Pivos XIOS DS Android 4 0 Network Media Player Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,325 words · ~6 min read
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so you like smart TVs well now you don't
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actually have to buy a smart TV in order to turn your TV into a smart TV so this
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is the pivos zos or zos X IO I mean
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they're really into things that are tough to pronounce when it comes to their product name so this is the second
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product in their media player mix so they do media player boxes their other
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one is the AOS which I think I'm pronouncing right as well this is still
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the PowerHouse this is still the tank this one is running completely custom
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firmware and it's not using any kind of
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uh you know Android or XBMC or anything
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like that at all this guy on the other hand is
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running Android Ice Cream Sandwich which
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with the new XBMC available for Android can run XBMC over top of Android or
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there's actually a native firmware that you can Flash directly to XBMC so you
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can be running XBMC natively off of this
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tiny tiny little device that you have to basically just kind of stash somewhere
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near your TV check that
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out so let's have a look at speeds and feeds before we have uh whoops before we
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take a closer look at the physical aspect of the and this there it's off
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now it's out of my way thank you comes with a fairly rudimentary
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remote okay comes with power
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brick okay oh look they throw in an HDMI cable too that's
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nice all right so what do they have to say for themselves so number one okay
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supports a bunch of video codex this is a very experienced team so it's going to
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support all of the important stuff including you know your rmvb for your
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Asian shows and all that all that good stuff what's in the box we've already
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seen supportive connectivity we'll definitely see system requirements so uh
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1080p resolution is fully supported and
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very very good uh Wireless is included with this device you can see right here
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Wireless N is included it also has 1000 Ethernet and I would usually recommend
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using 1000 Ethernet where possible but if you have good signal strength
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Wireless N will do the trick for you it also supports a micro sdhd card up to 32
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gigs and that is pretty much all it has to say for itself in that regard so here
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this is an older box actually because it's running Ice Cream Sandwich already
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with the newer units that are shipping okay that we've already covered supports
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a wide range of peripherals including pivos sense Wireless motion
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remote this one which yeah isn't the
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same as the one that came in the box so this is a motion sensing remote that I
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haven't actually used yet so move swipe point and click and I'm really looking
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forward to trying this this is an optional accessory whereas the zos comes
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with just the basic remote okay keyboard mouse webcam card readers digital
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cameras and many more comes with an ARM C 89 so fairly powerful processor 512
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Megs of RAM 2 gigs Nan flash although you can expand the storage and you can
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always also expand the storage via USB 2
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okay powered by Android yep okay the
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marriage between the digital home the ultra slim form factor and that's pretty
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much it so let's have a look at the unit itself very clean very cool styling zos
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DS media play on the front you find basically an IR receiver you got a few
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indicator LEDs on the side you find your micro SD for storage two USB 2 ports on
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the back you got a land port another usb2 port HDMI DC voltage in and a power
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button and on this side you basically got uh not a whole so the main advantage
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with any media player that you buy or not the main advantage the main
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consideration always has to be how well are they going to support it so pivos
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has shown with the AOS that they are willing to launch a product put it in
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the marketplace honestly at first there were a fair number of firmware bugs but
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these days um speaking as you know a retailer you know I work at NC um these
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days it's all Iron note they took care of it so the AOS runs really well now
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zos has some bugs you know that's to be expected however pivos is very committed
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to upgrades in fact they even have a dedicated upgrade button right on the
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bottom so the cool thing about upgrading this thing to Ice Cream Sandwich is that
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it's really meant to be run on a big screen so there's a fully functional
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Google Play Store which means that all you have to do is sync all the apps from
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your Android device no learning curve whatsoever and all of a sudden you've
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got everything that you want running on your TV as well as on your tablet or
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smartphone so that means you've got all that cool stuff that comes
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with using an open platform like you know Skype and Twitter and all that good
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stuff in fact it's supports webcams I think we covered that very briefly before but that's a cool thing cuz lots
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of smart TVs they want you to buy like their webcam in order to run Skype on
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your smart TV and it's like you know 100 over dollars
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well okay or you could just buy a cheap webcam and a zos for pretty much the
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same price and then you could run Skype on your TV and you can have all these
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other advantages as well it also has support for Chrome which is pretty cool
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given that it's only running Ice Cream Sandwich at this time you know you can play uh HD YouTube with all of the
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correct apps and all that maybe slick could look at the accessories for a
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second and all that uh p R functionality with supported USB tuners uh you can run
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games such as Angry Birds without any difficulty there's a few limitations so
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the included remote isn't that great it's just basic functionality however
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this sense one which we should actually open up just you know as an exercise in
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opening boxes cuz that's what we apparently do on this channel um so it
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comes with a USB charging cable uh mini
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USB receiver dongle that you will
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probably plug in to this
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there nice little profile and pivo sense
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Wireless motion remote so there you go so you have the
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option of a more robust remote control system as well and uh okay right so
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limitations there's no HD audio bit streaming but down mixing does work fine
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there's some issues with YouTube app switching between full and window screen
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but these are things that can potentially be worked on in the future
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uh there's also the fact that there's no
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multi- Channel audio pass through but DTS and Dolby Digital 5.1 will be
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enabled by a firmware update down mixing currently works fine so what's the
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summary basically this thing is not meant to replace the AOS and the pivos
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lineup but it's meant to be more of like a smart smart TV
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experience augmentation Creator thing as
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opposed to being like a like a Powerhouse media box so I'm really
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excited to try it out and I hope you guys are excited to sort of tune in with
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