Xiaomi Mi TV 4 can bring 4K TV revolution, just not a smart one
The rise of Xiaomi in India has been stupendous. Despite being only the fourth largest smartphone maker in its home market China, close to home Xiaomi has become a fan favourite. The brand recently climbed to become the biggest smartphone maker in India after it accounted for 25 per cent of sales in the last quarter of 2017, compared to 23 per cent for Samsung.
Flash forward to Valentine's Day 2018, and Xiaomi is looking to bring about a similar impact on the television market in India.
At a launch event in Delhi, the company announced the Redmi Note 5 and a surprise phone in the Redmi Note 5 Pro to maintain its hold over the budget segment in the country. However, it made a bigger announcement, one that could have a far greater impact on the position of the company in India, in the Mi TV 4.
Mi TV 4 is all about the hardware
Touted to be the thinnest in the world, the Indian version of the Mi TV 4 has a massive 55-inch display with no almost negligible frame and a thickness of 4.99mm at its thinnest point, and only 48mm at its thickest. With the form factor, the smart TV is slimmer than most smartphones out there and offers up to 4K resolution and HDR at an aggressive price of Rs 39,999.
The Mi TV 4 brings with it a design that is all glass at the front and uses metal at the back making it a sleek addition to any living room. The TV also excels when it comes to connectivity options and brings with it 3 HDMI 2.0 ports, 1 USB 2.0 port, 1 USB 3.0 port, 1 Ethernet port along with the standard AV, analog, and audio outports.
Unveiled originally at CES 2017, and available in China in three different sizes – 49, 55 and 65 inches – the 55 model for India comes with a 60Hz panel that offers a viewing angle of 178-degrees and has a response time of 8m.
Being a smart TV, it also packs specs to power it through the apps you throw at it – a 64-bit quad-core Amlogic Cortex-A53 SoC clocked up to 1.8GHz, Mali-T830 GPU, 2GB of RAM and 8GB of storage.
Xiaomi has also packed in Dolby+DTS Cinema Audio on the Mi TV 4, and two 8W speakers.
Here’s #MiTV4 for you- 4.9mm Ultra-thin- 4K HDR frameless display- 500K+ hours of content- PatchWall: Revolutionary TV experience.Priced at ₹39,999, it’ll available exclusively on @Flipkart, https://t.co/nVqFSYuXIq & Mi HomeRT this and you can win yourself a #MiTV4! pic.twitter.com/umW4NbwMHM
— Mi India (@XiaomiIndia) February 14, 2018
Redesigned OS for India
Being a smart TV, the device comes with an OS that on paper at least promises much. The custom PatchWall OS as Xiaomi calls it is based on Android and uses "deep learning AI for "making intelligent content recommendations" tailored for users. PatchWall not only promises support for myriad devices with the TV, but also promises seemless transition between the TV's smart apps, Set-to-box, and other devices connected to it.
Much of this will be brought to life, with the Mi remote that Xiaomi ships with the Mi TV 4. The Mi TV remote will interact with the PatchWall and not only handle the TV but also your DTH or any other cable set-top-box.
The PatchWall further brings with it support for as many as 12 content partners, including Hotstar and Voot.
Good but could have been better
The PatchWall further brings with it support for as many as 12 content partners, including Hotstar and Voot. In total Xiaomi claims that with its content partnerships, the Mi TV 4 brings to the users over 500,000 hours of streaming, making it the "King of Content" in the Indian smart TV segment.However, that claim only looks good on paper, a dvelving deeper into the content that the TV does not bring with it exposes its frailties.
Being 4K HDR ready, the MI TV 4 does not do it any favours by not supporting two of the biggest players in the content streaming arena – Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. The two are the only content providers in India whose catalogue includes 4K content. The TV also does not come with a native YouTube app, thus depriving its users of a chance of streaming music videos in 4K.
Thus, the only 4K content that can be watched on the TV, for now, is the one you download and play or worse, content that you watch after buying extra hardware like a 4K DTH box, Google Chromecast or a Fire TV stick.
This bottleneck, essentially makes the Mi Tv a glorified 4K HDR Tv that will most of the time be only used to watch 1080p content on it.
Can bring about a 4K TV revolution
Despite its flaws, the Mi TV 4 is a great offering from Xaomi. In a market that is finally getting used to Full HD resolutions, the Mi TV with its Rs 39,999 price tag could be a catalyst for change. The price not only makes it extremely cheaper than other premium 4K HDR TVs in the country but brings it on par with the cheapest of 1080p displays in the same size segment.
For example, VU, one of the more affordable TV brands in India, sells its 55-inch 4K TV for over Rs 50,000 in the country, while its 1080p model of the same size is currently retailing for Rs 39,999 on Flipkart.
Thus, the Mi TV 4 with its OS bottlenecks may very well not be able to change the game when it comes to bringing a smart TV revolution in the country, but it will for sure bring about a 4K TV revolution in the coming days.
Mi 3 for the smartphone industry
There's no denying that much like the Mi 3, the Mi TV 4, is not the finished article that we've come to expect from Xiaomi. Yes, it looks great, comes with some serious specs all at a brilliant price, but unlike Xiaomi's biggest hits in India – the Redmi Note 4, Mi Max 2, Mi A1 – the TV does not tick all the boxes.
The Mi TV 4 hence is very much like the Mi 3 that in 2014 came to the country and laid the foundation for a serious disruption in the smartphone market.
However, having said that, what cannot be ignored is unlike the Mi 3, Xiaomi's latest entrant has the company's established brand name, to fall back on in its initial struggles.
Add to that its great looks and the price and it is easy to see why the Mi TV 4 could have a much better run in the country. But even if it doesn't, expect Xiaomi's foray into the TV market to create more than a few ripples, and slowly, but surely change the game and most importantly push boundaries.
This may not be a Redmi Note 4 that wins Xiaomi the market, but the Mi TV 4, without a doubt is a precursor to that.
What prompted Mi TV 4
What's more impressive is that Xiaomi managed to become the biggest smartphone maker in a little under four years after it launched its first smartphone in India, the Mi 3, in July 2014. The company's flagship for the year shined on the spec sheet, and impressed with its price, but failed to rake in the money.
The reasons for that though were obvious. The Mi 3 was a good phone that came packing above-par specs at a great price, but it lacked the premium feel of the more expensive Galaxy S5, which looked and felt every bit worthy of it's Rs 51,500 price tag. But more importantly, it lacked the polished feel of rival operating systems.
However, what it did manage to do was put Xiaomi on the map as far as the Indian market went, and set the base for the success of a number of Xiaomi phones of the future – Redmi Note 4, MiA1, Mi Max 2 et al. Success that not only transformed Xiaomi's future but the future of the entire smartphone market in the country.
Soon enough, aggressive specs and even more aggressive prices became the norm for the market. Owning budget, and more interestingly Chinese phones, became cool. The transformation was tremendous.