Klastor Android TV-PC Dual Core - Rockchip RK3066 - WiFi - Full HD Multimedia Player - The most powerful Android TV-PC available - all the features of a powerful android tablet PC PLUS turn any TV into a SMART TV

review oct 2012, for the Android TV Dongle - Dual Core Rockchip rk3066
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pros: uses android ice cream sandwich operating system - all the advantages of an android, access to Google Market (Play) on the stock firmware. Good system spec, quad core gpu - compared to other similar dongles which only have a single core gpu. Powered USB hub can be used to allow more usb devices

cons: current firmware doesn't deliver all types of media playback too well, although it does a fairly good job on local playback. Original batch of Rockwell rk3066 has known problem of weak wifi and a lot of users are reporting a tendency of the dongle to corrupt the sd card (if your using an external sd card). No power off button or system provided power off function on the stock firmware to switch off the dongle.

bottom line: an excellent piece of kit, with loads of potential. In its current state maybe only useful for enthusiasts, rather than those that want a polished plug and play system. Who knows maybe a new firmware will correct the current niggles.

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The Rockwell rk3066 chipset at the time of writing is sold mainly from China with many different brands selling them as "Google TV Dongles". This particular model is actually a 1.6ghz processor that is currently set to an 'on demand sliding scale' frequency up to 1.2ghz. This means with future firmware it may be possible to unlock the full potential of this little beauty. With the original batch of rk3066 there is a known problem of weak WiFi - for the more adventurous, this can be improved by opening the case and pulling the antenna out of the case.

As this is an android device, if you already have an android device and use the same Google credentials to log into the Google Market, all your previous purchases are available to install on the dongle at no further charge. One disadvantage of the stock firmware, is the device is picked up as Chinese Rk3066 - this means not all Google apps that are regionally restricted will be available unless you root the dongle and install a Market Enabler app, or manually hack the config files (which also require root access).

Media playback on this device is mixed. I have used both the stock firmware and a custom one to root the device and both suffer from audio/video out of synch from between 0.5 seconds to 2 seconds. For something with its good spec this is extremely surprising. I find some playback is fine, like links to the Chinese video sites from the home screen.

My online playback consists almost entirely of bbc iplayer - the only way i could get it to work properly was use the official android bbc media player app and google chrome - even then the bbc site mistakenly identifies the dongle as some small mobile and gives no option for HD playback - this might change with time if tv dongles become more popular and bbc iplayer accommodates this, otherwise no fun watching iplayer on a 40+ inch tv on standard def! BBC iplayer playback wasn't too bad with the audio/video out of synch only barely noticeable. The stock media player, which is actually quite good, also support dnla servers and plays films served by my twonky server running off a nas box quite well. At the time of writing xbmc android app is still in closed beta, so will still have to wait for that.

Customising the home screen is very limited on the stock firmware. On rooted firmware it is possible to use normal launchers, which can be customised to your hearts desire. I purchased a 'branded' rk3066 to avoid the wifi issues, and rooted it to gain valuable internal space (after its all set up on stock firmware it goes down to around 540mb, but rooting it and repartitioning reclaims lost space giving you just under 1 gb space!

Controlling the tv dongle is done through a keyboard/mouse. Android has had keyboard/mouse support for a long time, only its become more feasible to use them. I used a wireless keyboard mouse combo on a single nano usb receiver stub - you can get add more usb sockets by using a powered usb hub. You might want to do this for example if you had your library of films/photos/music on usb drives.

Its surprising that these devices don't come with a physical or software emulated power off button/switch. All the dongles share this feature - even the pi doesnt have an on/off switch. The only workaround is to use a software power off function, that will only work if the dongle is rooted. Even then, because there is no physical switch, you still have to yank the power out after software emulating a power off otherwise the dongle will just reboot again. Still thats better than having no way of emulating a power off, just one more reason for rooting the device.

If someone ports over a linux desktop version for this like they have with the raspberry pi, this will kick some serious butt - if xbmc ever port a version that runs natively on this stick (like with the original xbox 1) that would be a dream come true! Native xbmc is one of the best media players I have ever used, and I ran it for years on xbox 1's until htpc became cheap enough to put windows/linux on them. The ported xbmc on raspberry pi runs reasonably well, but I would expect it to smoothly cruise along on the higher spec of the rk3066.

Overall, an enthusiasts gadget - I love it to bits, but the stock firmware and current root roms, imho, still need a lot of polishing before its good enough for the average joe bloggs off the street.

I ordered this item for £30 and it had quite a long lead-time of over a month. The item arrived about 3 days before they said it would and it was nicely wrapped and came with a sturdy HDMI cable, USB cable and UK main charger. Everything was perfect, really.

The little computer powered up quickly and I was connected to my wifi router in a couple of minutes. A few people have mentioned that this has some issues with wifi range and speed. I will say that this is true, as I only have about 50% signal when I'm quite close to my router, but the speed is just fine. It is very easy to do an aerial mod on this to bring the strip outside of the casing. I haven't needed to do this, but I've done this sort of thing before and there are youtube vids to help you, should you need to. I think it's fair to say that this device is probably better suited to hobbyists than the average consumers, but all the resources are on-line for this so pretty much anyone could work on it.

The software is generally pretty good. Browsing is fast, although most videos play with audio sync problems, which is an endemic problem apparently with this chipset. I'm hopeful that fixes will be applied to this as it matures. When it arrived, it wasn't rooted and the market place was not set to UK. If you do a search for Finless Bob RK3066 in google, you should be able to find firmware to download that will root the device and you can then apply the marketplace tool to change your google play store region.

The device is quite capable, running faster than my Galaxy Tab 7", scoring about 6000 in the antutu benchmark software vs 3000, so I'm quite happy with this. Not much more to say except that it's generally a good device that isn't totally perfect but can be improved upon with a bit of tinkering. I actually bought this so I could mess around with it, so it suits my needs perfectly.

I recently bought this device, mainly to tinker with but have found since installing this custom rom ([...]) that I can use it as a direct desktop replacement when it comes to streaming media, watching Youtube and browsing the web.

As it has a dual core CPU and 1GB of Ram it can handle 1080p videos fine and I'm very impressed with the general speed of the device. I use a Logitech MK260 wireless mouse and keyboard to control the device and have a 32gb micro sd card in it for storage.

My only complaint with it is that a lot of Android games don't work using the mouse as they are expecting a touch screen interface but things like Angry Birds Space work a treat! :)

I've also installed an FTP server and VNC server, so can remotely connect and transfer files too it and with my BT Hub port forwarding set can eve access it away from home (yep I'm a nerd :P).

Overall I'd give the device 4 out of 5 but with a few minor issues (mainly s/w related) resolved I'd happily give it 5 stars. You really can;t go wrong for the price, proper bargain! :)