Have you ever been tempted by the latest commercials of Samsung or
Sony for their newest TV? Do you have
an old TV and wish you could turn it into a Smart TV? For P2,880 the CD-R King
Internet TV Box might just do the job.
Last week, I was browsing the CD-R King website and found this
item listed as “coming soon”. Like a much-anticipated movie release, I purchased
one unit as soon as it came out. My goal was to off-load some of the work from
my aging Macbook such as watching videos, downloading torrents, youtube, etc.
to this one device. To give you an idea on what it does, it’s just like connecting
an Android phone to your TV. Theoretically, it should function as a small
Android computer and be able to do most of what I need. Spec wise, it has the
following features:
- Android 2.3 (Upgradeable daw!)
- 1Ghz Cortex A8 Processor with 512MB DDR3 RAM
- 4GB NAND FLASH
- 1080P Output and support for various video formats
- 4 USB Ports / 1 SD card slot
The unit includes a wifi antenna, remote control and manuals. If
you are familiar with Android, you should have no problems navigating the
simple menu, setup and settings. Unless you are planning to use it purely as a
media player, navigating with the supplied remote is “useable” at best. But
maximizing all its features is where it starts to get tricky. I would highly
suggest using a UBS keyboard and mouse or a CD-R King 3-in-1 wireless keyboard.
It is a bit expensive at P1180 but worth every peso if you want to do more. (I
tried using a Bluetooth keyboard with a Bluetooth USB dongle but could not get
it to work.)
The menu system is pretty straightforward. Just select media
player, apps, Youtube, Angry Birds (Yes, it works!), etc. You can even add
shortcuts to the main menu. Just plug your hard drive, USB or SD card with all
your media and you can play it right away from the media center app.
Here is the first problem I encountered. At first, I could not get
to play videos in full screen on the media player app. After much tweaking and
tinkering, I found out that by using the “My Files” app (which is like a file
explorer), videos play in full screen with no problem. The second difficulty I
encountered was using the Google Play store. I could not install some apps
using an Ethernet connection. Using wifi instead, solved the problem.
The beauty of Android is that it is very customizable. There are
lots of apps available on the Play store. Once I installed Atorrent, FTP Doid,
Podkicker, I was able to browse the web, download and play vidoes all from one
device. Heck, it even recognized my iPad, my other media player in the living
room and I can now stream from that as well.
Overall, I am pretty impressed with this little box. The media
player function alone is worth the price. Being able to access the Internet on
a TV unit like a proper couch potato is practically having the best of both
worlds.
The Good:
- Price!
- Media Player function
- Android OS
The Bad:
- Wish it had a faster processor and more RAM
- Not sure if Android 4.0 ICS update will be available
