Canadian looking for a streaming box

by SkittleFingers

Hi all, I need help deciding on a streaming box. All I use is Kodi, Netflix is a bonus. I'm thinking between the new Shield or the Mi box. Issue is, Mi box isnt available in Canada so I'd have to jump some hoops to get. The Shield seems great but cost seems a little high for what I need it for. I do want a really good Android tv experience as well, which I know the Shield has, not sure about Mi Box. Is it worth jumping hoops for the Mi and save some money or fork over the cash for a Shield? Thanks in advance.

igotthisone

The MiBox is basically a piece of junk. I've had it since the beginning and have had nothing but problems. If you like to use Kodi, especially to access say a home cloud for streaming, you can forget about getting your audio and video in sync. Sometimes it will be, but mostly it won't. Also you may or may not get Netflix working, there's really no way to predict it. And they have zero support available--if something's wrong your only option is to return it. So I intend to return mine to walmart and get a Shield. It's overkill for me too, but at least it will work and will be supported.

lordjustice17

I currently use a Nexus Player that I found used for a good price. It does the trick for me, although does have some minor performance issues. I use Kodi (SPMC), Live Channels, Netflix, Youtube, etc regularly and have no major issues. Note that Kodi pulls it's video from a backend server I have.

My plan is to upgrade to a Shield eventually.

Ausernameneeded

No issues at all with the Mi Box. Good quality, quick and Kodi works great on it (or SPMC).

I think it just comes down to what you need and money. If you need/want mobile games on your TV, Shield is better, but if you need just streaming, both are about the same but with big difference in price.

Gangstastick

Dude, there are only 2 android TV boxes worth commenting on. The shield and the Mi box, if all you do is watch kodi and stuff and would like to use the device as a central media/entertainment hub but don't wish to break the bank, then go for the Mi box, i stay in mississauga and i got mine from walmart.com, shipped to a US address which i got though crossborderpickups, that's the best deal you can get, even better than ebay. look them up. however, if the new shield had been available back in November when i got the mi box, i probably would have shelled out the extra coins for it. i like the fact that Nvidia's shield is rootable and appears to have better support and development both from the manufacturers and also from the community. the Mi box with its locked bootloader is a drag. but it does what it does pretty well, and i am glad i got it

hewsdaddy

Ottawa native here. In the household of a 1st gen Fire TV, Fire TV Stick and MiBox. i switched to the mi box recently (ie. DAYS before the announcement of Prime Video stuff coming to canada)

Pretty content with all 3. mostly commenting to come back to the thread and see what everyone else says.

p1rke

I have the MiBox, had to ask a friend to buy it while in the States. For the price, it's great.

I run IPTV, NBA Gametime and Plex on it. Have no issues at all except that the VPN crashes for some reason.

d_stealthy

I'm from Ottawa as well I just bought a MiBox on eBay and it came out to 130 shipped to my house. Paid a little extra but whatever, Shield was too expensive as I needed it as was a Kodi device. Other budget items you can look at is raspberry Pi, odroid c2 (if only a Kodi machine for these two) or also the weTek products... You can find reviews on the different ones on Kodi hardware forums

I was using RPI for the last few years and now instead of buying the latest one I figured I'd rather pay like extra 30$ or so and have Android TV ease

Illegal_sal

Get a x96 box or something with similar specs. It runs android 6.0 with kodi and you can install iptv. I haven't had any problems with my box.

clicker666

I bought my Mi Box (mdz-16-ab) from Amazon.ca. It shipped from Richmond BC in 5 days.