According to a fresh press release from ZTE, the company will attend the Broadband World Forum 2016 in London which is being held from October 18th through the 20th, where the Chinese tech giant will lift the veil off a new Android-powered TV media streaming box going by the name of “ZTE ZXV10 B860H”. Pricing details remain unknown, but it would appear that ZTE’s Android set-top-box could become a direct competitor to the Xiaomi Mi Box that was released in the United States this month.
According to the official press release, the ZTE ZXV10 B860H is powered by a high-performance quad-core System-on-Chip supporting ultra-high definition 4K x 2K@60fps content, 10-bit color format, and HDR10 as well as HLD HDR. Specifically the SoC houses an Amlogic (S905X) 64-bit processor with four ARM Cortex-A53 cores clocked at frequencies of up to 1.5GHz, an ARM Mali-450 MP5 (5-core) graphics chip, 2GB of RAM and 8GB Flash memory, and the package provides an HDMI 2.0a audio/video interface, RJ-45 10/100M Ethernet, Bluetooth 4.1 allowing for D-PAD connection and Bluetooth remote, and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n/ac. The official press release reads that “Embracing Google’s Android TV OS, B860H allows Android applications to be run smoothly on Java Virtual Machine (JVM)”, but the system is also integrated with some of ZTE’s proprietary features including ZTE Smart Home Services such as HD Video Call, Family Album, Multi-Screen, Voice Assistant, and Home IoT Network.
The manufacturer makes no mention of the product’s intended retail price but more details on this front should be revealed in the coming days once the TV box is showcased in London. Either way, it’s worth noting that the rival Xiaomi Mi Box which was unveiled a few months ago has a price of only $69 in the United States, which is an exceptionally affordable price point. On the other hand, the ZTE ZXV10 B860H does take advantage of an on-board Ethernet port which the Xiaomi Mi Box lacks, but regardless, it’s likely that ZTE will price its product in the same category in order to remain competitive. According to Fang Hui, Vice President of ZTE “As one of the key offerings of ZTE’s 4K Plus solution, B860H not only brings its best ever interface and streaming experience to users but profits for the operators around the world”, seeing how there’s been “an explosion in fixed IP traffic in 2016” as a result of the growing demand for online video streaming.