So which one? There are so many to choose!

[reddragon72]

So I was looking, and still am, at the Co-Star because of the great remote and functionality and price. But I was told here and a couple other locations that Google.TV, even the gen2, are hard to hack and do not support all android apps. Well I want to have the regular Google market to get cool games like modern combat series and asphalt and other high quality games.

So now I started looking at all these devices and found that they are almost all single core A8 or A9, but all seem to have the Mali-400 GPU. I have the Galaxy S2 and it has a dual core A9 with the Mali-400 GPU and it rocks all the games without a hiccup. So are there any of these "Google HDMI" devices sporting anything like that? Ebay has plenty to choose from and I can use my phone as a remote or even a wiimote, even though the Co-Stars remote rocks, and deal with that but what I am worried about is performance. I know the single core alone will kill performance, but the GPU is the same as my phone that rocks. I will also be playing lots of movies and Netflix so it would be nice to have those working as well.

So can anyone help out here? This would be a great way to start the feature list of the devices and how well they perform as I have been seeing lots of issues with ICS on some devices.

Any guidance or incite into this cluttered world would be great.

Thanks

 

[next121]

The GPU isn't the same that's in your phone. The Galaxy S2 has a Mali-400 MP4 (4 core) GPU. The Mali 400 GPU's you see in these Android TV boxes are 1 core only, the Mali 400 can scale from 1-4 cores.

In addition games are near useless unless you have gamepad support. Using a flymouse/remote is a waste of time and a killer on your wrists.

The most powerful of these Android TV boxes is the Geniatech ATV1600 which uses the Amlogic 8726-MX chipset which has dual core A9 CPU's at 1.5Ghz and a dual core Mali 400 at 400Mhz. These are not easy to obtain yet.

Android on Amlogic works well enough there are issues here and there obviously from running a tablet OS on a set top box but the plus points are
* full access to Google Play market
* XBMC for local media playback
* easier to obtain Android TV globally, GoogleTV is only available in a few places.

Plus points for GoogleTV are
* Officially supported by Google.
* Streaming game services like OnLive properly supported.
* GUI and apps designed for use with the remote control.
* HDMI input and HDMI-CEC (can control your cable/sat set top box)

Downsides are limited app support, no XBMC.