All satellite receivers on Android OS. Venz K1 Quad Core Android DVB-S2 Satellite Receiver

It performs its functions, but the impressions are mixed. Although you can take it for that kind of money.

The receiver is a typical media player on a dual-core Amlogik AML8726-MX processor, of which Ali has dozens of options. The difference is the built-in DVB-S2 tuner. It seems to me that it is not worth considering the functions of the media player in detail, everything here is banal, so I will focus on the highlight - the satellite part. I apologize in advance for the quality of the photos; they were taken late at night under artificial lighting using a very mediocre point-and-shoot camera.

Specifications

• CPU AML8726-MX Up to AML8726-MX 1.5GHz ARM Cortex Dual-core A9 + 1080P Media+Dual-3D GPU
• GUP Mali-400 GPU


• Memory DDRIII 1GB
• Flash Nand Flash 4GB (Support 8GB 16GB 32GB)
• WiFi 802.11 b/g/n
• IR Infra Remote control
• Mold Many shell mold
• CCCAM Support
• LED display Support
• DVB-S2 DEMO:AVL6211
• TUNER:AV2012
• DVB-S2 system standard:ETS 302 307
• Symbol Rates: QPSK,8PSK
• Forward error correction rate 1/4.1/3.2/5.3/5.2/3.3/4.4/5.5/6.8/9.9/10
• Carrier frequency acquisition range: ±5MHz for symbol rates above 3 Msps and ±3MHz for the remaining symbol rates
• Roll-off factors for pulse shaping: 0.2, 0.25 and 0.35
• Symbol Rates: 1- 55 Msps
• Code Rates: 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8
• Input Signal level: -84 dBm to 0 dBm (average power)
• ANT. Connector:IEC TYPE, female Loop Outpur:IEC TYPE, male
• 3G Support most external 3G USB dongle
• Power DC input 12V/1.5A
• Accessories gift box
• Power charger adapter
• AV cable
• IR remote control
• User Manual
• I/O 1*HDMI 1.4a Up to 1080p resolution
• 2*USB HOST Host usb port
• 1*TF CARD SUPPORT 1~32GB
• 1*AV or Y/Pb/Pr Standard resolution AV or Y/Pb/Pr signal
• 1*SPDIF Coaxial
• 1*RF IN DVB RF IN
• 1*RF OUT DVB RF LOOPOUT
• 1*RJ45 10/100 BaseT
• 1*Power input 12V/1.5A
• Software
• OS Android 4.2.2
• Video MKV,WMV/VC-1 SP/MP/AP,MPG,MPEG,dat,avi,mov,iso,mp4,rm,H.264,realVideo 8/9/10, up to 1080P
• Audio MP3,AAC,WMA,RM,FLAC,OGG
• Picture jpg,JPEG,MJPEG,PNG
• Adobe Flash Adobe Flash 10.1 support or above
• Support language Chinese, English ,Germany ,Japanese, Korea etc. 24 languages
• XBMC Support
• DRM Verimatrix/PlayReady/Wide Vine, Option
• Applications
• Online Browse all video websites ,support Netflix ,Hulu ,Flixster, youtube etc
• Apps Apps download freely form android market amazon appstore etc
• Medium Local Media playback, support HDD, U disk ,SD card
• Talk online Support SKYPE video call ,MSN, facebook ,twitter ,QQ etc
• Others Support wifi hotpiont ,could be as a wireless router
• Support DLNA, AirPlay, Google TV Remote, LAN, 3D Moive, Email, office suit etc

The receiver arrived in such a nice box, which was somewhat damaged in transit.

Content

Hero of the review

Behind


A fairly standard set of connectors. From left to right: power, HDMI, LAN, Coaxial (digital audio output for an external decoder?), MicroSD slot, AV output (adapter from 3.5 jack to tulips included), 2 USB, loop output and input from the converter. I can’t check the operation of DiSEqC and the motor suspension, I don’t have them. But the menu contains the corresponding settings items.

power unit

Compared to the old S8120

Remotes


The remote control can switch to mouse mode, but, unfortunately, without a gyroscope. The cursor movement is controlled by the joystick.
When you turn it on for the first time, a wizard is launched that allows you to configure the network connection, language settings, screen resolution (720p 50 and 60Hz and 1080p 50 and 60Hz modes are available), as well as perform a channel scan.
“Blind” search happens quite quickly, subjectively 2 times faster than on my GI S8120.

Shell






Let's see what Antutu shows


Quite predictable, but for a media player this is quite enough.

Disadvantages found:
- Maximum desktop resolution 720p. When you select 1080p, there is no real switching; 720p is scaled to 1080p, so the menu turns out to be quite soapy. Although HD channels seem to be at 1080p. I don’t know how to check, but visually the difference with the 8120 is not noticeable.
- Inconvenient list of channels, there is a very lack of “bouquets” a la Enigma. There is only one favorite list, no sorting by provider.


- There are no CI slots or card reader, so you can only legally watch free-to-air (FTA) channels.
- The native firmware does not support HDMI-CEC, but alternative ones do.

Pros:
+ Price compared to analogues. The recently released Spark2 has the same hardware platform, but costs about $170
+ Android :)
+ Alternative firmware. There are not very many of them, but among them there is even OpenELEC

The method for viewing encoded channels starting with the letter Sh is built into the firmware and works fine, but we won’t focus on it, because he's not entirely legal

What's inside?

We turn our receiver over and discover a mysterious cover


What's underneath it?


Why this “designer sophistication”? Let's figure it out.
Opening...


... and we begin to carefully examine the insides.
On the reverse side there is nothing interesting except the release date, September 27, 2014, fresh.


Interesting:






The board has a connector for front USB and a cutout in the case for its installation. You can modify it if you wish.
Have you noticed the unsoldered “to SATA” and “12v out” connectors? It turns out that the manufacturer provided for the installation of a 2.5" HDD and a mysterious cover specifically for it. There should probably be a USB-to-SATA board.
What else is there?
Front panel board with IR receiver, two-color status LED and segment indicator


Debug


There is a place for a switch next to the power connector; there is a hole in the housing.


Reset, by closing these contacts you can get into recovery.


But for this the Chinese need to have their hands beaten off. The ESD protection array is not wired near the HDMI output.

I am a very long-time user of satellite television, I installed my first “dish” back in 1995, many receivers have passed through my hands in the process of their evolution. Satellite receivers on Android appeared about 2 years ago, but reading the reviews of their users, there was no particular desire to buy them, they had a lot of problems. But time passed, the software improved, and just a couple of months ago new, quad-core receivers appeared, and it was no longer possible to refuse the opportunity to try what it was. If anyone is interested, please contact me.

Device characteristics

Chipset Amlogic S805
Processor Quad-Core Cortex A5 Processor, 1.5GHz frequency
GPU Quad-Core Mali 450, 3D Graphics Acceleration
Memory NANYA 1GB DDR3
Internal Storage 8GB NAND FLASH
Wireless Connectivity Realtek 8188 WiFi 2.4GHz
OS Android KitKat 4.4.2
Video Output HDMI 1.4b, up to 1080P @ 60fps, 3D mode
Audio Output HDMI 1.4b, optical SPDIF, CVBS

Peripheral Interface:

RJ-45 Ethernet jack (10/100Mbps)
MircoSD card reader × 1, support 1~32GB
USB 2.0 port × 4
Optical ×1 DVB
RF IN × 1
DVB RF OUT × 1

Power AC-DC SPS adapter 12V/2A included

Supported Decoder Format H.265/HEVC, H.264, WMV, VC-1, AVS, MPEG-1/2/4, RealVideo
Supported Video Format MKV, WMV, MPG, MPEG, DAT, AVI, MOV, ISO, MP4, RM, DivX HD
Supported Audio Format MP3, AAC, WMA, RM, FLAC, Ogg and programmable with 5.1 down-mixing
DOLBY TrueHD and DTS HD Supported DOBLY TureHD and DTS HD By KODI Helix

Mold Private Tooling

3G Support most external 3G USB dongle

CCCam Support
Newcamd Support
Biss Supprot

TUNER:AV2012
System standard:ETS 302 307 Symbol Rates: QPSK,8PSK
Forward error correction rate 1/4.1/3.2/5.3/5.2/3.3/4.4/5.5/6.8/9.9/10
Carrier frequency acquisition range: ±5MHz for symbol rates above 3 Msps and ±3MHz for the remaining symbol rates
Roll-off factors for pulse shaping: 0.2, 0.25 and 0.35
Symbol Rates: 1- 55 Msps
Code Rates: 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 5/6, 7/8
Input Signal level: -84 dBm to 0 dBm (average power)
ANT. Connector:IEC TYPE, female Loop Outpur:IEC TYPE, male

In short, this is an Android TV box, on a fairly modern processor, good graphics, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of flash memory, 4 USB, MicroSD, optical audio output, HDMI, as well as analogue audio and video outputs, network support LAN and WiFi. And most importantly, with a built-in satellite DVB-S2 tuner that supports all currently used broadcast formats. It is the presence of a tuner that allows us to call this small box a satellite receiver.

The receiver arrived in 15 days, well packed, “box in box” wrapped with tape. Weight 746g.

Unpacking photo

I will not consider in detail the functionality of the android part of the receiver, there are enough reviews of TV boxes on the Amlogic S805 processor, they are easy to find on music, and YouTube, and in other sources, in this regard everything is similar here. Of greater interest is the satellite part, and in the satellite part the ability to “cunningly” view coded channels, called card sharing, or simply sharing.

The capabilities of viewing videos of different formats are well shown in this review of a set-top box on the same processor

The launcher, installed by default, is quite convenient, designed to be controlled from the remote control, but for full use of Android, a wireless mouse or gyrocontrol is desirable. By the way, this seller comes with it in one of the packages. The stock remote control does not stand out in any way, the buttons are pressed clearly, the range is good, it is the same as all similar Android consoles.

Several screenshots of the stock launcher

The receiver supports real 1080p resolution (AnTuTu Benchmark and Kodi)

So, DVB-S2 is part of the set-top box.
Satellite viewing on Android is implemented as a separate DTV application. It starts automatically after loading the receiver or using a separate button on the remote control. The time from switching on to the appearance of the TV channel picture is 40 seconds.
Regarding turning on/off from the remote control. Similar set-top boxes that I had before had problems with this; it was possible to turn it off from the remote control, but you had to turn it on with a button on the set-top box. Here everything is in order, and it turns on and off completely from the remote control.
The channel switching speed is fast, 1-2 seconds, and largely depends on the time the key arrives from the server.





The receiver supports Diseqc 1.0, 1.1, motor 1.2, as well as USALS.
Built-in channel editor allows you to delete, rename, move channels, favorite lists are supported.
There is a graphic TV guide, recording functions, including a timer, and time shift.
In principle, the functionality is quite good.
Main. Finally a decently working cardsharing. The newcamd and cccamd protocols are supported, the settings are simple, entered from the remote control. Works great, no glitches.

Screenshots of cardsharing settings windows

I didn’t notice any difference in picture quality with receivers based on Enigma and Broadcom processors, but there it is considered the standard.
WiFi in the set-top box works perfectly, despite the built-in antenna.

But if the whole thing about this receiver was limited to Android, then everything would be fine, of course, but I’m not particularly interested in it, as are other users of satellite receivers on Enigma2, who are accustomed to huge functionality.
On this receiver, thanks Vitaliy_S c w3bsit3-dns.com, special thanks to him, the OpenElec operating system with Kodi (formerly XBMC) has been compiled, and I hope will be supported in the future.
It cannot be compared with Enigma2, it is a little different, both in setup and in the logic of use. But the trick is that the more you use this particular set-top box on OpenElec with Kodi, the less you want to return to the powerful VU+ Solo2 receiver on Enigma2. First of all, of course, because of the modern interface, with many settings, graphic effects and replaceable covers that allow you to completely transform this interface. In my opinion, this is still an alternative to enigma receivers, but due to some limitations inherent in enigma, which complicate its development, this platform will soon supplant it.
To configure this receiver on OpenElec you will need to put in a little more effort, but the result will be worth it.

To make life easier for those who buy this receiver, here are a few links.
The main topic where Android receivers are discussed, and recently this one, and where you should go with questions: 4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=400647
Support site from the manufacturer in English where you can download the latest firmware

Finally, let's see what's inside:



Assembly and installation are good. A small radiator heats up to 40-45 degrees. under load, so there are no issues with cooling

For those who do not have the opportunity to use a satellite dish, there is exactly the same receiver with a DVB-T2 tuner, it is $10 cheaper.

Conclusions:
1. The receiver deserves attention; it is suitable for both beginners in satellite TV and seasoned users of top-end receivers on Enigma2. The first for hassle-free TV viewing on Android, the second for learning and using new OpenElec+Kodi technologies
2. In my opinion, this device shows where satellite receivers will evolve in the near future.