All About TV Box Contents

Xiaomi's MiBox

1. The Differences between MiBox 4K and MiBox Mini

There are two version of MiBox, the MiBox 4K which has a USB Port, and the MiBox Mini, which doesn't have one. The following graphic gives the direct comparison:

The following explanations apply to MiBox 4K, MiBox mini, MiTVs and the Mi TV Bar, which are all using the TV version of MIUI OS.

2. Licensed Contents comes with Xiaomi

All versions of MiUI for MiBox 4K, MiBox Mini, MiTV and TV Bar (collectively call Xiaomi TV devices here) come with just the licensed contents provided by their China Content providers, iCNTV and GiTV. These contents are only accessible from within China, i.e. you need a China IP address to access. If you use the Xiaomi TV devices outside of China, e.g. Malaysia, these contents will be Geo-blocked, i.e. you cannot access with a non-China IP addresses.

You can't access these contents unless you have a China VPN service to bypass the Geo-block. With the China VPN service, once activated, your Xiaomi TV devices will be assign a China IP address by the VPN servers, establish a tunnel, and enable both GiTV and iCNTV servers to grant you access to their contents.

 MiBox Mini's default launcher program, which will launch into the above GiTV interface

 MiBox 4K's default launcher program, which will launch into the above iCNTV interface

3. Limitations with most TV Box, MiBox, and similarly the MiTV

The following are the few limitations with an original sealed-pack MiBox, or a new MiTV, fresh from China without any modifications.

a) Limited Contents

Both Boxes, and MiTV, come with Xiaomi's own App store, which provide very limited Apps, to make matter worse, if you go through a firmware updates, the latest MIUI firmware will totally removed remote installation of third party apps. Basically the original MiBox is just a plain Android TV Box with limited contents.

b) Limited Storage Space

To install third party apps, you'll need to install jailbreak App Stores that enabled you to remotely install any third party apps, as well as apps that are not officially available on most official app stores.

Both versions of MiBox comes with 4GB Flash Internal storage, but after the Android OS and some system reserved space, only around 1.7 GB is available for you to install other new apps. If you are keen on all kinds of new apps, there may not be enough storage for you.

MiTV and TV Bar comes with 8G of internal storage.

At the same time, if you do install some of the Apps that requires local cache and streaming buffers, e.g. Kodi, you may soon be running out of storage, as these local buffer/cache may be as big as a few hundred MBytes, after watching a full length movie.

c) Language Interface

All Xiaomi TV devices comes default in Chinese User Interface (UI) only, and if you do not read Chinese, you will not be able to use the box, as all interface are in Chinese. You'll need special tool to switch to English UI. You will not be able to do it on your own if you are buying a sealed-pack, as Xiaomi had removed all the language setting options;

d) Installation of Third Party Apps

In the latest MIUI firmware upgrades, Xiaomi had also remove the remote installation of App options, which was previously available. With this, you'll not be able to install third party apps on the MiBox mini, as it does not come with any USB port; as for MiBox 4K, MiTV and TV bar, you can still do app installation through the USB port, through a USB thumb drive.

4. What is Jailbreak Service?

"Jailbreak" generally means to enable you to install third party apps that are normally not found on the official App Store, usually due to the "illegal" status of these apps, as most of them provide contents that will unlikely be approved by the official App Store due to copyrights infringements.

Since buying a Xiaomi TV devices will have limitations as described above, you will need something we collectively called "Jailbreak Services" to enable your MiBox to have apps that can stream more interesting contents than those provided by the original box.

Some of the common "Jailbreak Services" will include the following:

a) Installation of Third Party App Stores

Since the official App Store do not provide the necessary sources for "interesting" apps, usually alternative third App Stores will be installed, where there are lots of new Jailbreak apps can be found and installed;

b) Installation of Third Party Jailbreak Apps

If you do not have VPN services, you will not be able to access contents from the iCNTV and GITV provided by Xiaomi, due to territory rights restrictions. 

However, there are lots of third party jailbreak apps that will have quite similar contents as those provided by iCNTV and GITV apps licensed for Xiaomi.

There are also jailbreak apps that are not even found on the third party app store, as they will likely be taken down as well by the store owner. Most of these apps can be found on underground forum and usergroups, and they usually provides free movies, dramas, variety shows from HK, China, Taiwan and Korea etc

On top of that, the popular Kodi also provides lots of Video Add-ons from various private repositories, these Add-on provides English sports, movies, Dramas and Live TV Channels from around the world.

c) Enable Remote Installation of Apps

If you purchase a sealed-pack box, you will not be able to enable the remote installation, there are third party tools that can enable remote App installation functions;

d) Trial license for VPN Services - See below

e) Trial viewing for IPTV services - See below

f) Language Interface tools - Third party tools that can enable English UI

5) Free Contents 

Basically, there are 4 major categories of online streamed contents that are free:

a) Archived Chinese contents, movies, dramas and variety shows from China, HK and Taiwan, Korea, all streaming on demand; these are provided by most of the Jailbreak apps from China;

b) English movies - available from individual apps like Showtime. Popcorn etc;

c) Live Asian TV channels - Most China Live TV channels are free, however, if you are looking for live HK, Taiwan and western TV channels, they are subscription based, you can installed some of these IPTV apps which offer 2-7 days of trial viewing, after which you'll need to subscribe with the respective vendors;

There may be a few apps that offer live TV channels, but mostly are cloned sources ripped from other IPTV services and they generally ceased streaming after a week or two, there are no free lunch for Live TV channels;

d) English movies, sports, TV series, Live English TVs - all through Kodi's Video Plug-ins

All the above are free, and the streaming quality will depends on the hosting countries and servers, as these are jailbreak apps, we cannot guarantee they will always operate, as they can be raid by their respective hosting countries, capped by ISPs, or the app developer /owner may quit providing free service anytime.

6) Paid IPTV Channels

These are subscription based, ranging from RM200 - 350, depending on thet kind of contents you are after, the popular one are -

i) 180 channels from HK, Taiwan, China, US/UK (CNN, BBC, Sports, etc) for an annual fee of RM200

ii) 300 channels from HK, Taiwan, China, US/UK, Malaysian Satellite (40 channels), Spore, Indian, Thai etc - for an annual fee of RM350

You can install trial versions of IPTV Apps, which give 2-3 days trial viewing period, some requires you to provide you TV Box’s Mac / ID Code to activate, you can sign up for subscriptions with the respective vendors, if you need these live TV channels;

Most of these live TV channels are provided by vendors in China, and they are usually paid through China's payment system e.g. Alipay etc, 

7) China VPN Service

As the default GITV and iCNTV app coming by default with the MiBox had been geo-blocked by IP, you cannot access them outside of China, certain contents from China (e.g. Youku and iQiyi) provided by the jailbreak apps may also be Geo-IP-blocked, or capped by the local ISPs, you will need to have China VPN to have a smooth access to these contents.

There are free trial version of a China VPN service, which you can install and access these Geo-IP-blocked contents after activating the VPN services. You can compare the speed with and without the VPN access during this trial period. After the free trial period, you can decide whether you need to sign up for the VPN subscriptions.

8) What kind of Bandwidth is required to stream online Contents?

Again it depends on what kind of contents you are trying to stream and what kind of bandwidth does the hosting servers have.

a) Hosted Content servers

Most video contents are hosted on servers located everywhere, for personal and pirated contents, they are likely hosted on free services which usually have very small bandwidth and traffic are likely capped when their assigned quotas had exceeded, or more than the allocated concurrent users connected allowed had exceeded.

If you are subscribing to paid services, either legal or illegal, they are likely hosted on bigger servers, with bigger bandwidth purchased by the service provider, and able to handled hundreds or thousands of user connections.


b) Your Bandwidth

There are different resolutions of video contents, from the lowly rated 240p to 480p generally called SD (Standard Definition), to 720p or 1,080p HD (High Definition) or 1,440p and beyond like the new 4K video.

SD contents will require a minimal 4mbps line, whereas the HD contents at least a 10mbps line, or at least 30-100mbps for the 4K contents.

Streaming contents is similar to watching Youtube videos on your PC or laptop, except they are being displayed on the TV, instead of Tablet or PC monitor. Most streaming contents are likely a TV series episode, a movie, or a live sports event, which generally is at least an hour or more duration, just ask yourself how is your streaming experience if you are streaming a hour HD Youtube video on your network. If it lags, then your network is not up to par.

Also it will depends on whether there are any other members on the same network doing downloading, watching youtube, or any peer-to-peer traffic.

If you are having 3 persons doing the same thing on the same network, you bandwidth is down to only a third.


c) Contents restrictions and ISP Capping

As online streaming become mainstream, most local ISPs had also started capping some video sources, by restricting the bandwidth for certain subscription groups, or overall traffic coming into their network.