It’s not hard to find an Android-powered TV box with a Rockchip RK3188 quad-core processor these days. But it is unusual to find one with a VGA port, as well as the usual HDMI output.
The Giayee TVB103 is one of the few devices I’ve seen which fits the bill.
It’s a device that you can plug into a television or monitor to run Android apps on the big screen.
In addition to the video ports, it has RCA jacks for audio, an S/PDIF port, and a 10/100 Ethernet jack. The device also features WiFi and Bluetooth. There are also 2 USB ports for connecting a keyboard, mouse, remote control adapter, or external storage.
It’s powered by Rockchip’s fastest ARM Cortex-A9 processor and the TVB103 features up to 2GB of RAM and 8GB to 32GB of built-in storage. There’s a microSD card slot if you need extra storage space.
Unfortunately one thing we still don’t know about the Giayee TVB103 is the price.
via AndroidPC.es
That’s a clever and cheap way to reuse an old monitor, keyboard and mouse. As long as it’s priced under 100$.
I wish the day when I can just download the ISO of my desktop Linux distro of choice and just install it on any ARM device like with any x86 device would come soon. Android on anything but a smartphone isn’t worth it for me at any price.
I have a Nexus 7 collecting dust waiting until Ubuntu for touch comes out. That is if I can go straight to the desktop and drop into a bash shell for running custom scripts.
Please see my post https://plus.google.com/u/0/109451178006683865932/posts/E6nGuouFjvs – Unfortunately they haven’t replied yet.
Hey why not VGA?
many tvs have the port, so save the HDMI for something that needs it
Many computer monitors do not have hdmi. That is a better reason for the vga port.
But VGA looks bad. Better to adapt the HDMI to DVI, which almost all current monitors do have.
What I want is a small box that has a GigE port, BT (if it has WiFi it should be dual band… it won’t so just the wired port is all I need) a place for a SATA drive and most important of all, it must support Linux/GNU/X with full video capability. Not Android.
which almost all current monitors do have.”
There are plenty of current monitors that do NOT have DVI, including this one:
https://www.amazon.com/ViewSonic-VA1912A-LED-19-Inch-LED-Lit-Monitor/dp/B008FC8DFY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371243197&sr=8-1&keywords=19+monitor
While I would prefer the Android box has a DVI connector over a VGA connector, I am not going to be watching movies on it, so I don´t really care..
I’m not sure if there are “plenty” of VGA only monitors in use even with that link. I’m surprised ViewSonic even makes that because many manufacturers are phasing out VGA support (for both ends of the link).
I can see work places being slow in moving away from VGA but this Android box isn’t targeting them.
There is still a market for small desktop monitors in the world. The overwhelming majority of monitors 19 inches or less do not support HDMI.
As John said, that’s why there are HDMI to DVI cables/adapters for those non-VGA only devices (ie. DVI) that people have.
According to the PDS specification sheet, the TVB13 explicitly supports Miracast.
The question is: Who needs a VGA output on a TV box? S/PDIF and analog audio output are useful when using a speakerless monitor for display.
Me. while it may be marketed as a TV box, at its core it is an Android computer.
For some reason this feels more like an Android PC than a tv box. This is not a bad thing. I would be interested in finding out how much this box costs.