Time to move on from Mi Box

by arrowrand

I've tried to love the Mi Box, I really have. I tried 2 times to buy them early when Walmart put them on the shelf before street date, and I went back on release day to get mine.

I use at least one of them almost every day, and for more than just a few minute at a time. They've been a disappointment from the start, and I'm tired of waiting for Xiaomi to make them better.

I can get over the 4K thing mostly. I only have two 4K TVs and they both have a Shield TV on them. The thing that I can't get over is how god-awful these things are with sports streaming on Vue or Watch ESPN. Fox Sports universally sucks on all platforms, so I won't complain about that.

The Mi Box cannot deliver 1080p/60fps for smooth sports performance. Not on WiFi, not on Ethernet. If I plug a Mi Box into the same Ethernet cable where my Shield TV pulls 700Mbps+, the Mi Box brings in 7Mbps. Given that I'm using a USB 2 Ethernet adapter I'm not going to get anything over 100Mbps. I'd settle for 20, but I can't get it. The Nexus Player with the same setup gets 95Mbps+ every time.

I wanted the AirTV to be good enough for my bedroom and the home office as they aren't used as often, but it just isn't. The box works well enough I suppose, but the Sling TV customizations would drive my wife nuts as she never uses Sling TV. Hell, the Sling customizations are starting to get to me too, and I use Sling TV a good bit.

I'm picking up the two Shield TV gen 2s that I just ordered from Best Buy this afternoon. It isn't money that I want to spend on set top boxes, but streaming is now how my family watches TV. I'm tired of settling for an inferior experience just because I have money tied up in a few cheap China boxes.

I'm giving away two of my Mi Boxes to people that don't give a squirt about sports and the third is going in a spare room. I am bearish on Xiaomi delivering the updates that they promised anytime soon given that they just issued a Marshmallow update a week or so ago.

Time to cut bait.

[deleted]

The mibox is so awesome since the lattest update, it fixed all my problems.

frg2005

Really, and don't take this offensively, but... if you have "only" two 4K TVs and two Shields, why bother having a budget device as the Mi Box? You are on a different tier already, of course go for the Shield...

getcashmoney

Agreed, the Shield is worth the premium, which is hard for people to understand if they haven't used it.

youareme7

I have been trying to use my Mi Box for months to watch live TV with a HDHomerun Prime and while it technically does work, it's plagued with stuttering issues especially with the live channels app which seems to be more resource intensive than the native HDHomerun app. I just got my Shield last night and it has completely fixed any issue, the live tv is now buttery smooth with nary a hiccup the several hours of basketball I watched last night. Now I need to decide if it's worth ponying up another 2 bills for my bedroom tv or just keep my second Mi Box for the mediocre occassional tv watching. I was thankfully able to return my first box to walmart within the return window but my other one is passed

chiefs1975

First world problems...

Ausernameneeded

I'm not sure why your setup is not friendly for the Mi Box, but if you have $800+ for four Shields, than why not go for the higher specs. The Mi Box is more mid range for those who want better than the Religious Ad Box (Roku) and not focused primarily on Prime (Fire TV), but don't want to spend the cash for shield.

As for the 7.0 update, it's only been out for about 3 months, so should see update soon. That last one was a bug fix update.

My only issue with the Mi Box is actually a Google issue. I wish Google got rid of the idiotic infinite scrolling row and allow for customization, like new backgrounds. AndoidTV UI looks/feels like a version 1.0.

Bodycount9

Two Mi Box's here and both perform great. No issues with PS Vue or sports or Netflix. No dropped frames. No issues with Plex (that wasn't Plex's fault).

Overall I love these things. Nice and cheap and they just work. I don't play games on them though. I have an Xbox One S for that.

fervidfly

mi box has worked well for me with one exception PLEX, movies play in quasi fast forward with audio issues.

Hopefully will fix soon

lonaysta

Can I buy a MiBox remote from you? all other replacements that I can buy online are for the china version, without proper voice button.

slimym

I am in the same boat but for sightly different reasons... No HDR Netflix, Plex app is awful, HD audio passthrough still buggy for me, no Amazon support, HBO Go crashes. I'm glad to hear the latest update has helped many users but I'm still not there.

Usty

Mine was working pretty great, but now the latest update from last week seems to have caused me to get DRM errors like the one this guy is having http://en.miui.com/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=475715&highlight=showtime on HBO Now and Showtime Anytime.

Convincing the wife to move away from cable was hard enough without issues - luckily PSVue is running well enough on this thing - that I haven't heard too much about it yet, but I have to look to head off issues before they continue. This may be going back to WalMart while I spend a little extra to pick up an Amazon Fire TV box.

(I'd love another Shield, but eating all of my cord-cutting savings on 2 boxes would not be the best move.)

AgentZeroGA

I usually only stream sports so the Mi Box would be a bad idea?

yimjh

Does anyone else have voice recognition issues using the remote? Normally Google can parse my voice commands very well (phone, google home), but trying to use the voice search on the mi box was like pulling teeth, and I ended up returning the box 1 week after I bought it. This was back in oct/nov after the launch update, but before the recent one.

Sbonhomme

I'm having the same issues which watch sports and news especially. I've compared the picture and playback quality with the Chromecast when using PlayStation Vue and the quality on the mibox sucks. The picture is more smooth and chrisp on the Chromecast. Xiaomi needs to stop stalling and seriously do something about this product.

l3rian

AirTV > Mi Box