Rippl-TV Android TV Box Brings XBMC Front and Center
Most Android TV boxes come pre-loaded with XBMC, but Rippl-TV goes a step further by replacing the Android home screen, or other common found launchers, by XBMC which is used not only as a media center, but also to launch apps, access the settings, and so on. Everything is done within XBMC. The hardware is very similar to SZTomato / Enybox M8, and Shenzhen Tomato appears to be the company behind this project, or at least promoting it.
Rippl-TV hardware specifications:
- SoC – AMLogic S802 quad core Cortex A9r4 processor @ 2GHz with Mali‐450MP6 GPU
- System Memory – 2GB DDR3
- Storage – 8GB NAND flash + SD card slot
- Connectivity – 10/100M Ethernet, dual band Wi‐Fi (2.4GHz/5GHz) & Bluetooth (AP6330)
- Video Output – HDMI 1.4b, AV. HDMI supports 1080p, 4K2K 30fps
- Audio Output – HDMI, AV, and optical S/PDIF
- Video Codecs and Containers – MPEG1/2/4, H.264, AVC, VC‐1, RM/RMVB, Xvid, DivX3/4/5/6, RealVideo8/9/10…
- Audio – MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, OGG, AC3, DDP, TrueHD, DTS, DTS HD, FLAC, APE…
- USB – 2x USB 2.0 host ports
- Misc – Power LED (ON:blue; Standby:Red), IR receiver
- Power Supply – 5V/2A
The box runs Android 4.4.2, and a thread on Freaktab seems to confirm it’s the same hardware as the “squared M8″. During my review of the M8 (aka EM8), I found it to be a bit unstable, but since then, I’ve had several people report they were unable to play complete movies in XBMC, as it would stop about 30 minutes or so, even with the latest firmware.