Not what I was hoping for, first impression
#1
Sad 
Got my A64+ 2GB board 2 days ago and so far I'm not that impressed, in fact I actually don't have a usable product right now. My hope with this project was to create a FireTV replacement for our bedroom TV. Right now my FireTV does everything I need it to do. It handles Live TV through the HD Homerun View app and handles all my movies with the Emby app. It also handles all our subscription services like HBO GO, Showtime app and the other various on demand apps. 

I know my hopes were pretty high that a $29 Pine 64 could compete with Amazon's latest offering. But both featured similar quad core CPU's and GPU's, they both offered 2GB onboard memory, both offered gigbit ethernet and both can do 4K & 1080P output. What the heck it's worth a shot. 

Well yesterday I decided to take the plunge and install the Android build first since this would be the obvious intended OS I would be using. Install went fine on my SanDisk Extreme Plus UHS 3 64GB card, inserted it and boom 4 mins later Android was up and running. I played around with the build but it seemed, I don't know, slightly sluggish in appearance and navigation. Button presses seemed slightly delayed and the overall performance seemed sluggish. I though oh well it wasn't that bad, let's try to download some apps and try them out. Fired up Google play and downloaded the HBO GO app. This app did not start off very well, force closed the first 2 times I tried to open it. Once I finally got it open, navigation through this app was painfully slow and glitchy. Once I finally got to a show I wanted to stream I clicked on it and got through the HBO GO splash screen then it hangs for about 15 secs before the stream starts then closes and tells me could not reach the server, please try again later. Ok so I close the program open it back up again and try a different show and episode and same thing, it either tells me "could not play video at this time please try later" or server error.  Strike one. Well, ok so I download the HD Homerun View app, start that up and Video is very choppy and stuttering basically un-watchable, plus navigation through the channel guide was very slow. Strike 2. I was going to try the Emby app but since you have to pay to play videos on every device you install it on I decided to pass and try at a future date. So suffice to say the Android experience was a huge disappointment. 

So today I decided to try the Remix OS build. So I burned that to my Sandisk card and booted it up with only the power and HDMI plugged in for the initial boot. Everything went fine plugged in my mouse and keyboard to complete the sign in, got to the desktop and everything was working. I played around for a few mins with everything then decided to plug the ethernet cable in, 4 secs later it reboots. Ok it gets back to the desktop and I start to explore again then bang reboots again. This time it's just stuck in an endless boot loop all because of the ethernet cable being plugged in. I found a thread that other people were having the same problem with boot loop due to ethernet cable being plugged in. Some were saying it was a Remix OS problem and some were saying it could be a power supply problem but my power supply is a 5V/2A microUSB charger and should work. So I will have to wait until someone clears that up.

So as of right now nothing is really usable for me at the moment. Hopefully the Android and Remix OS builds will get better, I mean I understand most people are just getting their boards so development of the OS builds will take some time and I'm willing to wait it out. Just a little disappointed right now.


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