So I saw a Xiaomi Mi Box 3C which is a Chinese version of the Mi Box 3 in Aliexpress for 1/2 the price of the US version,which is VERY interesting if it's a real Android TV OS and not another Chinese Android for tablet OS. From the tutorials I saw it's easily converted to English, and I live in Lebanon so I don't need or care for US TV services, I just need the OS to be 100% made for TV
Stay far away from Xiaomi's Chinese centric devices.
MDZ-16-AB is the ONLY Xiaomi tv box that is truly intended for the international market and is outfitted with official AndroidTV O/S.
Every single Xiaomi tv box ever produced is designed, with inherent limitations dictated by the PRC government authorities, for the Chinese domestic market, with 1 exception.
These boxes suffer from a freakish variant of generic android tablet O/S which locks you into Xiaomi's Chinese ecosystem. They also lack the basic amenities like a web browser, Google Play store integration and are chock full of targeted advertising and data collecting routines, along with enough backdoors and security issues to make one shudder.
What you want to care about the device you buy, when you are not a Chinese, is if the box has Google Services built in.
Most of Android based devices sold in China do not have Google Services Platform, which means you will find it much harder to install anything.
You may be able to turn the UI to English, but trust me, you can't even imagine using the Chinese "app store".
Xiaomi has been making Mi Boxes for years. Only one of them has the Android TV operating system on it, and that's the one they released for the USA with model number MDZ-16-AB. Any other Mix Box without that model number is a made for China box that runs regular Android.
It does come with miui and not original google Android tv platform.. The original Android tv is only model mdz-16-ab..