Any experience with cubox-i?

[Tzafrir Cohen]

On Mon, Jan 13, 2014 at 02:00:50PM +0200, geoffrey mendelson wrote:
> On 1/13/2014 1:45 PM, Amos Shapira wrote:
> >
> >So what's the advantage of this "Chinese Tablet"? It's limited to
> >old Android (I found them on eBay too now, they all list Android
> >4.2 or 4.0), can it run a Bittorent client properly? No HDMI cable
> >etc. So why?
> >
> >
> 
> It's not really a tablet, it has no screen. The screen is your
> monitor/TV connected via an HDMI port (obviously you looked at a
> different device than I did). It identifies as a tablet, so that's
> why I called it that.
> 
> A link would help:
> http://www.ebay.com/itm/Android-4-2-SATA-HDD-Media-Player-HD-TV-Quad-Core-Bluetooth-DLNA-WiFi-Streamer-5-/151207460031?pt=US_Internet_Media_Streamers&hash=item2334aabcbf

It has SATA support. As it happens I believe that this happens to be a
good sign: IIRC of the cheapo chipsets, only 2 have them, and both have
a pretty good community support.

This specific device is based on Allwinner A31. Unlike previous
Allwinner chips which use the Mali GPU, this one uses PowerVR. If you
hope to have free drivers for the GPU, this may not be the best for you.

See also below regarding community support. The more proprietary
drivers, the more difficult it is to have community support.

Here is a similar item from the store of someone who is one of the
developers involved:
http://store.r0ck.me/products/mele-m5-tv-box
(sold out, right now)

That model comes with a dual Cortex A7, that is: a less powerful CPU
(but it also means: requires much less power)

> 
> The main reasons is that it cost $100 (US) for the unit, and it
> includes a quad core ARM chip. This will give you enough CPU power
> to run BitTorrent, watch TV shows, etc and not run up the electrical
> bill that a real computer would. If you download to a USB memory
> stick instead of a disk drive, it will be silent.

I'm not really sure how much the CPU is really needed there (also: CPU
as opposed to GPU).

> 
> As for Android being old, the current divide is Android 4 (any
> version). Older versions than 4 won't run modern Apps.

I have no idea about newer versions, but from an initial glance over the
wiki, there's at least some work done to get newer versions working. I
guess they will be reasonably well community supported.

http://linux-sunxi.org/Category:Android

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