Egreat A5 & A10 w/HiSilicon Hi3798C V200 (3D / 4K / HD Audio)

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As VidOn, a former ‘renegade’ Kodi fork developer with VidOn XBMC, has seemingly complied with GPL, and a Kodi member was able to compile a Pro version from it, I’m starting this thread to discuss Egreat’s new A5 and A10 media players. They rely on VidOn.

Thanks to @pcristi and Egreat for sending me an A5 sample to test and review. The A5 and A10 leverage HiSilicon’s Hi3798C V200 SoC, the same SoC inside HiMedia Q5 Pro and Q10 Pro. But, unlike HiMedia, Egreat has opted to partner with VidOn and included the full, Pro (activated) version version of VidOn XBMC (Kodi 16.1 fork). You have the option to use the native media center as well, and play videos with the native media player, but this jukebox solution pales in comparison to Kodi of course (just IMHO).

[Image: npXPIWO.jpg]

These players are a little pricey:
– A5 is $209
– A10 is $299 (w/internal HDD capability)

Here are my initial impressions after just a couple of hours of testing an A5 (not enough, and need to test more)…

Plusses:

  • Very nice build quality
  • Nice, simple UI (launcher)
  • Detailed options in settings
  • Very good PQ (like w/HiMedia)
  • Full HD audio passthrough support
    – Including Dolby ATMOS and DTS:X
  • 3D ISO’s play well, and 3D depth looks very good
  • Full, interactive Blu-ray menus supported!

Minusses:

  • Lack of 23.976 support (only 24.000), so microstutters are visible as with HiMedia (as same SoC)
    – But, like HiMedia, the microstutters issues isn’t bad, and only occasionally noticeable. Need to test further
  • MVC MKV’s don’t play
    – Actually, playing them causes UI to go into 3D mode, w/audio and no video). Must force close to get player/display out of 3D mode
  • No 3D flip eyes yet
  • Native jukebox is so-so at best (just not for me), so VidOn XBMC is prefereble by a huge margin
  • W/native player, 2D 23.976 videos play at 60.000 (or whatever the player resolution is)

If eGreat can fix the top 3 cons I noted in red above (really the VidOn devs), I think eGreat A5/A10 may be winners! The other variable (a biggie) is VidOn. Their support hasn’t been all that great in the past, and proper 23.976 has yet to happen on any box running VidOn.