[Rob van der Does]

....Because from a user perspective there is no difference from Apollo through to the current generation, .....

Please try to be serious.
There are dozens and dozens of functional changes/additions. Some of them are minor, and may indeed be missed if you don't go into (context)menu's, others are very clear for every user.
You are entitled to your own opinion and (lack of) appreciation, but this remark clearly shows you're playing a game with us. That can't have been the purpose of this thread.

[Larry-G]

I have been a Enigma user since the DM7020 and a E2 user since the Vu+ Uno came out. Yes Android boxes are cheaper and they will play just about any thing you throw at them but the Android interface simply does not compare to enigma2, it is perfect for phones and tablets but horrendous on a large tv screen and any one who tries to claim differently is either trying to sell you something or the dont know what the hell they are talking about.

I own two wetek boxes an frankly they are rubbish when used with the android OS but bearable when OpenElec is installed instead, even running something like netflix on the wetek from within the android OS is a massive disappointment, it is slow and clunky and feels very poor in comparison to say the pc version or the version on the amazon fire tv box / stick, which in my opinion are only android based boxes that have even a half decent GUI (I own two of these as well) and use them daily even though they dont have provision for tuner support.

For android to take over as the primary receiver in my house there needs to be a hell of a lot more development put into the GUI as using the standard mobile phone based one is not only lazy but very very frustratingly slow and guaranteed to turn users away who are used to the more polished user friendly GUI that comes with enigma2 based images (well some of them any way, some teams attempts are frankly embarrassing and i'm not talking a A ViX team member here because I am not any more).

[steve1978]

Let's just be clear here, I'm not trying to disrespect any member of the Vix team all the VIxcommunity this is very important to remember. I have been a member here since day one and always had Vix on my E2 boxes. Before the E2 box I had a DM 500, and still have somewhere.

The Android boxes are quite comparative to an old dm500 and in truth they are probably slightly worse. They are 10 years behind where we are now with the e2 boxes. But the potential of Android for exceeds the potential of E2. It's just a matter of time before Android is developed for tv. I am not one minute saying that you can replace all of your current Home Entertainment with Android boxes as it stands, they are clunky they do crash and apps are frankly below par. But we know the Android has a much bigger community then the e2 one and in the short amount of time Android has been around it has gone from strength to strength.

I am not a seller, developer or anything else to do with the industry just an enthusiast. I do work in IT and see the developments in all areas Android is something that has interested me all the way through the years.

In truth I would say that I don't even watch TV anymore other than live sporting events, I watch everything via Plex, XBMC AMAZON or Netflix. I don't know if I'm alone on this but a lot of the people I speak to are in the same boat. For this reason E2 doesn't really offer me much anymore.

[Larry-G]

Let's just be clear here, I'm not trying to disrespect any member of the Vix team all the VIxcommunity this is very important to remember. I have been a member here since day one and always had Vix on my E2 boxes. Before the E2 box I had a DM 500, and still have somewhere.

The Android boxes are quite comparative to an old dm500 and in truth they are probably slightly worse. They are 10 years behind where we are now with the e2 boxes. But the potential of Android for exceeds the potential of E2. It's just a matter of time before Android is developed for tv. I am not one minute saying that you can replace all of your current Home Entertainment with Android boxes as it stands, they are clunky they do crash and apps are frankly below par. But we know the Android has a much bigger community then the e2 one and in the short amount of time Android has been around it has gone from strength to strength.

I am not a seller, developer or anything else to do with the industry just an enthusiast. I do work in IT and see the developments in all areas Android is something that has interested me all the way through the years.

In truth I would say that I don't even watch TV anymore other than live sporting events, I watch everything via Plex, XBMC AMAZON or Netflix. I don't know if I'm alone on this but a lot of the people I speak to are in the same boat. For this reason E2 doesn't really offer me much anymore.

No one here would accuse you of being disrespectful Steve least of all me, we were both mods on martins forum and I have not forgotten that, I am just giving my own personal point of view.

I am android through and through and use the android platform daily on multiple devices but I do think that in it's current form android is a very poor OS for use with a TV without substantial development. If you could put tuners onto a Amazon fire TV box you would have the best of all worlds in my opinion as amazon have put a good bit of work into their Amazon based Fire OS and the GUI works well for that platform but most other android boxes have nothing more than a mobile phone based GUI on them and thats just rubbish for day to day use on a big screen.

[steve1978]

Weird I was thinking about Martin the other day wonder whatever happened to him?

Yes I have the Amazon Fire TV also agree it's a really well polished device. I've always been an apple person until I bought the Samsung Galaxy S6 couple of weeks ago, I tried the s5 and S4 but I found the os was still too buggy for me. I know this might cause frustration but I'm going to say it anyway I think that e2 is simply following the crowd of Sky and Virgin boxes developing what they have already developed reinventing the wheel so to speak. The amount of hours Vix team and the open Alliance spend is probably in the tens of thousands of hours. My duo2 is perfect as a satellite receiver, but so is my Virgin TiVo and sky boxes are even better again.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

[Larry-G]

Weird I was thinking about Martin the other day wonder whatever happened to him?

Not really sure mate, I have seen him pop in here from time to time but he's never stopped to post any thing.

Yes I have the Amazon Fire TV also agree it's a really well polished device. I've always been an apple person until I bought the Samsung Galaxy S6 couple of weeks ago, I tried the s5 and S4 but I found the os was still too buggy for me. I know this might cause frustration but I'm going to say it anyway I think that e2 is simply following the crowd of Sky and Virgin boxes developing what they have already developed reinventing the wheel so to speak. The amount of hours Vix team and the open Alliance spend is probably in the tens of thousands of hours. My duo2 is perfect as a satellite receiver, but so is my Virgin TiVo and sky boxes are even better again.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

I would agree that E2 is a more polished OS these days and its humble beginnings as a OS for nerds and satellite enthusiasts with whopping big dishes parked in their gardens seems to be a thing of the past partly due to the ongoing development work of the community at large and part due in my opinion to the ex cable brigade who simply want to buy a receiver and steal pay tv channels or stream illegal content from the internet.

That said it would be a great disservice to say that E2 has not progressed in the past three to four years, it has come along in leaps and bounds.

In ViX the whole point was always to keep the OS as user friendly as possible so that even a novice could operate it with little to no prior knowledge or experience with Enigma2, so yes if you just use the standard ViX Night and Day skins the GUI (the bit you as a user sees) has barely changed since ViX was first created by andyblack almost 4 years ago.

As was pointed out earlier in this thread E2 is a different beast altogether now, gone are the days when you had to sit for 3/4 of a hour waiting for a simple channel scan on sky uk let alone the several dozen other satellites we can get access to, or waiting a fortnight for some one to make a ready made bouquet pack that was pretty much obsolete the second it was released. just remember the work we did on martins database keeping the channel data upto date for his plugin and you will see what I mean.

I could droll on and on and on about the various new additions to E2 over the years but I am not going to, I personally will continue to use E2 for many a year to come because even the mighty Android OS has nothing on E2 at this moment nor is it likely for a good while yet as it is in its infancy as far as a viable TV platform goes.

[2stein]

well, i think it's clear that android was not developed with being able to watch tv in mind.
and it needs quite a bit of development effort before it could compete with e2.
but i think the time is right... sony puts android on their high end tvs.
so, it looks like it can be done ;-)

[Larry-G]

well, i think it's clear that android was not developed with being able to watch tv in mind.
and it needs quite a bit of development effort before it could compete with e2.
but i think the time is right... sony puts android on their high end tvs.
so, it looks like it can be done ;-)

No one is denying android is a powerful OS and yes several big manufacturers have taken it and tailored it to their own needs but that is never going to be enough without a community of developers behind it, and as far as I can see that community simply does not exist in any way the same number as with Enigma2. The majority of android based boxes are Chinese crap with a tweaked mobile phone based GUI thrown onto it, with little to no community support except for the XBMC / KODI side of things, if it were not for that these boxes would have died a long time ago.

Just look at the prismcube for a example of hardware with very little in the way of community support, By rites it should have been the perfect marriage of Enigma2 vs XBMC and marusys probably thought they could sell it on the strength of their Vu+ receivers alone but with only BH really bothering to offer none factory images and the fact that it runs a custom version of XBMC so you cant even update that side of things easily, it has pretty much tanked.

[Rob van der Does]

The strength of enigma is a large, knowledgeable community who has spend years and thousands of hours developing it. No commercial software company could possibly match that.
So that would be the very first prerequisite for success.
But I thin all people interested enough in a versatile DVR are already in E2 and (very) satisfied with the results.

And speaking for myself: I have no idea why people are so interested in integrating a MM-player in a receiver. Surely no DVD-player would have such qualities, and that is an even more likely environment for playing MM-files.
In other words: why would people be interested in building a new community and spend (again) years of development only for a number of people to spare a few quid on a new box?

[2stein]

well, we'll see...
history shows that market leaders often failed to innovate and thus lost their leadership. it sounds like e2 might face the same destiny.
e2 is already being attacked by tvs, streaming services, etc. so from my point of view the outlook is not rosy.
but this discussion is not easy to have with e2 enthusiasts

[judge]

sony puts android on their high end tvs.
so, it looks like it can be done ;-)

Sony also produced some serious duds in the past.
If you want a stable box based on third party plugins for illegal streaming I'd doubt it will happen any time soon though.

[2stein]

i'm not talking illegal streaming... i'm talking legal drm.
i'd assume that in the near future nearly all streams will have drm.
don't know if the situation in germany is different, but i see a trend towards drm for most streams even those that are free (no cost).
that's why i think that future stb boxes need to be able to deal with (legal) drm. and i don't see how e2 can do that.