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Recently I purchased Xiaomi mi tv box - basically Android TV box to supplement my 55 inch LG OLED TV LGB6 (2016 model). LG Tvs are SMART TV, and they come with WebOS and already had Netflisx and Amazon Prime, YouTube Apps. However they lacked something extra which I was looking at. I mainly went for Android box for following reasons,
1) Wanted Apps like Hotstar, Sony Liv - which was not available in Web OS
2) YouTube HDR support - LG B6 does not support HDR in YouTube due to hardware limitation and was looking for box that supports YouTube. Despite there are so many boxes that all claim to support to 4K HDR, there are not many that support YouTube 4K HDR including Apple TV, and host of Android boxes. Hardware needs to need to support VP9-Profile2 Codec which is been used by YouTube for 4K HDR
There are 100s of Android boxes with low price to high price range, but even many of them were not having proper certificates. Read more on this here. Finally after lot analysis found Xiaomi mi tv box version 3.0 (International Mode( MDZ-16-AB) that met my requirements.
Setup
Setup was easy and stock firmware was Android TV 6.0. After the setup upgraded it to Android TV 8.0 (Oreo) and the upgrade was a smooth process.
Usage and Apps
Stock OS was coming with Netflix, YouTube, Google Play Store apps. So far have not tried Netflix app on this, as I have been happy with Netflix app on my LG TV (Web OS).
Installed Hotstar and Sony Liv and performance is quite good. Sports streaming like Cricket - there is bit of stutter, but I this is nothing related to the box or the Apps. I found the same performance issue even when I had tried the Sony Liv / Hotstar from the browser in LG Web OS. So seems like this is due to some settings in the TV.
Movie, Web Series quality is pretty good.
Installed ALT Balaji and in this also streaming quality is good.
Now the big one and one of main factors I had bought Xiaomi mi box- YouTube 4K HDR. The Stock YouTube App does not support this, and have to use Smart YoutTuve TV App for this. This app will not available in Good Play Store, and you need to side load this app by downloading the apk file from here and then use ES Explorer to install it. Once installed you will get launcher like below.
So far I have tried with 4K Alt, and 4K HDR works fine with this. Confirmation for that Video plays in 4K HDR is that your TV should pop-up HDR icon, and this confirms that box is now streaming in 4K HDR
Also wanted to tryout Airte TV App as it is aggregating lot of other 3rd party sources like Alt Balai, HOOQ.
But there is major limitation with this.
1) When the App is installed it gets displayed in portrait mode. You need to install another app called Install The Rotation Screen Orientation App and set it to run in Landscape mode
2) Without mouse it is difficult to navigate in this app. You need to either connect mouse and use another app called Mouse Toogle App to use mouse in this app
3) Despite all this, the 3rd party content like from ALT Balaji , Hooq do not play on Android TV due to DRM issue. They seems to play only on Mobile Android devices
So at this stage not sure it is worthwhile to explore Airtel TV app on Android TV.
Other than - overall quite happy with the performance of this box so far, and is serving my need.
1) Wanted Apps like Hotstar, Sony Liv - which was not available in Web OS
2) YouTube HDR support - LG B6 does not support HDR in YouTube due to hardware limitation and was looking for box that supports YouTube. Despite there are so many boxes that all claim to support to 4K HDR, there are not many that support YouTube 4K HDR including Apple TV, and host of Android boxes. Hardware needs to need to support VP9-Profile2 Codec which is been used by YouTube for 4K HDR
There are 100s of Android boxes with low price to high price range, but even many of them were not having proper certificates. Read more on this here. Finally after lot analysis found Xiaomi mi tv box version 3.0 (International Mode( MDZ-16-AB) that met my requirements.
Setup
Setup was easy and stock firmware was Android TV 6.0. After the setup upgraded it to Android TV 8.0 (Oreo) and the upgrade was a smooth process.
Stock OS was coming with Netflix, YouTube, Google Play Store apps. So far have not tried Netflix app on this, as I have been happy with Netflix app on my LG TV (Web OS).
Installed Hotstar and Sony Liv and performance is quite good. Sports streaming like Cricket - there is bit of stutter, but I this is nothing related to the box or the Apps. I found the same performance issue even when I had tried the Sony Liv / Hotstar from the browser in LG Web OS. So seems like this is due to some settings in the TV.
Movie, Web Series quality is pretty good.
Installed ALT Balaji and in this also streaming quality is good.
Now the big one and one of main factors I had bought Xiaomi mi box- YouTube 4K HDR. The Stock YouTube App does not support this, and have to use Smart YoutTuve TV App for this. This app will not available in Good Play Store, and you need to side load this app by downloading the apk file from here and then use ES Explorer to install it. Once installed you will get launcher like below.
So far I have tried with 4K Alt, and 4K HDR works fine with this. Confirmation for that Video plays in 4K HDR is that your TV should pop-up HDR icon, and this confirms that box is now streaming in 4K HDR
Also wanted to tryout Airte TV App as it is aggregating lot of other 3rd party sources like Alt Balai, HOOQ.
But there is major limitation with this.
1) When the App is installed it gets displayed in portrait mode. You need to install another app called Install The Rotation Screen Orientation App and set it to run in Landscape mode
2) Without mouse it is difficult to navigate in this app. You need to either connect mouse and use another app called Mouse Toogle App to use mouse in this app
3) Despite all this, the 3rd party content like from ALT Balaji , Hooq do not play on Android TV due to DRM issue. They seems to play only on Mobile Android devices
So at this stage not sure it is worthwhile to explore Airtel TV app on Android TV.
Other than - overall quite happy with the performance of this box so far, and is serving my need.
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