MK808 Dual Core Android 4.1 TV BOX Rockchip RK3066 Cortex-A9 Mini PC Smart TV Stick
Highlight:
1.Android 4.1 Jell Bean OS, Google Play Store pre-installed;
2.1.2Ghz Rockchip RK3066 Dual Core CPU, Quad core Mali-400 GPU;
3.1GB RAM /8GB storage;
4.Built in dual wifi antenna in this android device?which makes it more faster than other android tv boxes;
5.Support external SD card capacity:1GB-16GB ; Hard Disk: 1GB ~ 5TB;
6.Muliti-language supported
Specifications:
Chip: Rochip RK 3066, Cortex-A9
OS: Android 4.1 Jelly Bean
D
List Price: $ 50.43
Price: $ 50.43
A few glaring issues ruin an otherwise great device.,
The MK808 is essentially an Android tablet without a screen (you use your TV or monitor as the screen). This is a great concept, as it allows you to stream media directly onto your TV screen.
The glaring issue with the MK808 is that it will frequently drop the wi-fi connection (every 10-20 minutes for me). This ruins streaming Netflix or Hulu, but streaming music works well enough even with the connection dropping. This is not just an issue with my own MK808, this is an issue that basically all of them have. Unless you put your wireless router right next to it, or use a USB-to-Ethernet dongle and run an Ethernet wire directly to the box, you WILL have the same issue.
The MK808 still works fine for playing movies off an external hard drive, running other Android apps, and general web browsing. The Rockchip RK3066 processor is fast enough to run Android relatively smoothly (not as fast an top-tier Android phone, but fast enough), and movies play fine, even in 1080p.
The software that comes with the stick apparently has a lot of issues, so I installed a custom rom from FreakTab (search Google for MK808 custom ROM and check the first link- just follow the instructions carefully to install). A custom Android ROM is basically like a new version of the Android operating system, made by someone other than the company that makes the device. The one from FreakTab fixes most issues, frees up some extra space, and makes things run a little faster. Unfortunately, the wi-fi issues is apparently a hardware problem, so that won’t go away.
Even with the custom Rom, it will occasionally restart itself. This is pretty infrequent (maybe once every few days for me, and only when I’m running certain programs), so it’s not much of a problem, and I wouldn’t take off a full star just for this issue. It restarts in about a minute, so it doesn’t bother me too much.
So basically, it works perfectly if you ignore the wi-fi connection dropping periodically and the fact that you need to install custom firmware to fix the bugs (not hard, just takes about 15 minutes, and only needs to be done one time). Honestly though, if you can wait, I would wait for the next generation of Android mini PC sticks that fix the wi-fi issues and run a little cleaner. If you can’t wait, it’s still a fun toy for tech/media geeks like me.
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|Performs great especially after ROM upgrade. Some have wifi issue,
I bought 3 of these as Christmas gifts after I tested one for myself. I was able to play a 13GB mkv file off a windows share on my network without an issue (use ES File Explorer). Netflix works well, so does YouTube. MX Player indicates that it is using Hardware Decoding so performance is not a problem.
Some users reported wifi issues. Those have two solutions:
1. Get a USB to ethernet adapter from Amazon for $17. Search for: Android USB Ethernet. Make sure that ths adapter is for USB 2.0 for faster speed.
2. If you can’t get an ethernet cable to your TV then you can likely fix it by opening the mk808 and removing the ground cable for the two wifi antennas. Search Google or YouTube for “mk808 finless ROM”. Bob, the maker of the ROM made a video documenting the issue and how to fix it.
You should also upgrade to the Finless ROM v.1.5a or newer for a whole bunch of reasons such as having 2GB for application installation, root access, more Google Play store access, cleaned up some Chinese crap ware, etc.
Update 12/25/2012: I found that some of my .mkv videos are encoded with dts audio and that MX Player does not have the plugin to decode it anymore. You will need to search for the codec on forums and add it to MX player as a custom codec. Or you might find another video player altogether.
Enjoy
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