Magicsee C400 hybrid TV box with DVB-T2/S2 tuner

I’ve already reviewed quite a few different TV boxes, but today I’m looking at a somewhat unusual model. In addition to its TV box functions, it also has a tuner for digital terrestrial and satellite TV.
As usual, I’ll take a look inside, test it, draw some conclusions, and wrap up with a summary table.


Broadcasters are gradually switching to digital-only transmission, phasing out the familiar “analog” signal that’s been around for decades. So although almost all modern TVs support DVB-T2, there are still some sets that don’t. In some cases, you can also use a TV box like this with a monitor. By the way, this unit has an almost identical “twin” in the form of the Mecool KI PRO.

Anyway, I decided to give this box a try. As always, I’ll start with the specs:
CPU — Amlogic S905D
Number of cores — 4
Graphics — Mali-450
RAM — 2 GB DDR3
Flash storage — 16 GB
WiFi: 2.4 GHz
Bluetooth: Bluetooth 4.0
LAN — 100 Mbit
Ports: 3 x USB 2.0, HDMI 2.0, RJ45, AV, Optical S/PDIF, microSD card
Operating system — Android 7.1
Dimensions — 140 x 125 x 31 mm

As you can see, the key difference here is the type of SoC used—or, more specifically, the letter at the end of the model number: S905D. This processor is far from new; it’s already more than two years old. But it’s found specifically in models with a tuner, which is what sets it apart from the others. In terms of performance and features, it’s equivalent to the better-known and quite decent S905X. The processor also supports the RGMII interface, which can provide gigabit Ethernet, but that feature isn’t implemented in this TV box.
There’s also a higher-spec version, the Magicsee C400 Plus, link, with 3 GB of RAM, 32 GB of flash storage, and 5 GHz WiFi, but it costs $110.

SoC specifications:
Video decoder — 4Kp60 10-bit H.265, 4Kp60 VP9 Profile 2, 4Kp30 H.264
Video encoder — 1080p60 H.264
Ethernet — 10/100/1000 RGMII, 10/100M PHY
Audio — Stereo DACs, I2S, S/PDIF, DMIC
USB — 2 x USB 2.0
Video output — 4Kp60 HDMI 2.0a, CVBS, RGB
Video input — TS in, DVP
HDR — HDR10, royalty-free Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG)




The box is noticeably larger than those used for ordinary TV boxes. It’s also made of thick cardboard, although the power supply, remote, and other accessories are still rattling around at the bottom.


The package includes:
1. Magicsee C400 TV box
2. IR remote control
3. Power supply
4. HDMI cable
5. Manual.



The manual and cable aren’t particularly interesting; they’re entirely standard. The power supply, however, is rated for 12 V rather than the usual 5 V, with a stated output current of up to 1.5 A.


The remote is clearly larger than those supplied with most TV boxes, though the box itself also has noticeably more features.


It has the usual TV box buttons, as well as controls for recording and teletext.


I took the power supply apart mostly out of curiosity, and I can say it would be better to replace it. Fortunately, it uses a standard voltage.
It works fine, and it even has an output inductor. But when the TV box is using the satellite tuner, it also powers the LNB, so the power supply will be running without much headroom. The overall build quality isn’t reassuring either.


The design is about as common as it gets: a little black plastic box. Compared with the most recently reviewed models, the only real differences are the red badge on top and the case shape—it’s rectangular rather than square.


It’s also noticeably larger than the previous models, both in width and height.


The front has a translucent panel, behind which are the indicator and the remote control receiver.


On the back are the satellite and terrestrial antenna connectors, AV output (cable not included), Ethernet, HDMI output, optical S/PDIF, USB, and the power input.


There was some ambiguity about the antenna inputs. One of the product images in the store showed two standard antenna sockets. But satellite tuners usually have one F connector and one standard antenna connector. A regular terrestrial tuner would have a female antenna socket and a male plug. Here, though, it’s something else entirely. In any case, once it arrived, everything fell into place, though I wouldn’t have minded an option to pass the RF signal from the antenna input straight through.


There are a couple more USB ports on the left, along with a memory card slot.


The indicator is quite bright and a little... crude. The blue LED shines with all its might, so I recommend covering it with something. The display shows the current time, as well as the operating mode and channel number when used in tuner mode.


There are quite a lot of ventilation holes on the bottom. Too bad there aren’t any on the sides or top.


As usual, let’s take a look inside. First, you need to peel off a couple of rubber feet and remove the two screws underneath. The clips aren’t too tight, and then the box comes apart.


As you can already see, the design consists of two boards. The large board on the bottom has a couple of RAM chips and various other components.



The rest of the teardown is hidden under the spoiler.


Of course, the progress is noticeable. For example, below are photos of the boards from an analog tuner and three digital tuners, as well as what I eventually use these cases for, such as a mini PC and a DAC. I used to repair tuners and even make various modifications and improvements, but these days I mostly just repair power supplies, converter power stabilizers, or, in some cases, video output problems.


But enough of the sad stuff; let's get back to the TV box under review.
On startup, there's a nice, understated image, which is then replaced by the manufacturer's name.


The interface is familiar, runs smoothly, and causes no problems.


The settings menu is a sidebar, and is also divided into two sections: Device setting and More setting. The first contains the main settings, while the second is the standard Android menu.


The settings aren't anything special either—just the usual options for resolution and audio and video settings.




The More setting submenu opens the standard settings menu. It looks like they simply took it from a smartphone and barely changed anything. The unnecessary options are a giveaway, as is the fact that two apps launched in portrait orientation.


Of the 16 GB, about 9–10 GB is available to the user. One thing I should mention is that the active item is highlighted in a rather unpleasant color; what's worse, the text is almost impossible to read against the orange background.


It runs Android 7.1.2, with firmware from August 2018, so you could call it relatively recent. It won't update, though.


Detailed information from CPU-Z


As always, the performance tests are under the spoiler.


WiFi was a pleasant surprise, but before I show you the results, here's a picture of what's going on in my airspace.


With all that going on, and considering that the TV box only supports WiFi on the 2.4 GHz band, I got about 35 Mbps in the opposite corner of a large room with no direct line of sight, 50–60 Mbps two meters from the router, and 80–85 Mbps at one meter. In my opinion, that's pretty good, although given the surrounding conditions, the 5 GHz band would have been very useful.


Quite a lot of apps come preinstalled. Along with the usual ones, there are some extras too: TeamViewer, Megabox, Show box, and, of course, DTV player.


Basically, everything you need is there: a dull file manager, an update app, a perfectly functional Google Play, and even TeamViewer, which really surprised me.


There's also Skype, Twitter, and Netflix, which is very keen to get your money.


But there are some useful things too, like Kodi, which, surprisingly, works pretty well. Yes, some add-ons have issues, but overall it's not bad.


Megabox, on the other hand, is a bit odd. Or rather, it's not Megabox itself, but MV Cast player, which it won't work without and asks you to install.
Well, it asked, so I installed it—and was quietly stunned by the amount of advertising. Before I could get to the movies, it offered to sell me Viagra a digital antenna, install Lanet software, then forcibly sent me to some website. And when I exited playback, it kept insisting I install Opera. This stuff popped up very, very often.


Eventually, I did manage to get to the movies. In general, they play, but some ended with a poor connection message—about 20% of them. The rest played without any problems, but at 720p.
In short: you can watch, but using it without swearing is impossible.


If Modbro's video quality—or rather, its resolution—weren't so disappointing, I'd say it's great. Most of the content played, and it was stable.


YouTube was very good overall. I watched lots of different videos, both at 30 and 60 fps, and playback was smooth. You could find things to nitpick if you really wanted to, but the maximum resolution is 1080p.


Third-party apps.
Torrent TV. Unfortunately, I still haven't solved my “at home” problem with the picture freezing, but when it does play, everything is great.


While preparing the review, I noticed something interesting in a screenshot from an app “for professionals.” Maybe I'm missing something, but running an ordinary cable and drilling holes for electrical boxes in a log house seems somehow wrong....
You see all sorts of things while putting a review together.


While installing software, I also came across an app from my provider (Volia). I installed it to try it out and understood why its rating is so low (3.3). Not only did it launch in portrait mode here, it also offered me an additional service. But the “icing on the cake” was that I had to reboot the TV box to exit the app: I simply couldn't turn it off using a regular keyboard, even though the TV box itself was working properly. Basically, "to the trash it goes."


Lime TV, on the other hand, worked great: no freezing, channels switched fairly quickly. No complaints there.


The usual test of support for various formats
Next, I tested playback of various video formats:
1024x768_h265_AC3.mkv
2560x1600_AAC .mp4 — minor frame drops
3840x2160_AAC .mp4 — minor frame drops
4096x2160_AAC .mp4 — minor frame drops
gopro-hero-3-be-avc-high@l5.1-4096x2160-12p-aac-2ch.mp4
GraysPeak8HDR_Dolby AC3.mp4
LG 4K Paris_AAC.mp4
LG 4K Story-of-Earth_AAC.mp4
LG_Chess_HDR.mp4
Philips_UHD_supershopdemo_1.mp4
samsung-note-3-3840x2160-high@l5.1-AAC-2ch-2.mp4
4K HD.Club Changhong-Furano-100mbps.mp4
Sony_4K_HDR_Camp.mp4
Molly — Holy Molly (2016) 4K UHD_60 fps.mkv
Ducks.Take.Off.1080p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv
Ducks.Take.Off.2160p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv (243 Mbps)
4K HD.Club TCL-super_car-Part-1-HEVC.mp4
Colours Of Culture Bali (6K.3240p.x264).mkv

Some videos played perfectly, and AC3 audio worked too, but there were a few issues when playing from a USB flash drive. The video was clearly pushing the limits, with minor frame drops on some test files. For example, with
Molly — Holy Molly (2016) 4K UHD_60 fps.mkv
Ducks.Take.Off.2160p.QHD.CRF25.x264-CtrlHD.mkv (243 Mbps)
Sony_4K_HDR_Camp.mp4

there were frame drops even when playing from the built-in flash memory.



Other 60 fps videos played without any problems, though the 8K-resolution file wouldn't play.
4k hdr demo 60fps wildlife video for 4k oled tv 1920x1080
4k hdr demo 60fps wildlife video for 4k oled tv 2560x1440
4k hdr demo 60fps wildlife video for 4k oled tv 3840x2160
Peru 8K HDR 60FPS 1920x1080
Peru 8K HDR 60FPS 2560x1440
Peru 8K HDR 60FPS 3840x2160
Peru 8K HDR 60FPS 7680x4320


The pixel test also passed without any issues.


When connected to the "TV emulator," the full list of available resolutions appears. Unfortunately, AFR wouldn't work, although the refresh rate can be changed manually without any problems. I also checked CEC along the way; it works.


And now for one of the key features of this particular TV box: its built-in tuner.
First, over-the-air DVB-T2. Setup is very simple: the first time you turn it on, it prompts you to scan for channels automatically. This takes about 7–8 minutes, after which it switches automatically to the first channel found.


No problems here at all. Pressing the Info button displays information about the channel and the program being broadcast. At least one channel is also broadcast in HD. It found 32 channels in total.


You can also bring up a channel list showing what's currently on each channel.


Video recording is also available. Pressing the REC button brings up the recording settings. By default, recording doesn't start immediately; it begins at the start of the next minute.
By default, video is also recorded to a USB drive, if one is connected. No problems here; it works great.


The recorded video uses the *.ts extension; its properties are shown below.


There aren't many settings. While watching channels, you can choose whether to display subtitles and select the audio mode: stereo, left only, or right only.
The full settings menu includes an option to launch automatically when the TV box is turned on; it's disabled by default. You can also choose where to save video recordings.


DVB-C is essentially the same as DVB-T2, but delivered over your provider's cable.


And DVB-S, i.e. satellite TV. Unfortunately, I can't test it, even though I spent quite a long time repairing satellite receivers and had a dish set up for 13 degrees. When I moved to a new apartment, though, I decided not to install the dish; I get by just fine without it. I might have installed it, but the windows face the wrong way, so the only option would be to put it on the roof :(
The usual set of features is here: LNB and positioner control, along with general settings.


And, of course, the final results table. On average, this TV box performs about as well as other models based on the same S905X, but some of the results are let down by inadequate cooling.


Looking at all the results, I can see two drawbacks: weak cooling and trouble playing some videos from flash drives and other storage devices. The first shows up as a drop in performance under sustained full load; the second as brief image freezes, and the problem doesn't occur everywhere.
When playing video from storage or streaming online, the temperature was around 70-75 degrees.

Otherwise, the TV box works very reliably, whether you're watching YouTube or online TV, or using it as a DVB-T2 tuner. For some reason, I liked the last use case best of all. The WiFi performed surprisingly well, although, as I mentioned, it only supports 2.4 GHz. Unfortunately, I couldn't test it with a satellite dish; everyone nearby uses cable. So if you need any additional menu screenshots, let me know and I'll take them.

That's all from me. I hope the review was useful, and as usual, I'll be glad to answer any questions or read your comments.