September 2014 ~ Ask About It At Play

Thursday 18 September 2014

Xiaomi MiTV 2 - A walk through

BY Cavarii IN 4K, MiTV2, MiWiFi, Xiaomi No comments

Xiaomi stepped into the living room space when it launched their smart TV. The Mi TV 2 is extremely affordable, aligned with Xiaomi’s aim to launch devices that undercut the prices of other similar products on the market.

Read on the cost of bringing in a Mi TV2.

The size of the TV takes into consideration the size of the living rooms of young people today. The Xiaomi TV 2 is a product that caters to the needs of the younger generation. The TV uses an LG display.

The MiTV 2 is the second-generation TV set from Xiaomi. It has a 4K Ultra HD specs with a high-resolution of 3840 x 2160, the set itself is just 15.5cm thick and has a crazy slim bezel of just 6.2mm. The 49-inch Mi TV 2 weights at 12.9 KG

On the inside, it's powered by a MediaTek MStar 6A918, a 1.45GHz quad-core chip with 2GB of RAM, backed up by a Mali-450 MP4 GPU. There's 8GB of storage built in, expandable via microSD by up to 64GB.

Controlling this TV is made easy with the included Bluetooth LE remote

Xiaomi has added has added a nifty search feature for the remote control. In case you don’t find it in the room, by tapping the bottom of the TV which make the remote to beep.

The control will ‘ring’ (like a phone) when activated, while voice search can be used to find movies and TV shows.

The remote app can be installed on your Smartphone by which you can control the TV by using gestures and voice, it also reads the related information that comes from IMDB about the show that you are watching.

The 3D-capable panel is contained in a a 6.2mm aluminum bezel, and is just 15.5mm thin, so thin, in fact, that the sound system has been split out into a separate 8 Speakers sound bar + 120W subwoofer.

Both the soundbar and sub-woofer are paired via bluetooth to the TV, it can also be used with your smartphone or tablet over Bluetooth.

The software on the MiTV 2 will give you info on what you’re watching, pulled from the Internet and you can use Bluetooth gamepad controllers (not included with the TV) to play Android games on your set as well.

On the software side, it's running a customized version of Android with Xiaomi's MIUI TV interface.

The MIUI TV system supports Miracast, WiDi, Airplay, DLNA, SMB, and mirrors photos and videos directly from your phone or PC.

The menu interface is in simplified Chinese, as the only market available now is only China. When you boot up the MiTV 2, it will end up in their own launcher interface as follow:

Rooted and Jailbreak
As the interface is only available in Chinese, it will not have mass appeal to a wider buying public. However, if you rooted the MIUI OS, there are ways to tweak the unit to have interface in English.

Integrated with Xiaomi's AC Router
Xiaomi has another router product, which they called Mi WiFi, that is acting as an AC router with a built in 1TB Harddisk. It also offer Dual band Wi-Fi 802.11ac with a Broadcom dual-core 1GHz CPU, just perfect to host your movies, music and photo collections.

Read on the Xiaomi AC Router review - MiWiFi

An interesting set nonetheless, the MiTV 2 is incredibly affordable. Unfortunately for the majority of us however, we’re unlikely to see this outside of China, but we’re bringing them to you.

This is a Youtube video I found showing the initial setting up of the TV, it's in Chinese but I think it basically shows the whole unboxing experience, and the steps you'll need if you are buying one.

You can purchase the MiTV 2 from here

Here are the specs for Xiaomi's 2nd-generation Android-powered TV:
- 49" Ultra HD 4K (3840x2160) panel
- 15.5mm ultra-thin frame / 6.2mm bezel
- MStar quad-core 1.45GHz processor
- 2GB DDR3 RAM / 8GB eMMC flash
- 802.11ac 2x2 Wi-FI support 2.4GHz/5GHz dual frequency (802.11a/b/g/n), MIMO support 300Mbps
- 8-speaker soundbar + 120W subwoofer
- MIUI TV Android-based OS
- CodecSupport Dolby Digital Plus, DTS
- Bluetooth4.0
- Connectivity: 3 ports HDMI, 2 ports USB (1 x USB 2.0, 1 x USB 3.0), 1 Micro SD, 1 VGA port,
1 AV port, 1 analog TV anthena, 1 SPDIF audio, 1 Ethernet port

Thursday 11 September 2014

Buying Xiaomi's 4K TV

BY Cavarii IN 4K, MiTV2, Xiaomi No comments

About Xiaomi's MITV 2
The MiTV2 is Xiaomi's second generation of TV, It is a 49-inch 4K TV, the size of the TV takes into consideration the size of the living rooms of young people today. The Xiaomi TV 2 is a product that caters to the needs of the younger generation.

For more detail features of MiTV2 please see this Xiaomi MiTV 2 - A walk through

MiTV 2

MiTV2 is only available in China market at the time of this writing, and only come in Chinese menu and interface, with warranty covered in China only.

If you are ordering from the official Xiaomi China site, you can only buy 1 unit at a time @RMB3,999 plus a RMB150 delivery charges to any one of the 105 deliverable locations in Xiaomi China. Currently they do not ship outside of China.

If you are buying online from any China online site, for International credit cards, a 3% charge will be imposed on the charges, including the delivery charges.

Buying Xiaomi’s appoint Distributor

If sourcing from other "Xiaomi’s appointed distributors" in China, who may have stocks for bulk volume order, usually there’s a bit of mark-up on their side as their own margin.

Our Add-ons Bundles

The official Xiaomi MiTV 2 comes with the 49-inch TV, soundbar, sub-woofer, 2 pairs of 3D sunglasses, and the installation kits. However, you would eventually need to purchase additional add-ons non-bundled items - mounting kit for the TV, wireless Bluetooth Gamepad, 3 metre 1.4V HDMI cable, soft silicone protective cover for the remote control, and a 8GB USB drive for sample 4K demo videos and 3D movies.

Rooted and Jailbreak Services

Being only available in China for now, MiTV2 only comes in Chinese interface, however, if you requires English menu, you’ll need to get someone to root the Android OS, and do the necessary customisation or purchase an App that’ll do the necessary English interface for you.

Transport to Malaysia, freight, insurance plus Tax

The TV packing is 23KG and the subwoofer itself is 11KG, add on wooden crates for shipment would make up a total of almost 40KG. There are cost incurred by sea freight with wooden crate, insurance coverage and door-to-door delivery.

Malaysian custom import duty is 30% for TV and 10% for sales tax

Warranty

Most vendor bring the units in and sell it on an "AS-IS" basis, once you carry the unit out of their door, you are on your own. Groupon gave 7-days warranty.

Optional Items

It's like when buying your smartphone nowadays, you are expected to spend more on sleeve covers, screen protectors and all kinds of accessories.

If you need a truly integrated experience with the Xiaomi TV 2, you will certainly need:

a) the Menu interface to be in English (if you don;t read Chinese)

b) All the add-on bundle items like wall mount kit, Bluetooth Wireless Gamepad, HDMI cable, Cat-6 cable extension and 8G USB drive with sample 3D & 4K videos,

c) There are less than 30 4K movie titles available on Amazon site, and if you try on torrent sites, you ar elucky to find more than 2, and each true 4K movies can be around 140-160GB, however, MiTV2 can also playback 3D movies, there are a few hundred titles out there, without these contents, it's just a normal TV;

d) While you can playback you movies / music from a USB drive connecting to the TV's 2 USB ports, for long term, you'll most probably requires a Xiaomi AC router/NAS to store all your movies, music and photos, which is tightly integrated with the Mi TV2

Read our review on Xaomi AC router/NAS

e) There are Apps available on IOS/Android to control the Xiaomi AC router, speakers and manage your content;

You can purchase the MiTV 2 from here

Tuesday 9 September 2014

Xiaomi MI WiFi Wireless AC Router

BY Cavarii IN MiTV2, MiWiFi, NFC, Xiaomi 2 comments

This Xiaomi Mi Wi-Fi Wireless Router is a media server and is powered by a Broadcom dual core A9 processor clocking at 1 GHz, coupled with 256 MB of DDR3 RAM and also has 1 TB of hard drive for storage. This device acts as a Smart home centre that controls home appliances, TV’s, Audio devices, AC’s, IP cameras, lights etc.

The Xiaomi Router is a small (smaller than you are imagining) black box with dual internal antennas and a 1TB hard drive. The small black package packs dual band Wifi 802.11ac, a Broadcom dual-core processor, and runs an Openwrt operating system.

Top with dual-band AC Smart router and built-in with a large 1TB hard drive, it is 3 times faster! and support the latest 802.11ac protocol,

It is equipped with a Broadcom dual-core CPU and Micron / Samsung 256 MB large memory, with dual band router with highest data transfer rate of up to 1167 Mbps that can support stable high-speed downloads, document literacy, pre-loaded, network acceleration, as well as a wealth of plug-in applications.

More and more mobile devices at home / SOHO
You'll now need a small home server to download movie and keep photo, with the large built-in 1TB HDD / Remote Access Photos Video / offline download / automatic backup Download 1000 Full HD movies with Xiaomi routers, store 40000 lossless music, or put 100,000 RAW format photo album to set up your server.

Now, your Xiaomi mobile phones, computers, Pad & television can use this 1TB large hard drive, ready to back up or access, remote access, and can be viewed on your mobile device.

Super-wall model, independent external signal amplifier
With true dual-band 2 x 2 antenna AC for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz signal transmission respectively, and beam forming smart antenna and independent signal amplifier.

The Beamforming techniques can be adopted in accordance with the position of the terminal equipment, intelligent signal to follow. Independent external power amplifiers, effectively strengthen the signal strength and penetration. Equipped with adjustable energy-saving, standard, through-wall three modes

Put your home into pocket is no longer a future technology
In the future, with Xiaomi routers and intelligent home control center; you can make home air conditioning, television, and even lights intelligent and customize intelligent scene according to their habits.

Only professional friends can help set the router?

When setting up your Xiaomi Router you will be asked to visit the MiWifi.com website where you can download an application. The app is available for Android, IOS, Mac, Windows and other operating systems, and makes set up a breeze (although it is mostly in Chinese).

The Router app allows to you check your storage, view files, see who and what is connected to your WIFI, and even allows you to download a few plugins to download video, and other useful features.

Easy Backup
One of those great plugins is a way to connect your Mi Router to your Mac’s Time Machine backup so that scheduled back ups are saved to the 1TB of memory in the little black box. You can do this with pretty much any storage solution, but the easy of set up on the Xiaomi Router makes it a really great feature even for the less technically minded.

MiWiFi with NFC
The Xiaomi Mi Router also comes with NFC ( Near Field Communication. This is quite an interesting decision by XIaomi, since they decided not to include NFC on their new Xiaomi Mi4.

NFC, is a short range wireless link which uses very little power. It evolved from Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Small amounts of data can be easily transferred from two devices close to each other, without draining the battery. Unlike with Bluetooth the devices are not synced and no battery is charged.

The Xiaomi MI Router connects devices automatically via NFC, that means you connect to your WIFI just by tapping it with your NFC smartphone. That is a very useful feature on a router, so you don't have to give your WIFI password to all your friends and guests.

Xiaomi Router – Connect from anywhere in the world

You can install the app to your phone, tablet and Mac, and also connected your router to your Xiaomi account. This allows you to login to your router even if you are not connected to your own WIFI network. If you're out and about you can simply login over a 3G, LTE or another WIFI signal using your Xiaomi account credentials, check details, move files and make back ups. Even when you're in another country you can have quick access to your storage.

The applications are what Xiaomi Router can differentiate from its peers. Currently five are available. The Quick Connection to Router is for all the Xiaomi devices, smartphones, smart TV, set-top box and future products, to connect to the WiFi router with one click on the Permission button on those devices. As the device supports DLNA, you can get and play media content in the hard drive on other Xiaomi devices.

Xunlei Download is the only third-party service of the five applications. Users can command the router to begin downloading a video when you’re heading home and play it right away upon arrival. Xiaomi Router users will be able to enjoy Xunlei premium download services for one year.

Another application is Cloud-based backup service that is provided by Kingsoft Cloud. No wonder it’s Kingsoft, not another better-known name like Aliyun or Tencent’s, for Lei Jun, CEO of Xiaomi, is still the chairman of the company.

The router, of course, includes Xiaomi App Store. The last of the five is quick access to to Apple devices.

What’s more interesting with Xiaomi Router is it runs LAMP stack, which means third-party developers can install WordPress sites or other applications.

The device supports the remote app with the Android and iOS devices. This device will be giving 2x faster web browsing speeds with the Sogou browser engine. You can download video content and movies remotely with the pre-loaded Xunlei.

The Wireless Router has user programmable smart rules for handling and controlling all the home appliances easily. The device will be featuring OpenWRT – based Operating system with updates rolling out weekly for it. The device has an open plug architecture and SDK so we can expect its developers to come out with many new use cases.

The existing users of Xiaomi phones, and other Xiaomi devices, have more reasons to buy such a router. For them, as all of their Xiaomi devices share the same app platform, the addition of a smart router makes it easier to have different devices to communicate and access media content.

Monday 8 September 2014

Using XBMC

BY Cavarii IN MiTV2, Navi-X, XBMC 1 comment

XBMC is a software media player and entertainment hub that can be installed on Linux, OSX, Windows, iOS, and Android, featuring a 10-foot user interface for use with televisions and remote controls. It allows users to play and view most videos, music, podcasts, and other digital media files from local and network storage media and the internet.

Add-Ons
The real power of XBMC comes from the vast selection of user created Add-ons that are available though many piblic repositories. There are Add-Ons for popular web services, applications and scripts.

Starting XBMC
Once you had started the XBMC app, you can select Video > Add-on, after which you will see a list of popular video-add-ons installed e.g. 1Channel, cliq, mash-up, Navi-x, sportsdevil and YIFY movies.

One of the popular Video Add-on is Navi-X.

Navi-X - Media Browser Addon for XBMC.

Navi-X is the oldest and most trusted add-on for XBMC, used by millions of people worldwide. You'll find everything from live television to your favourite movies and television shows, easily accessible.

Once you had clicked on the "Navi-X" video add-on, you can click on the "Navi-Xtreme Portal" abd access "most visited list in the past 24 hours"

If you like sports, you can access via "Sports TV HD", where you'll be able to select all live streams from around the world, if you like EPL, browse to the end of the list for UK Sky Sports;

If you like movies, select "YIFY Movies".

see how to operate Navi-X from video below

Where to get more Repository?
SuperRepo.org is worlds largest XBMC addon repository containing more than 1.300 addons! It offers easy access to XBMC best addons. Supercharge your free media player and/or home media server now!

Wednesday 3 September 2014

iCNTV on Xiaomi TV Box and MiTV 2

BY Cavarii IN iCNTV, MiTV2, Xiaomi 2 comments

About iCNTV

iCNTV is the first internet television platform approved by China's State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT).

iCNTV has formed a partnership with Xiaomi, maker of devices that allows people to put streamed Internet video content on their TVs. The deal will allow Xiaomi to stream some of the state broadcaster's popular content on the platform of iCNTV. It provides licensed contents to both Xiaomi's TV Box and their Mi TV.

Since their content are only licensed for distribution for Xiaomi devices within China, any access to their content from IP outside China will be blocked.

When your Xiaomi TV Box or MiTV is connected to Internet, it will first try to establish a session with iCNTV servers, to verify from where you are access their content; if you are access from outside China, you will like get "'unable to connect to iCNTV' (无法连接到iCNTV认证服务器) message, barring you from access their content.

To overcome this, you can use some VPN service from China, which basically establish a connection session to the VPN servers in China, and assign you a "Chinese IP", so that you can bypass the IP verification required by iCNTV.

You can try using some VPN services from China.

We can access the iCNTV content using the VPN on Xiaomi's MiTV 2. However, for Xiaomi TV Box 2 and 4K version, you will need to start the the VPN service and stay in the app for 5 minutes, after that press back button from remote control and check to see if the verification error still there or not. if no more verification error, then you have successfully bypassed the iCNTV verification, if still have error, then you may need to stay in VPN app 10 minutes.

iCNTV's Launcher App
When you first boot up the Xiaomi TV Box, the default iCNTV launcher app will first appear, and this launcher app will basically control where and what you can access with the TV Box, you can only use their approved contents licensed to Xiaomi from iCNTV, access to Xiaomi's own App Store, and can only install Apps from this store, no other third party apps can be installed to the TV Box, everything is controlled within Xiaomi's own ecosystems.

Since everything is controlled within iCNTV's launcher program, and if we cannot even get iCNTV launcher app to verify against their server if access from outside China, this will basically make the TV Box useless, apart from streaming movies from your own USB drives.

Why you cannot view content on your XiaoMi TV Box?
If you have purchased the Xiaomi TV Box (both Generation 2 & 4K version) from China or any vendor on an "AS-IS" basis, i.e. shipping directly unopened, it will only be having the iCNTV launcher App installed, but iCNTV cannot be used outside of China, as they are imposing Geo-blocking for IPs outside of China.

ABOUT JAILBREAK & ENHANCING SERVICE

What is this Jailbreak and Enhancing Service?
To jailbreak , we simply install another third party Launcher App, so that upon booting up, you will have a choice to choose between the existing iCNTV Launcher App OR the new third party Launcher App.

If you access through the third party Launcher App, you can install other third party Apps, and these apps can be access directly within the new Launcher App.

The “enhancing service” is the installation of a separate launcher program, and another 20 popular IPTV apps currently available on the Market. With the new launcher app, there is no need to use iCNTV anymore, as we will install other third party apps that offer a lot more content.

What does the Launcher Program do?
With this new launcher program, you can select all the third party Apps, including access to a whole lot of Apps in the new Marketplace, where you can pick and choose to install the apps of your choice.

What Can I watch after the Jailbreak and Enhancing service?
Most of the popular China Apps like Togic, iQIYI, HDPfans, VST, TV 2.0, 兔子视频, 布丁电視, 电视直播 and others will be installed so you can watch movies, TV shows, Dramas, and around 600+ Live China TV channels.

Please Note : The apps are third party apps, the speed of streaming and availability of content will be subjected to change, we cannot guarantee all movies or channels will always be available.
For TVB, you can watch it through Cloudtv, they have free member access and subscription service. Paid subscription will have fast connection and higher quality streaming.
You can also install XBMC, which offer a host of western contents like live sports, US TV Shows etc, together with some of the popular repositories.

What do I need to watch these online content?
To watch online streaming Videos, you must have a decent and fast Internet connection. Preferably 4MB and above. Please consider this factor before you make a purchase a TV Box.

Can the Language Interface be change to English?
Xiaomi TV Box originally came in Chinese interface, however, after the Jailbreak and new launcher, you can change the interface to English, so that the Android menu will now be in English. However, as most Apps are written in Chinese, once you run these Apps, the App interface is still in Chinese.