Rikomagic MK802IIIS Mini PC (Android 4.1) Review

I have a new toy! Technology has now advanced so much that Chinese manufacturers can now stuff a full blown operating system into a little package as small as 9cm x 4cm x 1cm. That's a pretty small computer!

The one I have is from Rikomagic which interestingly have UK offices and actually have a good English website! Actually, they seem to build pretty decently designed devices for a Chinese company (since there are literally thousands of these factories there). The MK802IIIS is a dual core "Mini-PC" with Android 4.1 (the latest one has quad cores and Android 4.2).

The "Mini PC" comes with a HDMI port to be plugged into your monitor or TV, one host USB for your mouse, one OTG mini-USB for your external USB HDD and one mini-USB for power. There is a HDMI extension cord provided in-case your HDMI port is too narrow, a mini-USB to female USB port and a mini-USB to USB for the power cable.

To turn on, plug the HDMI and the power USB in. Your screen should show the boot up process. After a few seconds, you will be greeted with the Android 4.1 homescreen. The Rikomagic has a few preinstalled software, and the most prominent one is the XBMC player.

The "Mini-PC" simply makes your TV into a giant tablet without any touch capabilities. You need a mouse and keyboard for this purpose. While the "Mini-PC" can make your TV into a smart TV (smarter than this anyway) the main purpose of this "Mini-PC" really is to watch streaming videos using your highspeed broadband and the built in XBMC with all the video add-ons ready proves that. I can't think of any other reasons to own one. Maybe to play Android games with it? Hmmmm...

Having said that, my attempts to play movies from XBMC has been pretty fruitless. I've tried with 1Channel and Icefilms video repos, and found that many times I am greeted with the plugin failure. When I do manage to get some success with Icefilms and play a movie, I get the message that it's playing on an External Player and no video shows up. Almost at the verge of giving up, when I saw THIS. It looks like my MK802IIIS did not come with MX Player pre-installed.

I then went to the Play Store and searched for MX Player. I was surprised at the number of results, but proceeded to download the ARMv7 version. Upon installing, running it once and then running XBMC, the videos from Icefilms then launched from MX player. BUT, now I get a new error on MX Player (Unable to play video)! Try as I may, nothing worked. So I:

1. I downloaded the ARMv7 NEON codec which is supposed to be the right set for the RK3066 chipset which the MK802IIIS is based on (see HERE)
2. I downloaded the ARMv7 non-NEON codec just for the heck of it
3. I downloaded additional custom codecs as well based on this forum
4. I switched between HW, SW and HW+ decoding 
5. I plugged in a USB drive with a couple of DIVX movies to test

All the above did not work. So close yet so far!!!

Upon checking the internet and specifically the Rikomagic MK802 IIIS Forum there is really a lot of things which may be the cause of the problem. It can be MX Player, the MK802IIIS chipset or even the Android firmware. It looks like it's going to take me too much time and hassle just to get it to work.

At the end of the day, I have decided to just plug my Macbook with XBMC installed to the HDMI port on my TV and use that as my media player instead. Goodbye Rikomagic, we almost made it together, but I just can't afford any more time tinkering with you!