Making its first appearance in Europe is the recently-announced ATV1900AC TV box, which manufacturer Geniatech claims is a much better specified device than the Google Nexus Player.
Powered by Android 5.0 (‘Lollipop’), it features a quad core processor operating at a frequency of 2.0GHz and 1 GB of memory, augmented by 8GB of Flash memory.
The box supports 2.4GHz/5.0GHz 802.11AC/2T2R Wi-Fi and two external Wi-Fi antennae – giving it, according to Geniatech, three times the wireless performance of 802.11N and 150% wider coverage for larger homes and multi-floor locations with less interference. Gigabit Ethernet is also available.
Also provided is H.264 and H.265 hardware decoding for resolutions up to 3840×2160. A browser and VPN support are included with the platform. Video output is via HDMI, and four USB interfaces enable the connection of external hard drives, a mouse and keyboard and so on. A MicroSD card is also featured.
The ATV1900AC includes support for Kodi 14.1 (formerly XBMC). The media player platform – which is pre-installed, customised and optimised for the unit – allows users to play and view most videos, music, such as podcasts from the internet, home network and all common digital media files from local and network storage media.
Voice recognition/voice search has also been implemented on the ATV1900AC by Geniatech, allowing key words to be used to search for applications and content.
