Gadgetory

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 pebbles zo sore xios ex iOS I mean they're really into things that are tough to pronounce when it comes to their product name still this is the second product in their media player mix so they do media player boxes there 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 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 whoops before we take a closer look at the physical aspect of using this they're off now it's out of my way thank you comes with a fairly rudimentary remote okay comes with power brick okay I'll look Victor on an hdmi cable too that's nice alright so what did they have to say for themselves so number one okay supports a bunch of video codecs this is a very experienced team so it's going to support all of the important stuff including you know your rmvb for your agent shows and all that all that good stuff what's in the box we've already seen supported connectivity will definitely see system requirements so 1080p resolution is fully supported and very very good a wireless is included with this device you can see right here wireless-n is included it also has 10 underneath or net and I would usually recommend using ten hundred Ethernet where possible but if you have good signal strength wireless-n will do the trick for you it also supports a micro sdhc 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 pebbles sent 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 slight point and click and I'm really looking forward to trying this this is an optional accessory whereas the xios comes with just the basic remote okay keyboard mouse webcam card readers digital cameras many more comes with an ARM Cortex a9 so a fairly powerful processor 512 megs of ram two gigs nand 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 pretty much it so let's have a look at the unit itself very clean very cool styling xios TS media play on the front you find basically an IR receiver you've got a few indicator LEDs on the side you find your microsd for storage to usb2 ports on the back you've got a lan port another USB to port hdmi DC voltage in and a power button and on the side you basically got not a hole 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 soap Evos 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 firmware bugs but these days speaking as you know a retailer you know my work at NCIX these days so all i er no they took care of it so the AOS runs really well now zayas has some bugs you know that's to be expected however kalos is very committed to upgrades in fact they even have a dedicated Upgrade button right on the bottom so the cool thing about up getting 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 supports webcams I think we covered that very briefly before but that's a cool thing because 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 / dollars well okay or you can just buy cheap webcam and a bios 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 HD youtube with all of the correct apps and all that so maybe flick could look at the accessories for a second and all that PVR functionality with supported USB tuners 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 because that's what we apparently do on this channel so it comes with a USB charging cable mini USB receiver dongle that you will probably plug in to this nice low-profile and Pipo since wireless motion remote so there you go so you have the option of a more robust remote control system as well and okay right so limitations there's no HD audio bin 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 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 works fine so what's the summary basically this thing is not meant to replace the AOS and the pebbles lineup but it's meant to be more of like a smart smart TV experience augmentation creator thing as opposed to being like 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 Linus tech tips for unboxings reviews and other computer videos