UnspokenDrea
Member
Found this on another Forum, so i thought i share.
SKYBOX AS100 REVIEW
Manufacturers Spec: SkyBox | SkyBox
Well I have been one of the "lucky" few who have managed to acquire a test sample of this brand new skybox from the makers of the legendary F5s. This new box brags a lot of features for a sensible price, circa £70 for the box delivered. In terms of the legacy of the F5s box, this box had a lot to live up to.
Initially I was dissapointed that the GPU was only dual core and for the price not a Quad Core GPU.....I was also dissapointed that the processor whilst an ARM A9, was only 1GHz. But having said that I decided to give it a go.
The Box is layered booting, what that means, is that Android and Live TV load on top of each other and sit layered once fully loaded. There is effectively two boxes inside this box and very separate, they dont necessary merge into each other, other than for the purpose of switching to either Android or Live TV (sly). The changeover can be made allegedly within a few clicks. I will explore this later on.
It is although a F5s box and a low spec android box has been to make this kit. The screens arent all that different to an F5s, the only difference is I was hoping for a better EPG in line with some of the linx recievers providing a easy screen to use, this failed to live up to expectations as the box had poor epg (same as f5s) XMLTV. the only difference was I could set timers on the 7 day epg which the slybox f5s couldnt do, no doubt a bit of firmware would solve this if they developed it, I assume they will as it will be mstly a case of copy and paste form the codeing of the as100.
The menus are alot sharper than the F5s menus. When using high resolutions. The channels list, I used AJ's list to flash the box, worked staight away, I renamed the categories to same as AJs, and created an image download so i had it for the other boxes to install onto, I have 10 samples of this box.
When using sly features its eactly the same as F5s in terms of setting up newcamd etc...
To use the android features, I botted up the box, XBMC was preinstalled,so I just installed fusion and Mashup on the box, with fusion i installed Sports Devil only as the memory wa quite low and i didnt want to burden the box with extra plug ins, where mashup and sports devil can do most things nearly.
The box isnt capable of sharing the Ethernet Port with both andorid and sly live tv. The android purely uses the Ethernet connection and so what do you do with live tv the...you have to create a wifi hotspot in android using unlocked unsecured broadcating. Then you o to Live TV and connect to this wifi hotspot. The box cleared the channels no problem once this was setup. However when I turned the bx off the hotspot was lost when i turned it back on, i had to setup this hotspot each time which was annoying, because clearly they rushed the firmware on this box as it cant store simple settings which it should do.
The Andorid features crashed on the third time boot, and the box only loaded live tv, andorid was frozen in bottom right hand corner, just saying "ANDROID" and flashing, from this point on the Android features seemed to permanently crashed, it wasnt possible to use android again, I have contacted the factory manufacuturers for the Firmware files so that this box can be rescued via RS232 flashing to restore Andorid if this is even possible??? Time will tell the support on this product is low on the web as its brand new product, there isnt much helpful info at all on skybox.cc and no contact email addresses.
I tried another bx, and this time all was well, apart from the anoyance of setting up wifi hotspot each time it worked, the streaming was good, bit slow on the menus compared to my MX2 andorid box, but worked well enough and smoothly.
The box in its present state needs firmware update ASAP. I'm sure the skybox makers are onto this as the intial tests drew out every problem that needs resolving to make this a box that is as simple as the F5s.....for now I will stick with my F5S which has always been the best box out there.
SKYBOX AS100 REVIEW
Manufacturers Spec: SkyBox | SkyBox
Well I have been one of the "lucky" few who have managed to acquire a test sample of this brand new skybox from the makers of the legendary F5s. This new box brags a lot of features for a sensible price, circa £70 for the box delivered. In terms of the legacy of the F5s box, this box had a lot to live up to.
Initially I was dissapointed that the GPU was only dual core and for the price not a Quad Core GPU.....I was also dissapointed that the processor whilst an ARM A9, was only 1GHz. But having said that I decided to give it a go.
The Box is layered booting, what that means, is that Android and Live TV load on top of each other and sit layered once fully loaded. There is effectively two boxes inside this box and very separate, they dont necessary merge into each other, other than for the purpose of switching to either Android or Live TV (sly). The changeover can be made allegedly within a few clicks. I will explore this later on.
It is although a F5s box and a low spec android box has been to make this kit. The screens arent all that different to an F5s, the only difference is I was hoping for a better EPG in line with some of the linx recievers providing a easy screen to use, this failed to live up to expectations as the box had poor epg (same as f5s) XMLTV. the only difference was I could set timers on the 7 day epg which the slybox f5s couldnt do, no doubt a bit of firmware would solve this if they developed it, I assume they will as it will be mstly a case of copy and paste form the codeing of the as100.
The menus are alot sharper than the F5s menus. When using high resolutions. The channels list, I used AJ's list to flash the box, worked staight away, I renamed the categories to same as AJs, and created an image download so i had it for the other boxes to install onto, I have 10 samples of this box.
When using sly features its eactly the same as F5s in terms of setting up newcamd etc...
To use the android features, I botted up the box, XBMC was preinstalled,so I just installed fusion and Mashup on the box, with fusion i installed Sports Devil only as the memory wa quite low and i didnt want to burden the box with extra plug ins, where mashup and sports devil can do most things nearly.
The box isnt capable of sharing the Ethernet Port with both andorid and sly live tv. The android purely uses the Ethernet connection and so what do you do with live tv the...you have to create a wifi hotspot in android using unlocked unsecured broadcating. Then you o to Live TV and connect to this wifi hotspot. The box cleared the channels no problem once this was setup. However when I turned the bx off the hotspot was lost when i turned it back on, i had to setup this hotspot each time which was annoying, because clearly they rushed the firmware on this box as it cant store simple settings which it should do.
The Andorid features crashed on the third time boot, and the box only loaded live tv, andorid was frozen in bottom right hand corner, just saying "ANDROID" and flashing, from this point on the Android features seemed to permanently crashed, it wasnt possible to use android again, I have contacted the factory manufacuturers for the Firmware files so that this box can be rescued via RS232 flashing to restore Andorid if this is even possible??? Time will tell the support on this product is low on the web as its brand new product, there isnt much helpful info at all on skybox.cc and no contact email addresses.
I tried another bx, and this time all was well, apart from the anoyance of setting up wifi hotspot each time it worked, the streaming was good, bit slow on the menus compared to my MX2 andorid box, but worked well enough and smoothly.
The box in its present state needs firmware update ASAP. I'm sure the skybox makers are onto this as the intial tests drew out every problem that needs resolving to make this a box that is as simple as the F5s.....for now I will stick with my F5S which has always been the best box out there.
