Mecool was kind enough to provide me with the Mecool KT1, an Android TV device that sports a DVB-T2/S2/C tuner built-in that I was able to test successfully because it's the standard available in my country (I tested the DVB-T2 signal).
Below are the specifications of the device:
- Android 10.
- Amlogic S905X4 with AV1 hardware decoding.
- GPU Mali-G31 MP2.
- HDR, HDR10 and HLG.
- 2GB DDR3 RAM.
- 16GB internal storage.
- WiFi AC dual band.
- Ethernet 10/100.
- One USB 2.0 and one USB 3.0 ports.
- One microSD card slot.
- Bluetooth 4.2.
- HDMI 2.1.
Next, the pros and cons of the device:
PROS:
- The interface feels snappy and fluid thanks to the S905X4 SoC, I still haven't seen any lag.
- The remote control is useful to program the TV's ON/OFF power button when HDMI-CEC is not available, plus, a built-in mouse toggle helps to control side-loaded apps not made for the remote. A numerical pad, an assistant button, a Live TV button and quick colored buttons to access functions for the "Live TV" app are also available.
- The "Live TV" app is an slightly modified version of the "Live Channels" app, intended to gather different live channel sources (Pluto TV, M3U8 streams, etc.) and the bult-in tuner, all in one place.
- You can Invoke a TV channel from home screen by the press of the assistant button, just say "channel [number] and it goes directly to it.
- Multichannel PCM support is back on Android 10 (it was removed from Android 9 for some reason).
- Dolby Atmos inside Dolby Digital Plus passthrough support is available.
- Dolby Digital Plus to Dolby Digital conversion is available thanks to the variant in the SoC (The letter B in the SoC [S905X4-B] means the device can provide the conversion. Earlier S905X SoCs with that letter also supports the feature).
- The SoC/GPU helps to improve PSX games using emulators, stutter is practically gone, though N64 games still need a powerful device such as the Nvidia Shield.
- Earlier Mecool devices had trouble with WiFi, this at least feels stable overall.
CONS:
- As it's already known, Netflix is not available because it's not a certified device, though there are modified versions on the internet that can be used without problem.
- Setting up the tuner the first time is not practical or straightforward, I had to learn by myself how to use it since the included manual doesn't have tuner setup instructions.
- The tuner is not dual, which means, recording a channel while watching another in a frequency different than the one where recording takes place is NOT possible.
- Timeshift is not ON by default while using the tuner, it needs to be turned ON manually but switching channels is NOT possible while it's ON.
- Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD High Resolution Audio and Master Audio are not supported, though some apps can decode them as multichannel PCM without loosing the lossless quality.
- Auto framerate is not supported.
BUGS OR ISSUES:
- I wasn't able to use a microSD card I have, the device says it's not supported, but I believe it could be a bug in the OS, which I'm going to report as soon as possible.
- I had issues when trying to mount a USB 3.0 thumb drive in the USB 3.0 port, most of the time it doesn't recognize it or it takes some time to do so, but it always get recognized in the USB 2.0 port.
- The WiFi module doesn't respond to the internet connection after waking up the device from standby, it takes approximately 2 to 3 minutes to respond.
- The DVB-S2 tuner doesn't seem to appear or when it does, it doesn't seem to recognize the signal from the satellite dish I tried to use, I'm still not sure if it's a problem of the device or a wrong satellite setup from my side.
The above issues are already reported to Mecool, here's to hope they provide a firmware update to fix them all.
NOTE: The timeshift feature and recordings can't be made with the internal memory, an external USB thumb drive or hard drive is necessary.
Overall I believe this is a cool device, it just needs some polish in a few aspects.
Thank you Mecool!