[ajitkommini]

Originally Posted by neoonwheels

Got the MiniTV delivered today. While browsing on net came to know that there are fakes as well. How can I make sure mine is original?

The packing has a black cover with a green line at the top and the text says "MINI TV" with a small TV with 2 antennas icon.

You'll have to open the cover (carefully!) and check according to this thread: http://www.freaktab.com/showthread.p...-identify-them

The forum is down right now though.

[neoonwheels]

Finally I got my MK808B this week and following are my initial impressions:

1. The USB stick packing says "MINI TV" and there is a hologram with name "CozySwan". Seems the vendor is CozySwan. The build quality is pretty impressive for the price.

2. The device has Android 4.2.2 out of the box. The installation is pretty easy, attached the device to the TV through HDMI port and voila the TV has become smarter now. The device came with few pre-installed apps and thankfully with the Google play app and support.

3. I configured my wifi router which is around 30-35 ft away from my TV with brick walls in between and as expected the signal was weak. I could install few apps from the Google play but I feel, I need to move my router in the living room or at least in the center of the house to have good connectivity in all rooms. My Laptop never suffered weak signal but then as this is a pretty cheap device it struggled with weak wifi signal strength.

4. I tried using the XBMC s/w and I am pretty much impressed with it. Now all I have to do is to prepare my data structurally on my Laptop and share it over wifi so that the XBMC on this device would stream it on TV. It can also use the locally (to the device) connected HDD/storage. I am not sure about how much HDD it can access.

5. The video quality is superb to say the least. As the Audio and Video travels on the HDMI, there are no messy connections. A single cable takes are of A and V. I played "The Hobbit" HD movie stored on a USB drive attached to this device and it played it flawlessly. Of course the quality of the movie is too good and the device did not play any spoil sport. One observation I made is, while the "Screen output" was set to default 1080p, I could somehow feel a 0.5 secs delay in the picture speed. Since my TV is HD ready (720p), I changed the screen output to 720p and voila, the speed was corrected automatically. May be this has to do with downscaling of the 1080p to 720p and thus a very very slight drag in 1080p mode. Please correct me if I am wrong.

6. This little thing scores big time on convenience (Of course all similar products). I have a 2 year old DVD player which would not play mp4/mkv files and thus kind of useless for me since few days. This device will now take care of decoding the mp4/mkv files and I dont need to spend on Bluray etc players. Since I would be in the market for AVR, this will be a big plus for me. I guess the AVR would take the HDMI output of this device and then further process the audio as per the encoding. So theoretically, I can see the movies in HD quality and get the 5.1 true surround (if the movie file has it) when I would connect this device to my AVR.

7. The only remaining thing in my setup now is the remote keyboard and mouse. Since I have a tight budget (Thanks to wifey), I would settle for RC11/RC12. Overall, I wanted to spend as much less as possible. I bought the MK808 for 3200/- and I hope the remote would be in 1500/- range. For around 5K, this is going to serve me well.

8. Ajith and others: Thanks a lot for your inputs and helping me out. I hope my initial impression would help another soul treading this path.

Following the is setup pic:

[ajitkommini]

Congrats on your setup. One question though - how are you using it if you don't have a mouse / keyboard?

[Rehaan]

Originally Posted by neoonwheels

7. The only remaining thing in my setup now is the remote keyboard and mouse. Since I have a tight budget (Thanks to wifey), I would settle for RC11/RC12.

If you mainly use this for XBMC and have a smartphone, you could try using one of the XMBC remote apps?

cya
R

[neoonwheels]

Originally Posted by ajitkommini

Congrats on your setup. One question though - how are you using it if you don't have a mouse / keyboard?

As of now using a wired mouse since mostly watching movies. I would soon order the RC 11/12 since I am tempted to use the browser, FB etc apps as well.

Originally Posted by Rehaan

If you mainly use this for XBMC and have a smartphone, you could try using one of the XMBC remote apps?
cya

Yeh, I can try that for time being but as I said, its not going to be limited to XBMC. Soon I would start using browser, FB etc.

[netarchie]

Have been playing around with the tronsmart MK908, videos upto 720p works good, impossible to watch 1080p.
The in-built wifi is limited to 65 mbs only, even though I have my wifi router next to the device, seems a limitation of the inbuit wifi device.
I have ordered a 10/100 mb ethernet usb adapter, will test it out after I receive the same.

The device gets quite hot while watching movies.

Have attached a webcam to it and also used it for some video calls , works quite well.

I am using the RC13 airmouse as a remote (recently ordered), which is quite good.

[ajitkommini]

Originally Posted by netarchie

Have been playing around with the tronsmart MK908, videos upto 720p works good, impossible to watch 1080p.
The in-built wifi is limited to 65 mbs only, even though I have my wifi router next to the device, seems a limitation of the inbuit wifi device.
I have ordered a 10/100 mb ethernet usb adapter, will test it out after I receive the same.

The device gets quite hot while watching movies.

Have attached a webcam to it and also used it for some video calls , works quite well.

I am using the RC13 airmouse as a remote (recently ordered), which is quite good.

Cool. Did you try to get any performance figures like AnTuTu rating etc.? Just curious how the quad-core version compares with the dual core one. Disappointing to hear that the heat issues persist in these ones as well. Maybe you can try one of the heatsink mods that people have built.

[neoonwheels]

Originally Posted by netarchie

Have been playing around with the tronsmart MK908, videos upto 720p works good, impossible to watch 1080p.
The in-built wifi is limited to 65 mbs only, even though I have my wifi router next to the device, seems a limitation of the inbuit wifi device.
I have ordered a 10/100 mb ethernet usb adapter, will test it out after I receive the same.

The device gets quite hot while watching movies.

Have attached a webcam to it and also used it for some video calls , works quite well.

I am using the RC13 airmouse as a remote (recently ordered), which is quite good.

Please update your experience with this device. This would surely help people who venture into this Android TV path.

[anujmishra]

Can these Android device be used in car as carputer? If yes, what are the modification required to do?

[ajitkommini]

Originally Posted by anujmishra

Can these Android device be used in car as carputer? If yes, what are the modification required to do?

Sure, why not? so long as you have a display unit that accepts HDMI input it should work. You still need an air mouse or other input device, and a power supply to convert 12v car socket to 5v USB power (2A min current output at 5v). If you're looking at playback of stored content (movies, music) and offline gaming I think this would work. It's not so interesting for other in-car applications like navigation because it doesn't have GPS. Neither does it have a SIM card slot so internet access while on the move may be difficult.

On the other hand, you could connect an OBD-USB adapter and use it with some of the neat Android based automobile apps like Car Gauge, Torque Pro etc. That would be a really cool use case.

[rajshenoy]

Neat setup. I would like to know more feedback on the remote. How effectively can this remote be used with Android ?

Can i play games like Real racing3 ? or at least Subway surfer or temple run 2 by configuring some keys for various actions ?

[nkg77]

Ajit, I have a question, while watching one of the channels from TATA sky, will I get notifications from skype on the screen. I am looking for a solution where both linear TV and stuff from internet co-exist. Any pointers towards this direction will be very helpful.

[bharanidharang]

I have a few questions as well. My usage of computer has gone dramatically low after i started using ipad and android phone.

1. Will i be able to edit documents on the tv with this stick and an external keyboard and mouse ? If yes, will the tv resolution's and refresh rates make it feasible to edited documents without eye strain
2. I have started using snapseed for picture editing. Do these tv sticks support snapseed ? Again will resolution make me have an eye strain ?
3. If not a TV will a good monitor with hdmi do the above work.

Aim is to throw out the comp when it goes kaput along with the computer table which occupy space and use the wall mounted tv to do the above work. Worse case i can wall mount a monitor as well.

Thoughts ?

[Fillmore]

Originally Posted by bharanidharang

I have a few questions as well. My usage of computer has gone dramatically low after i started using ipad and android phone.
...

The basic purposes of these devices are not to replace a computer. Rather to enable a TV to be able to play media content from local storage, streaming websites etc..

The processors in these devices have limited capacity and are not built for regular computing tasks like running programs, software, editing documents etc.. So comparing it with a computer would not be an apples to apples comparison. It is more like a media player that is internet capable.

You may be able to browse etc.. but not all pages will work the same as they do on a computer. Eg: trying to trade on ICICI Direct using a Google TV might not support all the scripting languages / tools leveraged by the hosting site.

[nkg77]

Originally Posted by bharanidharang

I have a few questions as well. My usage of computer has gone dramatically low after i started using ipad and android phone.

1. Will i be able to edit documents on the tv with this stick and an external keyboard and mouse ? If yes, will the tv resolution's and refresh rates make it feasible to edited documents without eye strain
2. I have started using snapseed for picture editing. Do these tv sticks support snapseed ? Again will resolution make me have an eye strain ?
3. If not a TV will a good monitor with hdmi do the above work.

Aim is to throw out the comp when it goes kaput along with the computer table which occupy space and use the wall mounted tv to do the above work. Worse case i can wall mount a monitor as well.

Thoughts ?

Did some more research on the so called Google TV boxes, for starters these are not "Google TV", they are just Andriod builds running on ARM processor. That being said it can effortlessly drive the TV in HDMI mode (1080P resolution) and can load all the applications supported by Android (Google playstore).

This way you can use your HD TV to edit documents and use Snapseed for picture editing. But the only issue with these boxes are, the internet part and the linear TV will not coexist. You need to buy proper Google TV box for that.