Mi TV 4A: Screen size and resolution India’s television market is in the process of a much-needed reform. The entire trend seems to be shifting more towards smart, advanced features that weren’t possible to think of some 5 years ago. And above everything else, affordability is bound to a play a key role sooner or later when it comes to mass acceptance. Enter Xiaomi’s latest Mi TV 4A. Within three weeks of their debut in India’s television market with Mi TV 4, Xiaomi launched a new series called Mi TV 4A in two screen sizes: 32-inch and 43-inch. For starters, Mi TV 4A series was first unveiled in China last year, featuring a variety of screen sizes. Some of the bigger models over there even have AI-based speech recognition to offer. Isn’t that great? We can’t deny the possibility of Xiaomi showing some love and magic of such advanced features here in India as well in the near future. But before that happens, you may want to know about Xiaomi’s most recent additions. Screen size and resolution First things first, Xiaomi Mi TV 4A has two models: 32-inch and 43-inch. Previously, folks at Xiaomi India announced the company's first ever Mi TV4 in India, featuring a bigger 55-inch screen size. Hence, it seems like Xiaomi wants to establish a presence across all screen sizes. But since we are talking about Mi TV 4A in this article, let’s see what they are all about. One of the basic models of Xiaomi Mi TV 4A has a 32-inch LED screen featuring HD resolution of 1366 x 768. Meanwhile, the 43-inch variant has a Full HD resolution of 1920 x 1080. Both the models have a refresh rate of 60Hz and a typical response time of 6.5ms. So these wouldn't be bad options for gaming either, but that's something we can assess only after we put them to test. The claimed viewing angles stand at 178 degrees. All we can say for now is they are standard options one can find while buying a new TV. Are they smart? Yes, they certainly are, both of them. Xiaomi Mi TV 4A has got everything it requires to be called smart i.e., connecting to the internet, streaming videos, running apps and playing games too. To elaborate more on that, let’s talk about some of the popular streaming sticks, set-top boxes and home theatre system that we often look up to these days. And with the advent of video-on-demand streaming platforms like Netflix, Hotstar and Amazon Prime Video, need for streaming movies on the big screen have increased exponentially over the last couple of years. Nowadays, we have so many options to choose from such as Apple TV, Google Chromecast and Amazon Fire Stick that turns our standard TV into a smart TV. These TVs already come with apps for some of those services preinstalled and an option to add more in the future. They also give you an option to mirror content from your smartphone on the TVs. What is PatchWall? PatchWall is Xiaomi’s own content aggregation platform, which is based on Android. And guess what? You can sideload any of your favourite app or game and witness some magic unfold on the big screen. However, we are still waiting to try some of its features ourselves. PatchWall offers a whole bunch of multimedia content, stream your favourite movies with some of the built-in apps like Hungama, Voot and Sony LIV. And we are told that Hotstar might soon mark its presence on PatchWall as well. You get a Mi TV remote for navigation, and in some cases, playing games. But we are not too sure how effective that will be and we hope it supports wired/wireless controllers just for gaming. But PatchWall, at the end of the day, is not limited to playing games. You can run apps that you would normally do on a smartphone, and it’s really important to cut down on the dependency of a smartphone to some extent for streaming content. PatchWall has 15 content partners across 12 Indic languages. What that means is there is a huge library of video content across different video-on-demand providers. But reports suggest Netflix doesn’t support PatchWall just yet. What’s more, it also connects to DTH set-top boxes and streaming devices and easily switches to any channel you want. Hardware and connectivity options Both the models of Xiaomi Mi TV 4A are powered by a 64-bit Amlogic Cortex A53 quad-core chip clocked at 1.5GHz as well as a Mali-450 MP3 GPU for graphics. In addition, both of them have 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage. For audio, there are two speakers with total 20W power. In terms of connectivity, Mi TV 4A 32-inch has 3 HDMI ports, 2 USB ports, an Ethernet port, AV ports, 3.5mm headphone out and support for single-band Wi-Fi. Meanwhile, a 43-inch model, on the other hand, features has 3 HDMI ports and Wi-Fi support, in addition to 3 USB ports, S/PDIF port, an Ethernet port, AV ports and 3.5mm headphone out. Mi TV 4A supports a couple of added accessories that are necessary i.e. Wall Mount and Mi IR Cable Set-top box (STB) Controller. Price, warranty and availability Xiaomi Mi TV 4A 32-inch with 1366 x 768 screen resolution costs Rs 13,999 whereas a 43-inch model with 1920 x 1080 (Full HD) resolution is priced at Rs 22,999. These prices are highly competitive for Smart TVs in their respective size class. The sale of a 32-inch model starts March 13, 2018. Meanwhile, a bigger 43-inch model goes on sale starting March 16, 2018. The sale takes place on both Mi.com and Flipkart. Xiaomi’s previously announced Mi TV 4 with 55-inch with 4K resolution will also go on sale on March 13, 2018 for Rs 39,999. As for warranty, Xiaomi has made it clear on their official website the main product itself which includes TV / Remote / Mi IR Cable has a 1-year warranty. All other parts such as main board, power board, IR PCB, LVDS cable and speakers also carry a 1-year warranty.
