Android Box Recommendations Please

[Webmaster95]

Hello all,

I’m looking to upgrade from old DS9 boxes recommended by Xibo within the organisation I work for. I know Xibo has a recommended list but was wondering what people recommend and use to connect to the CMS and running the app on the device?

Thanks!

[Swansea_DWale]

What’s your motivation for the upgrade? If you have some specifics on why your current boxes aren’t meeting requirements any more, I’m sure we’ll all come back with some solid suggestions.

We’ve got a selection of different players here; 151 screens across multiple OS deployments and hardware configurations, and the only players that don’t give us any issues at all are our 27 DSCS9s… they just don’t stop! My only complaint is our cyber security team don’t like them because they’re not patched with the latest Android security updates. But… that’s Android for you. We don’t have any of the newer DSCS95s or DSCS9Xs here, but I’d trust them to work just as well.

[Webmaster95]

Thanks for this, that’s good to know. We use DSCS9’s too and a few of our boxes have stopped working completely, sometimes I find they just lose connection and drop off playlists when trying to upload content. We are looking to purchase a few more anyway due to expanding our digital signage coverage. I have looked at the newer DSCS9 range and was just wondering if people had any more recommendations before making the decision on what to purchase.

[Orjan_Fredriksson]

Hi
We have been working with Ugoos X4 for some years now. They take some work to set up but runs very nice. Even have some in roadsign LED installations (down to -20C) for over a year now.

[Jon_Knowles]

Giada D77, imo best player I’ve used for some weird reason when doing screen splicing, one of the 2 dedicated CPU HDMI ports gets the color messed up only on Hisense displays. The other dedicated CPU driven output as well as the 2 GPU based outputs always work flawlessly.

[Vishal_Debipersad]

We have 250 displays where the first batch was DSCS9 (around 30 players). All of them running fine for years.

Often breaks are the AC/DC adapter because of the sudden power outage which could break the adapter. Also DSCS9(x) doesn’t like to get a power interrupt alot. From the 250 players in 3 to 4 years. We replaced 10 devices en reinstalled 5 because of constant power outages. But specifically those devices where running at customer were they needed to turn it off instead of leaving it on.

[signage]

We have hundreds of the DSDevices Android players in our environment. Our biggest complaints for the DSCS9/9X/X95 units are that they:

1. They have to be shipped overseas at a markup. If you don’t live in the UK, this means long lead times and tarrifs
2. They have limited RAM, and Xibo is not optimized to use all available. This often leads to unnecessary OOM/Trim scenarios when there’s still plenty left for the system to use
3. Wireless is spotty at times and inconsistent. They tend to just fall off the network for no reason at all and the hardware watchdog fails to correct the issue
4. They are consistently behind on AndroidOS updates. We understand that just because it’s older doesn’t mean insecure, but it limits what APKs can be run on them. For example, many remote control solutions do not support anything older than Android 10/11, which is still not available on any player sold by Xibo. Another issue with this is that the Chrome/Webview platform is consistently out-of-date, no bug fixes and often experiences strange behavior/crashes with modern web APIs
5. Lack of support for true 4K@60Hz output resolutions and modern video codecs. Everything is upscaled, cannot run at 60Hz, and even then it doesn’t always negotiate at 4K correctly. Modern hardware decoders for H265 and AV1 are also not supported.

We appreciate the amount of work that has gone into supporting and developing for these players, but they are far from perfect. If there was a cheaper alternative that addressed the concerns above, we’d switch in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, they all come at a premium and are locked down to other competing companies.

[dan]

I just wanted to step in and say thanks for the feedback.

We have really tried to get Android 13 on the 9X/95, but after significant time and effort we’ve had to accept defeat. Amlogic do not support anything beyond Android 9 on the chip, which makes it impossible.

Instead we are working on pulling in and back-porting the latest security updates for Android 9, and can take your other feedback onboard, particularly regarding RAM/Wireless. If you have anything further you wish the device did please do let us know!

A small point on shipping which might be useful; if you’re in the EU then we do ship from The Netherlands so there are no duties to pay. Unfortunately when considering the rest of world there are duties and tariffs to take into consideration.