Since 2018 I've been playing back all my ripped media (audio and video) through a 7th Gen NUC (7i5BNH) and while I've been pretty happy with it, there have been some persistent (unsolvable) issues that have had me keeping one eye open for a new playback solution. I detailed some of my journey with this box partly in a thread here - I started out with Linux Mint but begrudgingly ended up purchasing a copy of Windows 10 for a couple of reasons - one being that at the time Linux didn't support HDMI passthrough for Kodi, and secondly the only way to do the firmware upgrade to the HDMI port to enable Atmos passthrough was a Windows-based utility.
The 7th Gen NUC boxes were the first ones to support the minimum HDMI and HDCP specs (I can't remember now, but I think it was HDMI 2.0a and HDCP 2.2) required for HDR10 video and Dolby Atmos, but being "bleeding edge" relatively speaking at the time, it was kind of a MacGyver-ed solution, using some kind of DisplayPort to HDMI adapter for the output, and it never worked right for me. I don't think my setup is particularly exotic - NUC into an Onkyo 5.1.2 AVR connected to a Sony X900H (X90H), but it was plagued with intermittent video dropouts where the components would all lose HDMI sync: the TV would go black and the AVR front panel where it shows the speaker layout and signal type would disappear and then momentarily reappear. And then when Atmos came along, I started to get similar dropouts of just audio, which really drove me to the breaking point. I'm a tinkerer of moderate intelligence, and I feel like normally with enough Google search engine kung-fu and some elbow grease you can almost always find someone who's had the same problem as you and successfully solved it, but with this issue there was no remedy - in fact the more recent Intel graphics driver updates made the problem worse, not better, so I reluctantly admitted defeat.
So for the last year or so I've been looking for some kind of replacement, but nothing really fit the bill. What I wanted was sort of a unicorn: something that didn't cost a lot of money but which also played back all of my media at full quality, and in particular on the video side I wanted support for Dolby Vision playback because my TV supports it, and a lot of my ripped Blu-Rays are encoded with it. Getting another NUC was a non-starter on both counts: Dolby doesn't license DV playback support to computers (more on this in a moment) and thanks to the current economic climate buying a new NUC that was any kind of upgrade on my 2018 model would've busted the budget of this poor turd miner.
The closest to something satisfactory I found was the NVidia Shield Pro, but again I had misgivings. One was that despite the fact it's a relatively "old" device now (dating from 2019) they still want $260 Canadian for it, and it felt like if I bought one, the karma gods would have NVidia finally announce a new 2024 model the month after I bought one. The other reason is that while the Shield Pro supports Dolby Vision playback, it doesn't support it fully - with DV there are various flavours of it or "profiles" as they're called, and the Shield supports output of the lower-quality ones (which they call MEL or 'minimum enhancement layer') found on streaming services (primarily 5, 6 and 8) but not Profile 7 (or FEL 'Full Enhancement Layer') which is the kind found on Blu-Rays, and the kind that I wanted output support for. Think of the MEL profiles as the visual equivalent of Dolby Digital Plus, and P7 FEL as the visual equivalent of TrueHD.
The Shield Pro was the closest to "satisfactory" but never enough for me to pull the trigger, and I'm glad I didn't because a few months back I became aware of the UGoos AM6B+.
On paper (and physically) it looks like every other Android streaming box, but there's one difference: some enterprising individuals somehow got their hands on the Dolby Vision processing kernel (the bit of software code required to make a box output Dolby Vision) and as a result this box - and a couple of others that use the same chipset, neither of which are made any more - can output all of the DV variants, including the fabled Profile 7 FEL found on DV Blu-Rays.
This makes the AM6B+ (and the other boxes that use the Amlogic S922X-J chipset) unicorns, because older chipsets don't allow for DV playback and the loophole has been closed (or at least not discovered) in newer ones. It's a lot like how the chipsets in the Oppo 103/105 (and similar) opened up the world of SACD ripping that Sony was working so tightly to control - Dolby tries to do the same thing, making the only possible way (before this development) to achieve Dolby Vision playback either through a Blu-Ray player for physical media, or an app on an approved Android or iOS device. For people who want full freedom to enjoy playback of their ripped and downloaded Dolby Vision media, the AM6B+ is the first time that this end goal is achievable.
The developers of CoreElec, which is an offshoot of Kodi that takes it and puts it on top of a minimal Linux installation (so minimal that it's basically invisible, you turn your box on and you're in Kodi) have created a version that takes full advantage of the AM6B+'s Dolby Vision capabilities, and after having used it for the last couple of months I couldn't be happier. In a nutshell, you install CoreElec from a USB stick and it replaces Android as the operating system for the box - you can set it up to dual boot if you want to switch between CoreElec and Android, which I've done but I haven't needed or wanted to use Android for anything. The integration between hardware and software is so tight and seamless that it feels like you're using a native hardware playback unit - in fact the menu browsing and file loading (across a gigabit ethernet connection to a NAS in another room) is so snappy it makes using my actual cable box feel sluggish by comparison. This extends to browsing my media library too - I'm a lifetime "mouse and keyboard" guy and worried that switching to a remote would make it feel like I didn't have 'full control' over my library, that it would take forever to navigate to artists buried in the middle of the alphabet, but in fact the opposite was true. I was able to set up my Logitech Harmony universal remote to control CoreElec (so I didn't even need to use the supplied remote) and scrolling through pages of artists and albums is even faster than it was with a keyboard, and all the Harmony buttons are perfectly mapped so controls like play/pause/ffwd/rew/skip track forward/back/previous menu and others (many of which aren't on my wireless media keyboard) all work. I actually feel more in control of my media library now, and I've listened to more music as the result of being able to whizz through it even more quickly and easily than ever before.
I haven't found a file type or format thusfar that CoreElec on the AM6B+ won't play: on the audio side that includes 1.0, 2.0, 4.0/4.1 (both of which map correctly), 5.0 and 5.1 FLACs, 2.0, 5.0 and 5.1 DSD .dsf, and both Dolby Digital+ and TrueHD Atmos .m4a and .mka (with no dropouts), and on the video side (most of which is .mkv) everything from regular HD to 4K HDR10 and yes, Dolby Vision Profile 7 FEL all plays back perfectly without a hitch (and CoreElec changes output framerate to match the framerate of the media), and all of the bitstreamed audio from plain old Dolby Digital and DTS up to TrueHD Atmos and DTS X plays as it should.
Maybe the best part is how affordable this box is - I got mine from this store on AliExpress for $193 Canadian (about $140 USD or £105GBP) - the price is currently a little higher but if you're patient, AliExpress regularly has sales and promotions where they post discount codes that work with everything on the site. In my case, they had one this summer that was something like $25 off orders of $190 or higher. You can find these in other places including from 3rd party sellers on Amazon, you pay a premium for the convenience, and with how easy AliExpress is to use, why give any extra money to someone who is effectively an Amazon scalper? While I was a little bit apprehensive about ordering from China as I'd never bought anything from Aliexpress, the process was simple and easy. They accept PayPal so I didn't have to share my credit card details with anyone, and shipping updates including a tracking number were sent to my email address. Within a couple of weeks, the box was sitting on my front doorstep and I didn't even get dinged for any customs or import charges.
I know this may be of somewhat limited interest here given that we're obviously surround and/or music focused, but if you're looking for a "does it all" media streamer like this, or want an option that's as future-proof as these things can be, you can't really go wrong with this box. The price is right, and since it only does one thing (Kodi) if you screw something up you can just wipe it and start over again.
This is the Reddit thread I used to set mine up, which has installation instructions and then also recommended settings at the end:
And this is the original thread (also with instructions) on the CoreElec developers forum:
https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/guide-s922x-j-ugoos-am6b-coreelec-installation-and-faqs/51231
Searching QQ I see that it looks like @ted_b has one of these, maybe he could chime in with his thoughts and experiences, and I'm tagging @HomerJAU QQ's Patron Saint of media playback because I think he might have an interest in this too.
The 7th Gen NUC boxes were the first ones to support the minimum HDMI and HDCP specs (I can't remember now, but I think it was HDMI 2.0a and HDCP 2.2) required for HDR10 video and Dolby Atmos, but being "bleeding edge" relatively speaking at the time, it was kind of a MacGyver-ed solution, using some kind of DisplayPort to HDMI adapter for the output, and it never worked right for me. I don't think my setup is particularly exotic - NUC into an Onkyo 5.1.2 AVR connected to a Sony X900H (X90H), but it was plagued with intermittent video dropouts where the components would all lose HDMI sync: the TV would go black and the AVR front panel where it shows the speaker layout and signal type would disappear and then momentarily reappear. And then when Atmos came along, I started to get similar dropouts of just audio, which really drove me to the breaking point. I'm a tinkerer of moderate intelligence, and I feel like normally with enough Google search engine kung-fu and some elbow grease you can almost always find someone who's had the same problem as you and successfully solved it, but with this issue there was no remedy - in fact the more recent Intel graphics driver updates made the problem worse, not better, so I reluctantly admitted defeat.
So for the last year or so I've been looking for some kind of replacement, but nothing really fit the bill. What I wanted was sort of a unicorn: something that didn't cost a lot of money but which also played back all of my media at full quality, and in particular on the video side I wanted support for Dolby Vision playback because my TV supports it, and a lot of my ripped Blu-Rays are encoded with it. Getting another NUC was a non-starter on both counts: Dolby doesn't license DV playback support to computers (more on this in a moment) and thanks to the current economic climate buying a new NUC that was any kind of upgrade on my 2018 model would've busted the budget of this poor turd miner.
The closest to something satisfactory I found was the NVidia Shield Pro, but again I had misgivings. One was that despite the fact it's a relatively "old" device now (dating from 2019) they still want $260 Canadian for it, and it felt like if I bought one, the karma gods would have NVidia finally announce a new 2024 model the month after I bought one. The other reason is that while the Shield Pro supports Dolby Vision playback, it doesn't support it fully - with DV there are various flavours of it or "profiles" as they're called, and the Shield supports output of the lower-quality ones (which they call MEL or 'minimum enhancement layer') found on streaming services (primarily 5, 6 and 8) but not Profile 7 (or FEL 'Full Enhancement Layer') which is the kind found on Blu-Rays, and the kind that I wanted output support for. Think of the MEL profiles as the visual equivalent of Dolby Digital Plus, and P7 FEL as the visual equivalent of TrueHD.
The Shield Pro was the closest to "satisfactory" but never enough for me to pull the trigger, and I'm glad I didn't because a few months back I became aware of the UGoos AM6B+.
On paper (and physically) it looks like every other Android streaming box, but there's one difference: some enterprising individuals somehow got their hands on the Dolby Vision processing kernel (the bit of software code required to make a box output Dolby Vision) and as a result this box - and a couple of others that use the same chipset, neither of which are made any more - can output all of the DV variants, including the fabled Profile 7 FEL found on DV Blu-Rays.
This makes the AM6B+ (and the other boxes that use the Amlogic S922X-J chipset) unicorns, because older chipsets don't allow for DV playback and the loophole has been closed (or at least not discovered) in newer ones. It's a lot like how the chipsets in the Oppo 103/105 (and similar) opened up the world of SACD ripping that Sony was working so tightly to control - Dolby tries to do the same thing, making the only possible way (before this development) to achieve Dolby Vision playback either through a Blu-Ray player for physical media, or an app on an approved Android or iOS device. For people who want full freedom to enjoy playback of their ripped and downloaded Dolby Vision media, the AM6B+ is the first time that this end goal is achievable.
The developers of CoreElec, which is an offshoot of Kodi that takes it and puts it on top of a minimal Linux installation (so minimal that it's basically invisible, you turn your box on and you're in Kodi) have created a version that takes full advantage of the AM6B+'s Dolby Vision capabilities, and after having used it for the last couple of months I couldn't be happier. In a nutshell, you install CoreElec from a USB stick and it replaces Android as the operating system for the box - you can set it up to dual boot if you want to switch between CoreElec and Android, which I've done but I haven't needed or wanted to use Android for anything. The integration between hardware and software is so tight and seamless that it feels like you're using a native hardware playback unit - in fact the menu browsing and file loading (across a gigabit ethernet connection to a NAS in another room) is so snappy it makes using my actual cable box feel sluggish by comparison. This extends to browsing my media library too - I'm a lifetime "mouse and keyboard" guy and worried that switching to a remote would make it feel like I didn't have 'full control' over my library, that it would take forever to navigate to artists buried in the middle of the alphabet, but in fact the opposite was true. I was able to set up my Logitech Harmony universal remote to control CoreElec (so I didn't even need to use the supplied remote) and scrolling through pages of artists and albums is even faster than it was with a keyboard, and all the Harmony buttons are perfectly mapped so controls like play/pause/ffwd/rew/skip track forward/back/previous menu and others (many of which aren't on my wireless media keyboard) all work. I actually feel more in control of my media library now, and I've listened to more music as the result of being able to whizz through it even more quickly and easily than ever before.
I haven't found a file type or format thusfar that CoreElec on the AM6B+ won't play: on the audio side that includes 1.0, 2.0, 4.0/4.1 (both of which map correctly), 5.0 and 5.1 FLACs, 2.0, 5.0 and 5.1 DSD .dsf, and both Dolby Digital+ and TrueHD Atmos .m4a and .mka (with no dropouts), and on the video side (most of which is .mkv) everything from regular HD to 4K HDR10 and yes, Dolby Vision Profile 7 FEL all plays back perfectly without a hitch (and CoreElec changes output framerate to match the framerate of the media), and all of the bitstreamed audio from plain old Dolby Digital and DTS up to TrueHD Atmos and DTS X plays as it should.
Maybe the best part is how affordable this box is - I got mine from this store on AliExpress for $193 Canadian (about $140 USD or £105GBP) - the price is currently a little higher but if you're patient, AliExpress regularly has sales and promotions where they post discount codes that work with everything on the site. In my case, they had one this summer that was something like $25 off orders of $190 or higher. You can find these in other places including from 3rd party sellers on Amazon, you pay a premium for the convenience, and with how easy AliExpress is to use, why give any extra money to someone who is effectively an Amazon scalper? While I was a little bit apprehensive about ordering from China as I'd never bought anything from Aliexpress, the process was simple and easy. They accept PayPal so I didn't have to share my credit card details with anyone, and shipping updates including a tracking number were sent to my email address. Within a couple of weeks, the box was sitting on my front doorstep and I didn't even get dinged for any customs or import charges.
I know this may be of somewhat limited interest here given that we're obviously surround and/or music focused, but if you're looking for a "does it all" media streamer like this, or want an option that's as future-proof as these things can be, you can't really go wrong with this box. The price is right, and since it only does one thing (Kodi) if you screw something up you can just wipe it and start over again.
This is the Reddit thread I used to set mine up, which has installation instructions and then also recommended settings at the end:
And this is the original thread (also with instructions) on the CoreElec developers forum:
https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/guide-s922x-j-ugoos-am6b-coreelec-installation-and-faqs/51231
Searching QQ I see that it looks like @ted_b has one of these, maybe he could chime in with his thoughts and experiences, and I'm tagging @HomerJAU QQ's Patron Saint of media playback because I think he might have an interest in this too.
