Best Decent Android TV Box

Stephan Maritz said:
This is a good find, I pulled the trigger on this one. If only AliExpress was as quick as Temu haha
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Today I collected the Rocktek from the post office, with a fee of R149. I ordered on the 11th of May, so I was pleasantly surprised with the short delivery time.

I have connected it up, and set up the basics, and so far it works brilliantly.

It's snappy and responsive, and the Android TV interface which I missed, is back!

I'll give more feedback in a day or two.
 
So far, everything runs without a hitch. I watched a review on YouTube where the reviewer mentioned limited Play store apps, but Android TV and GoogleTV does actually not have the same apps as an Android phone or tablet would have.

In that regard, there was no difference for me. Netflix now has 5.1 surround again, even my dodgy streaming app works flawlessly.

Plex streams great from a remote server (to be fair, this wasn't an issue with the Xiaomi either).

My TV is only a 1080p, so while YouTube does say 2160p, the limit is on my TV.
 
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So I ordered my Rocktek G2 on 10th of May and collected it at my local SA post office on Friday 30 May (if you dont recall, mine ordered on AliExpress).
Must say I am very happy with it, it performs extremely well!
Operations are snappy and quick. 5.1 surround working perfectly through the hdmi, still struggling to get it working on dolby atmos specific content, but I think its my old receiver that does not support it, so need to figure out how to let it downscale to standard 5.1. I will test using an spdif connection to see if that handles atmos on my old receiver.
Picks up my windows media share without issues and also works perfectly with my local hdd connected on its usb 3.0 port - This is an NTFS format drive, which my older mediabox maverick did not want to read.
All in all, happy customer
 
Bliksis said:
For now, I'm done with Xiaomi Android boxes. They screwed up the 2nd gen so bad, I'll never buy another one.
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whats wrong with the 2nd gen? ..... i was fairly happy with mine - i created solutions for whatever i considered the perceived weaknesses besides the ram (i would have liked 4 gigs) and not reading flash drives in any file explorer
 
naughty001 said:
whats wrong with the 2nd gen? ..... i was fairly happy with mine - i created solutions for whatever i considered the perceived weaknesses besides the ram (i would have liked 4 gigs) and not reading flash drives in any file explorer
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Small things, like Netflix did not have 5.1 audio anymore, I could not use my own Screensaver app which I purchased, home screen channels kept rearranging themselves, no time/clock on the home screen. Play Store so hidden you are better off trying to access it with a voice command. Audio settings relating to surround sound over SPDIF not functioning as it should.

It will now serve as a media player in the guest room.
 
Bliksis said:
Small things, like Netflix did not have 5.1 audio anymore, I could not use my own Screensaver app which I purchased, home screen channels kept rearranging themselves, no time/clock on the home screen. Play Store so hidden you are better off trying to access it with a voice command. Audio settings relating to surround sound over SPDIF not functioning as it should.

It will now serve as a media player in the guest room.
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the screensaver thing is definitely irritating - even worse is that even if you use a launcher like Projectivy you have to purchase the pro version to allow screensavers to work ..... the play store thing .... well one of the first things i did was to add the play store shortcut to the home screen ..... i haven't played around with the audio settings because i got rid off all my audio equipment and moved into a single room space in a retirement home so i cant help with that
 
I just purchased this to compare to my Nvidia Shield Tv Pro 2019 and I must say I am quite happy with it. Fast, snappy and supports YouTube HDR (Wow).

I would definitely recommend the Google Streamer 4k.

www.geewiz.co.za

Google TV Streamer 4K - Porcelain

Fast Streaming Entertainment on Your TV with Voice Search Remote Watch Movies, Shows, Live TV, and Netflix in 4K HDR Smart Home Control 32 GB of Storage Colour - Porcelain
www.geewiz.co.za www.geewiz.co.za

Edit: Projectivity Launcher is a must.
 
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Looney said:
I just purchased this to compare to my Nvidia Shield Tv Pro 2019 and I must say I am quite happy with it. Fast, snappy and supports YouTube HDR (Wow).

I would definitely recommend the Google Streamer 4k.

www.geewiz.co.za

Google TV Streamer 4K - Porcelain

Fast Streaming Entertainment on Your TV with Voice Search Remote Watch Movies, Shows, Live TV, and Netflix in 4K HDR Smart Home Control 32 GB of Storage Colour - Porcelain
www.geewiz.co.za www.geewiz.co.za

Edit: Projectivity Launcher is a must.
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i suppose that the Google streamer will have some advantages over the Mi Box S 3rd gen because of the amounts of ram but some of the other boxes have different advantages over the Google streamer

interesting comparison table can be found here between the Google streamer, the Rocktek GX1 and the Mi Box S 3rd gen

https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidTV/comments/1k8p8k6/comparison_chart_of_the_new_generation_of_android

if you cant see the table on Reddit you can find the table here and then follow the discussion at Reddit

https://imgur.com/a/comparison

about Projectivy launcher - i got it because someone here posted it and recommended it and i owe them a debt of gratitude - i enjoy using it :thumbsup:
 
Bliksis said:
Small things, like Netflix did not have 5.1 audio anymore, I could not use my own Screensaver app which I purchased, home screen channels kept rearranging themselves, no time/clock on the home screen. Play Store so hidden you are better off trying to access it with a voice command. Audio settings relating to surround sound over SPDIF not functioning as it should.

It will now serve as a media player in the guest room.
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What do you mean Netflix doesn't have 5.1 audio anymore? What were you using for 5.1? As my 2nd gen has it
 
Bliksis said:
Small things, like Netflix did not have 5.1 audio anymore, I could not use my own Screensaver app which I purchased, home screen channels kept rearranging themselves, no time/clock on the home screen. Play Store so hidden you are better off trying to access it with a voice command. Audio settings relating to surround sound over SPDIF not functioning as it should.

It will now serve as a media player in the guest room.
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Unfortunately as of yesterday, my screen saver app which uses Google Photos no longer works.

It appears Google as disabled 3rd party app access to Google Photos, and some work about is required.

Leave it up to Google to ruin things that work well haha.
 
also regarding the CPU/GPU combo of the Google streamer (Mediatek MT8696) vs the CPU/GPU of the unit in the Mi Box 3rd gen (AMLogic S905x5M) the AMLogic has a bit of a frequency advantage which shows up as almost doubling Antutu scores vs the Mediatek unit ..... now this isn't always important if they are reasonably close but double the score is pretty advantageous IMHO since it will probably show in real life tests ..... so if only Xiaomi wasn't stubborn and added $10 to the price and increased usable ram from 2GB to 4GB then it really would have IMHO been a case of no contest at all between the two but i reckon because of this difference the Google streamer catches up in terms of usable speed and general snappiness

https://gadgetversus.com/processor/amlogic-s905x5m-vs-mediatek-mt8696/

interestingly the same Antutu test vs the SOC in the 2nd gen yielded totally the opposite results ie the Google streamer was double the score of the 2nd gen unit

https://gadgetversus.com/processor/amlogic-s905x-vs-mediatek-mt8696/

if all of this makes any practical difference i will only know after i actually see the Google streamer in action BUT i will be comparing the Xiaomis side by side later today
 
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Jean Claude Vaaldamme said:
LOL at HDR10+ who cares? I thought Dolby Atmos was where its at? (according to you?)
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One thing though - if you do want to try take part in chats & try dismiss technologies, you need to understand what they are first.

We can’t have you talking vision and sound in one sentence trying to defend Apple but not really having any idea about what you’re defending.
 
Smiggles said:
Don't bother. These people prefer this:
9F7DCf.gif
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I nvidia shield tv pro went eol and in the end I just got myself the apple tv 4k lan edition. Probably just worth it for a clean, clear and concise home page. Also... match frame rate/content and other few nice things.
 
Smiggles said:
Don't bother. These people prefer this:
9F7DCf.gif
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how about posting your home screen and we see if its any more useful or better looking or even neater than some of the stuff that some of the other Android/Google boxes manage :p 😉
 
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