Aiwa, Daewoo and Akai: what they ship with and what comes off
· 7 min read
| Brands | Aiwa, Daewoo and Akai |
|---|---|
| Directory entries | 25, 20 and 5 |
| Exclusive platforms | None for any of the three |
| Responsible in the EU | Aiwa Europe, Vestel Holland and Barni Carlo |
| System | Android TV or Google TV by model; on Akai, VIDAA too |
| Memory | No official sheet we downloaded publishes it |
| Source | Google Play device list and EPREL |
Aiwa has been selling audio gear since 1951. Akai was founded in Tokyo in 1929. Daewoo was one of the great Korean conglomerates. None of the three builds the television that carries its name today, and you do not have to take anyone's word for it: it is in the Google Play device list and in the European energy label register.
Twenty-five, twenty and five entries
For every model, this site's directory stores the device the set itself
reports: the platform it is built on. It comes from the Google Play list
of supported devices, not from a sales catalogue.
Leaving out the 209 players and set-top boxes that list also carries, 2,228 televisions remain under 439 brands across 222 platforms. Aiwa has 25 entries on 17 platforms, Daewoo 20 on 13 and Akai 5 on 5.
Not one of those 35 platforms is exclusive to its brand. Zero, for all three. Aiwa shares hardware with another 224 brands in the directory, Daewoo with 171 and Akai with 93.
All three on the same platform
The SW6H platform carries 27 brands, and all three are on it. These four
rows are literal:
Aiwa,"AIWA UHD SMART TV","AIWA TV",SW6H,tv
Akai,"AKAI 4K SMART TV","AKAI 4K SMART TV",SW6H,tv
Daewoo,"DAEWOO SMART TV","DAEWOO SMART TV",SW6H,tv
Sharp,"SHARP 4K TV","SHARP 4K TV",SW6H,tv
On that same SW6H sit Haier, Hyundai, JVC, Thomson, Tesla, Philco,
Noblex, realme and fifteen more names.
The osaka case is clearer still. There, Aiwa and Daewoo share more than
the platform: they declare the same model name, character for
character.
Aiwa,"AI PONT SA","Smart TV",osaka,tv
Daewoo,"AI PONT SA","Smart TV",osaka,tv
AI PONT is not a catalogue name: it is what the firmware answers when
asked what it is. And it repeats on hongkong and on lavender, where
Aiwa and Daewoo both declare 4K SMART TV. On mountbaker, 2K SMART TV
for both. Aiwa and Daewoo overlap on seven platforms; Aiwa and Akai, on
three.
Who answers for each one in Europe
EPREL, the European energy label register, requires whoever places the product on the market to identify itself. It is the cleanest proof there is.
Daewoo declares 244 display records. We downloaded 50 (the API's
paging returns the same block over and over, so we extrapolate nothing
about the rest). In all 50, without exception, the registrant is
Vestel Holland B.V., or its German branch, and the declared nature is
IMPORTER. Daewoo's own European site says it: «In Europe, our Major and
Small Domestic Appliances business is powered by our partnership with
Vestel». And the group's Italian distributor finishes the job: «I marchi
Toshiba, Telefunken, JVC e Daewoo, gestiti da VESTEL tramite accordi di
brand licensing».
Akai declares 42 records; we downloaded 25. In all 25 the
registrant is Barni Carlo S.p.A., of Busto Garolfo (Milan), with
www.barni.it and the contact AKAI_Customer_Care. Barni is an Italian
appliance distributor that also carries Nordmende and Sansui; its manuals
page holds 43 AKAI product documents, among them eleven AKTV
televisions, plus coffee machines and dehumidifiers. Twenty of those
records declare IMPORTER and five, MANUFACTURER.
Aiwa declares 104; we downloaded 34, and here the split is different:
20 records under DONGNING SARL, 8 under VOV Trade s. r. o.
(Bratislava), 3 under AVT Distribution d.o.o. (Ljubljana) and 3 under
AIWA EUROPE, S.L.U., of Viladecans (Barcelona), this last one as
AUTHORISED_REPRESENTATIVE. Its three models are the 32GO40804HD, the
40GO50804FHD and the 43GO70804UHD, the same ones its shop sells
between €219.99 and €629.99.
The footer of that shop explains the relationship in one line: «The AIWA logo are registered trademark and copyright of AIWA CO.,LTD, Tokyo Japan». And the official timeline of that Japanese Aiwa closes the circle: 2008, «ブランド使用を停止» (use of the brand stops); 2017, «Towada Audio, which acquired the Aiwa trademark, founds a new Aiwa Co., Ltd.». The name was dark for nine years.
The domains say something too
aiwa.eu does not belong to Aiwa: it is a Sedo page asking €10,000
for the domain. aiwa.us redirects to GoDaddy's sale page. akai.fr is
for sale. akai.it returns 410 Gone. akai.eu, akaiglobal.com and
akai-europe.com do not resolve.
And one detail says a great deal: eu-aiwa.com, the domain Aiwa Europe
declares as its own in its legal notice and in its EPREL record,
serves an HTTPS certificate that does not cover that name (SSL: no alternative certificate subject name matches target hostname). It only
answers over plain HTTP.
In Greece and Cyprus, Akai is something else: akai.gr sells speakers and
turntables, says the brand was born «in Tokyo, founded by Masukichi Akai»
in 1929, and states that «the exclusive representative of Akai products in
Greece and Cyprus is Soundstar». Same name, different commercial
continent, different company.
The full map
None of this is a quirk of three brands. Of the directory's 439 television brands, 401 never appear alone on any platform: 91 %. Not one of the sets they sell is a set somebody else does not sell too.
The other end is the ones that do build:
Sony 26 platforms, 25 exclusive
TCL 20 platforms, 20 exclusive
Aiwa 17 platforms, 0 exclusive
Daewoo 13 platforms, 0 exclusive
Akai 5 platforms, 0 exclusive
Which system they run, which is not always the same
You cannot generalise by brand here. The official sheet for the Daewoo
43DM72QA says «Operating System: Android TV», with 3 HDMI, 2 USB, energy
class F in SDR and G in HDR, and 0.5 W on standby; neither RAM nor storage
appears. Aiwa Europe's Infinity series is sold with a dropdown where you
pick between «Android TV» and «No Smart TV». But in the directory, Aiwa
declares AIWA 4K GOOGLE TV on hongkong and Daewoo declares DAEWOO Google TV on alimos and on dangni.
And Akai has models that are not Android at all: its EPREL records include
the AKTV3234S Smart VIDAA, the AKTV403J Smart vidaa and the AKTV404M VIDAA. On VIDAA there is no ADB and no packages to disable.
How to tell which one is yours
Stop searching by brand and search by platform:
adb shell getprop ro.product.device
Whatever comes out (SW6H, osaka, bangbae, whatever it is) is what to
look up in the directory. And this is the practical part:
the package list for an Aiwa works for the Daewoo or the Akai that
shares its platform, because the badge on the front does not supply the
software. It is exactly the mechanism behind JVC and the own-brand
sets.
With no ADB to hand, Settings → System → About shows the model and the Android version, which already narrows things down.
What comes off and what stays
Off without thinking: the streaming apps you do not use, the free content channels on the home screen, and the demo modes, very common in this range.
Look first: the recommendation engine
(com.google.android.tvrecommendations) clears the screen, but it also
empties the «continue watching» row.
Do not touch: Google Play services (com.google.android.gms), the
launcher (com.google.android.tvlauncher on Google TV,
com.google.android.leanbacklauncher on Android TV) and anything starting
with com.android. you cannot identify.
All of it is reversible: a disabled package comes back with one command and a factory reset returns the set to the box. The full method is in cleaning up an own-brand TV.
If you own one
From these televisions we mostly need one thing: the output of
adb shell getprop ro.product.device along with the brand and the
commercial model. With that we can confirm which brands are the same set,
which is exactly what none of them publishes.