DVD800 to modern android conversion

[zzattack]

For me it's not so much about the raw computing power and memory it has. It's about the tuner quality, audio processing and screen/build quality. All of which are areas Chinese vendors economize on
Let me give you some examples.
With DAB tuners, the audio streams contain metadata that indicate alternate frequencies, including FM ones, on which practically the same content is broadcast. Using this knowledge, a secondary tuner, time-alignment and volume matching, it's possible to catch intermittent reception and fill the gaps seamlessly with audio from another source. Pretty nice, but not so easy. There's chips that can do all of this, iirc NXP makes the best ones but they're not available to just any manufacturer. No way a Chinese maker will consider putting something like this €25 chip in their radio because there's €3 chips that can also receive DAB audio, so they see no point.

I've done some research on audio paths on high-end pioneers and some Chinese models. On the pioneer, all audio streams are kept in digital i2s streams for as long as possible. There's a mux component near the end of the graph, and after that comes the DAC and gain control. At every step of the process, audio is kept digital as much as possible, so there's no possibility of introduced noise. Cheaper radios will often route analog signals wherever they need to go, mix at the end and apply gains over a signal that has gone through a few components already as analog. The pioneer is just better engineered.

Also integration between apps on premium brands is just better. Chinese will never have android auto or carplay. For Americans, SiriusXM, Aha, Pandora, HD Radio... it either doesn't exist or is implemented too poorly for actual use. I'm not sure if Chinese units got any better in this regard recently but another thing I always liked about expensive radios is how they will implement subtle navigation instructions when the nav map isn't opened. Think of a small interruption on the USB player like a bar on top or split-screen for the duration of the nav instruction. On the other hand, you're able to freely add or remove APKs from the play store so that's a big plus for Chinese units.