hey everybody it’s LAN sideband we’ve got another official Android TV box to take a look at today this is the e Matic jetstream that’s sold on Walmart’s website for $69 this is pretty much the same as the me box but it has a few extra ports on it but unfortunately as you’ll see in this review it doesn’t do everything that the me box does especially for home theater users it will have a lot to talk about regarding this device in just a second but I do want to let you know in the interest of full disclosure that I paid for this with my own funds all the opinions you’re about to hear are my own nobody is paying for this review nor has anyone reviewed or approved what you’re about to see before it was uploaded so let’s get into it now and see what this box is all about so let’s take a closer look now at the hardware this box cost $69 it has the same processor I believe as the me box and s 905 X it’s got 2 gigs of RAM and 8 gigs of storage and is running Android 8.1 Oreo so in many ways it’s kind of like most of those generic boxes you might buy from overseas but it’s being sold at Walmart and it has an official Android TV license and will boot it up here in a second so you can see how it all works now what I like about this box is that it has more ports so you’ve got optical audio out here HDMI out you’ve got Ethernet which I believe is only 100 megabits as well as an analogue audio output and then you’ve got two USB ports and a micro SD card slot the ports are one thing that the me box lacks and this one certainly has a lot more but functionality here is an issue so let’s boot this thing up now and see how it actually works so here we are on the home screen of the jet stream and I have it connected up to a 4k display at 60 Hertz so we can get a feel for how it operates at the highest resolution this is the standard Android TV interface for version 8 so if you don’t like it on other boxes you won’t like it here either I did do a video
explaining how the interface works if you want to get more information on that what you can do if you want to get quick access to your apps is to hit the apps button here that will pull up all of the installed apps that are available and you can also pop into the Google Play Store to get more of them this box does not support Amazon video and a few other services so it’s kind of hindered the same way the me box is by a lack of apps for specific things so you may want to check your service providers that you’re paying subscriptions for to make sure that the apps you want are going to be on this box if compatibility is what you’re looking for I found the Roku’s have the best compatibility for streaming apps although the Android boxes are a little more fun for apps and games and whatnot let’s pop open Netflix here real quick just to see how fast everything loads up so it is a pretty quick and snappy interface here Google’s made some changes to the Android TV operating system to make it run better on low-end hardware like this but it really feels to me about the same as the me box s we looked at about two weeks ago which is also running android 8 unlike the me box though I was not able to get Netflix to work with HDR it does work in 4k but on my LG set upstairs which of course supports HDR in two different formats it was not switching the television into HDR even with Netflix shows that support that in fact I couldn’t get it to work in HDR on anything at the moment so maybe there’s an update that’s due to come out for this thing
but right now it is currently up to date and no HDR worked at all despite the fact that the box says it does and like the me box it only supports Dolby Digital Plus and not at most so you won’t get the best possible sound quality out of the shows on Netflix and other services that support at most but you will get a digital 5.1 channel sound at least there is some voice commands that you can issue to the device here you’ll hold down this button here and start speaking but as you can see here I just push the button and nothing happened because sometimes when you push the button it kind of delays itself for at least five minutes or so before it pulls the Shelf up and it doesn’t work until it gets itself out of whatever rut it gets into as you can see here when it does work you do get the Google assistant that works the same as it does on other Android TV devices so you can issue a universal search you can have it turn on lights around the house or whatever pretty much the same Google assistant experience you’re used to also works on this but only when it works and if you like to watch 4k 60 her content on YouTube you shouldn’t have any issues here I was able to playback this video that I shot at 60 frames per second 4k no problems here playing it back on this box so even though the processor is a little on the
slow side it’s well optimized for this kind of content and the knee box s also handled this pretty well itself now like other Android TV devices this handles live television quite well you’ve got a couple of different ways to watch live TV but we’ll start with the built-in Google live channels function now you need to compare up there goes the voice search that I initiated five minutes ago this is one of those things I was talking about sometimes the voice search is very much delayed but we’re going to start with the live channels function this is Google’s own interface and what this will do is connect up to a network TV tuner or a USB tuner that’s compatible and allow you to watch live television now in my house I have an HD homerun prime which is a network TV tuner that works with my existing cable subscription they also have one that works over-the-air so you can pull in stuff from an antenna and then just put it out on your network so devices like this can see it in full disclosure there an occasional sponsor here on the channel but not sponsoring this video and you get a nice grid channel guide here and you can tune into whatever you want you also have a rudimentary DVR that’s built into it as well if you want to experiment with that I did a full video on how the DVR and live channels works I’ll put that down in the video description as well so you can get some more information on that another thing I like the test is the HD homerun app itself because
they recently added support for DRM protected channels on cable systems so some cable systems encrypt every channel and don’t let you watch anything unless the Box passes muster with the cable bureaucracy and the good news is is that this box does pass muster it will play back this DRM protected content here from HBO just fine and of course work with the HD homerun DVR as well now another thing I like to test on these boxes is how well they handle Chrome casting which allows you to take out a compatible app on your mobile device and cast the video from that app to your here and by extension your television and some of the fake boxes we’ve gotten in from China don’t always work with HBO go here for example so I thought we’d give this a shot real quick to make sure that it does in fact works we’ve got HBO going here and it looks like it’s able to playback the content here just fine so as far as Android certification is concerned this device appears to be official which is a good thing but again there are some glitches here that are not working as well as they do on the me box S which is also an inexpensive official device and these boxes are not gaming powerhouses again it’s running with that same low powered chip that we found in a number of generic Chinese boxes in addition to the me box s but it can play most of the games you’ll find on the Google Play Store given that they’re targeted at some of the lower end hardware out there what I’m running here is an emulator of a PlayStation 1 game called Destruction Derby and it’s
running on here just as well as it did on the me box s and some of those other devices we’ve looked at so it’s probably okay for that it works with Bluetooth controllers so you should have a fairly decent gaming experience on here but it is nowhere nearly as good as an Nvidia shield might be but where the box really falls short is in its home theater capabilities I’m gonna load up one of my 4k blu-ray movies off the network here and you’ll see this thing will be spinning around for quite some time even over Ethernet it’s having a really hard time working and getting these movies to playback this is something I do all the time on my Nvidia shield which of course is a more powerful device but here in Plex we’re just not getting the same performance we’re also having a few other issues with home theater namely it doesn’t support lossless audio formats so even if you have a movie with Atmos encoded on it that will not pass through on the box it also doesn’t automatically switch my TV into 24p mode which is another problem because most movies are shot at 24 frames per second and if you want the movie the way the director intended it your TV needs to do that in order for the movie to look right and also it’s not passing HDR through either when it does manage to get something to playback so altogether this box for home theater usage is a real so our search for an affordable Nvidia shield
alternative continues this box certainly is not it and another factor to consider is who’s making the box this is manufactured by a company called ematic they fill up Walmart’s shelves with a bunch of cheap tablets and PCs which have very short product life cycles and they’re rarely updated especially on the Android side so I would not expect any future Android updates getting pushed down to this box because once they run out of stock at Walmart they’ll probably move on to the next thing and there’s a hint of that in the warranty guide here because you only get a 90 day part and labor warranty on it after 90 days they’re going to charge you labor to get the device repaired whatever that’s gonna be and I think it’ll probably end up costing you more to get it repaired after 90 days than it would just buy something else so keep that in mind as well I’ve had a bad customer service experience with ematic in the past they weren’t very good at resolving an issue that I had and they also don’t even have this device on their website yet with any support information at all and another thing that got me a little nervous was the other side of the warranty card enticing new customers to write a review in exchange for free product they’ll send you this charger here if you write a review take a picture of it and email it to them that’s got me a little bit nervous especially because they reserve the
right they say to determine what constitutes a review so I wonder if this might be a way of getting people to write something positive about a product that many people may have a negative experience with I don’t like when companies do this and this is a red flag for me especially when this is waiting for you inside the box so altogether I’m going to say skip this box the me box S is the better of the two it’s also less expensive than the $69 price tag on this one neither box is very good but again the me box is the lesser of two evils here namely because it does support HDR at least and this one although it claims two dozen and that’s a big issue and of course I’m concerned about the company behind this box and I’ll tell you what this review enticement thing has me very nervous about the kind of company they are and my past has not been very good with them so again if you really need a cheapy android TV box go with the me box s it is a little better than this one and unfortunately this one was a real disappointment until next time this is laden Simon thanks for watching this channel is brought to you by the lon TV supporters including gold-level supporters Chris Allegretto the four guys with quarters podcast Tom Albrecht gerard Newberg in Cali an Kumar if you want to help the channel you can by contributing as little as a dollar a month head over to LAN TV slash support to learn more and don’t forget to subscribe
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