so you like smart TVs well now you don't
actually have to buy a smart TV in order to turn your TV into a smart TV so this
is the pivos zos or zos X IO I mean
they're really into things that are tough to pronounce when it comes to their product name so this is the second
product in their media player mix so they do media player boxes their other
one is the AOS which I think I'm pronouncing right as well this is still
the PowerHouse this is still the tank this one is running completely custom
firmware and it's not using any kind of
uh you know Android or XBMC or anything
like that at all this guy on the other hand is
running Android Ice Cream Sandwich which
with the new XBMC available for Android can run XBMC over top of Android or
there's actually a native firmware that you can Flash directly to XBMC so you
can be running XBMC natively off of this
tiny tiny little device that you have to basically just kind of stash somewhere
near your TV check that
out so let's have a look at speeds and feeds before we have uh whoops before we
take a closer look at the physical aspect of the and this there it's off
now it's out of my way thank you comes with a fairly rudimentary
remote okay comes with power
brick okay oh look they throw in an HDMI cable too that's
nice all right so what do they have to say for themselves so number one okay
supports a bunch of video codex this is a very experienced team so it's going to
support all of the important stuff including you know your rmvb for your
Asian shows and all that all that good stuff what's in the box we've already
seen supportive connectivity we'll definitely see system requirements so uh
1080p resolution is fully supported and
very very good uh Wireless is included with this device you can see right here
Wireless N is included it also has 1000 Ethernet and I would usually recommend
using 1000 Ethernet where possible but if you have good signal strength
Wireless N will do the trick for you it also supports a micro sdhd card up to 32
gigs and that is pretty much all it has to say for itself in that regard so here
this is an older box actually because it's running Ice Cream Sandwich already
with the newer units that are shipping okay that we've already covered supports
a wide range of peripherals including pivos sense Wireless motion
remote this one which yeah isn't the
same as the one that came in the box so this is a motion sensing remote that I
haven't actually used yet so move swipe point and click and I'm really looking
forward to trying this this is an optional accessory whereas the zos comes
with just the basic remote okay keyboard mouse webcam card readers digital
cameras and many more comes with an ARM C 89 so fairly powerful processor 512
Megs of RAM 2 gigs Nan flash although you can expand the storage and you can
always also expand the storage via USB 2
okay powered by Android yep okay the
marriage between the digital home the ultra slim form factor and that's pretty
much it so let's have a look at the unit itself very clean very cool styling zos
DS media play on the front you find basically an IR receiver you got a few
indicator LEDs on the side you find your micro SD for storage two USB 2 ports on
the back you got a land port another usb2 port HDMI DC voltage in and a power
button and on this side you basically got uh not a whole so the main advantage
with any media player that you buy or not the main advantage the main
consideration always has to be how well are they going to support it so pivos
has shown with the AOS that they are willing to launch a product put it in
the marketplace honestly at first there were a fair number of firmware bugs but
these days um speaking as you know a retailer you know I work at NC um these
days it's all Iron note they took care of it so the AOS runs really well now
zos has some bugs you know that's to be expected however pivos is very committed
to upgrades in fact they even have a dedicated upgrade button right on the
bottom so the cool thing about upgrading this thing to Ice Cream Sandwich is that
it's really meant to be run on a big screen so there's a fully functional
Google Play Store which means that all you have to do is sync all the apps from
your Android device no learning curve whatsoever and all of a sudden you've
got everything that you want running on your TV as well as on your tablet or
smartphone so that means you've got all that cool stuff that comes
with using an open platform like you know Skype and Twitter and all that good
stuff in fact it's supports webcams I think we covered that very briefly before but that's a cool thing cuz lots
of smart TVs they want you to buy like their webcam in order to run Skype on
your smart TV and it's like you know 100 over dollars
well okay or you could just buy a cheap webcam and a zos for pretty much the
same price and then you could run Skype on your TV and you can have all these
other advantages as well it also has support for Chrome which is pretty cool
given that it's only running Ice Cream Sandwich at this time you know you can play uh HD YouTube with all of the
correct apps and all that maybe slick could look at the accessories for a
second and all that uh p R functionality with supported USB tuners uh you can run
games such as Angry Birds without any difficulty there's a few limitations so
the included remote isn't that great it's just basic functionality however
this sense one which we should actually open up just you know as an exercise in
opening boxes cuz that's what we apparently do on this channel um so it
comes with a USB charging cable uh mini
USB receiver dongle that you will
probably plug in to this
there nice little profile and pivo sense
Wireless motion remote so there you go so you have the
option of a more robust remote control system as well and uh okay right so
limitations there's no HD audio bit streaming but down mixing does work fine
there's some issues with YouTube app switching between full and window screen
but these are things that can potentially be worked on in the future
uh there's also the fact that there's no
multi- Channel audio pass through but DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 will be
enabled by a firmware update down mixing currently works fine so what's the
summary basically this thing is not meant to replace the AOS and the pivos
lineup but it's meant to be more of like a smart smart TV
experience augmentation Creator thing as
opposed to being like a like a Powerhouse media box so I'm really
excited to try it out and I hope you guys are excited to sort of tune in with
us so don't forget to subscribe to L US tech tips for more unboxings reviews and other computer videos