Comparison Android TV Box X96 Max Plus Ultra 32 Gb vs Android TV Box H96 Max X4 32 Gb

The technology of broadcasting audio and video signals through a Wi-Fi connection. Widely used in Apple electronics, the media centre with AirPlay will make it easy to duplicate a “picture” on a TV, for example, from an iPhone or iPad. The main disadvantage of this technology compared to similar Miracast is the need for a local network with a wireless router.

LAN — connector for wired connection to the Internet and/or local area network using an Ethernet cable. A wired connection is not as convenient as Wi-Fi (see "Multimedia"), but it is considered more reliable and provides faster data transfer speeds. And the speed indicators depend on the device and can be 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps.

Ability to play videos in Ultra HD 8K on the device.

This format is a further development of high-definition video after UltraHD 4K (see above). The term "8K" alludes to a size of about 8000 horizontal pixels; and the most common frame size for this format is 7680x4320 (that is, twice the 4K on each side and four times the number of pixels in the frame). This gives extremely high detail; in addition, the technical specification of 8K screens includes a number of additional requirements regarding high-quality colour reproduction, and media centers often meet these requirements. On the other hand, so far (as of early 2020) 8K screens are rare and very expensive; therefore, there is little content released for them, and support for such video in media players is provided rather for the future.

HDR standard supported by the media player.

For more details about HDR in general, see above, while the standard defines some features of the implementation of this feature. Today, the following HDR formats are relevant:

— HDR10. Historically the first of the consumer HDR formats, less advanced than the options described below, but extremely widespread. In particular, HDR10 is supported by almost all streaming services that provide HDR content at all, and it is also common for Blu-ray discs. Allows to work with a colour depth of 10 bits (hence the name). At the same time, devices of this format are also compatible with content in HDR10 +, although its quality will be limited by the capabilities of the original HDR10.

— HDR10+. An improved version of HDR10. With the same colour depth (10 bits), it uses the so-called dynamic metadata, which allows transmitting information about the colour depth not only for groups of several frames, but also for individual frames. This results in an additional improvement in colour reproduction.

— Dolby Vision. An advanced standard used particularly in professional cinematography. Allows to achieve a colour depth of 12 bits, uses the dynamic metadata described above, and also makes it possible to transmit two image options at once in one video stream — HDR and standard (SDR). At the same time, Dolby Vision is based on the same tec...hnology as HDR10, so in modern video technology this format is usually combined with HDR10 or HDR10 +.

Codec — from the phrase "Encoder-DECoder" — in this case is the format used for encoding digital video during storage/transmission and decoding during playback (without encoding, video data would take up an unjustifiably large amount of space). Do not confuse this parameter with the format of video files: different files of the same format can be encoded with different codecs, and if the corresponding codec is not supported by the player, video playback will be impossible, even if the file format itself corresponds to the capabilities of the device. And in models with online TV support (see "Features") this nuance also determines compatibility with a specific broadcast: the general format of the broadcast is indicated by the codec used for this.

In general, modern devices usually have quite extensive sets of codecs (one of the most advanced is H.265, AV1 codecis also popular), and there are usually no problems with video playback; in extreme cases, you can use special programs for transcoding files. As for specific codecs, detailed data on them can be found in special sources, but with standard use of media players, such details are not needed.