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New Minix Neo T5

Love cobbling my own home made media center with these android boxes since the SMP8635 back in the popcornhour A-110.

I'm a minimalist guy who likes a simple setup so no where near tested all the options and features.

My Setup

Sony Bravia 55W700B

Yamaha RV-1700

T5 HDMI to Bravia / TOSLink to Yamaha

Rii+ Remote

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Sharing my thoughts for anybody who is like me

Smaller than expected, about 1/3 smaller than my T95Z clone which was surprising. Took pictures of my Kodi audio as I've had issues with passthrough in the past. Unplugged old device and plugged in T5.

Wouldn't pick up my cabled ethernet connection or my 5G Wifi. Had to connect through 2.4 Wifi. Set the language and small wizard popped up. Asked me if I wanted to install a bunch of apps which had a few that were nice (Kodi, X-Plore, VLC). Included remote doesn't have voice. Simple IR and tiny. Had to figure out how to "return" with my Rii+. Frustrating for a minute but was fine. In the midst of exploring an automatic firmware update came in which I applied.

Loaded Kodi and streamed Avengers.Endgame.2019.1080p.BluRay.x264.DTS-WiKi.mkv locally from my Synology NAS to test passthrough. Just worked. This was amazing to me because all my other android boxes I'd have to tweak the advancedsettings.xml. No need here but may configure in the future.

Installed Seren + RD and tested with Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Automatically played a 2160p DTS file which actually streamed like butter. My old box would stutter on 2160p anything. Seren ran a tad faster on this box which I liked, but the simple fact what ever played just played (no skipping, no buffering) was a huge plus. Best part for me was the picture quality. It has some HDR-like feature that when I turned it on it made the black BLACK. So that is making my movies pop.

Netflix and Amazon Prime are non existent in the play store. I tried a simple side load with X-Plore and it would only play Netflix sideways. I figure I can fix this, but with seren+RD I might not even bother. Amazon prime... Well I never actually watched it now that I think about it.

Just have to add Nixtoons for my 70s toon fix and I think I'm good.

First time with AndroidTV and I dont like the limitations it has, but thats coming from full android OS TV boxes. I DO like the fact that AndroidTV just works out the box making it feel more like a commerical product. Box quality was nice and aesthetics were smooth. The UI passes the "non-tech wife" test with flying colors. She likes that the boxes are big and easy to navigate.

Looking to see if I can get KODI more prominent on the first page. There is a smaller banner up top that you can use but it doesnt bring attention to itself.

TLDR; small compact device that had all the inputs I needed and just worked out the box. Took me longer to setup KODI than to configure this. Would recommend as a solid media device that is a bit easier to navigate given AndroidTV

AMA :)