Fix Youtube app on Xiaomi Mi Box S
Well, this is not the usual post I do yet incredibly enough I have not found a real solution or even hint to the problem I had, so let’s hope this helps you.
What is the problem?
I recently bought a Xiaomi Mi Box S which is a little tiny box that really works much much better than any Smart TV that I have owned before. In the same category as Amazon FireTV, Google Chromecast, Roku, and so on, this box was cheaper and easier to get here in Peru. I had to buy it because my LG TV had a very crappy internet connectivity: Ethernet was on and off for months. Ok with Netflix, but dreadful with Disney+ and HBO GO (hope any dev from there reach this article, you have to improve your buffering!), so when I tried to decide to go to WiFi, it appears that LG Wifi card got broken at some point (which seems to be a very common problem for LG tvs).
Back to my point, this box has an Android TV OS which works very well in general. Yet, today we tried to watch a YouTube video, and it just didn’t work. We were able to use the entire app (search, navigation, etc), except for the playback. You entered into a video, and it got stopped right at 0:00. When I advanced to another timeframe e.g. 01:44, the video also stopped right there.
What was my solution?
Well so I researched a bit on the internet and found many like me that found that their YouTube app in SmartTvs or in other topboxes also stopped working.
The typical solution was to:
- Erase app data
- Erase app cache
- Uninstall updates (to leave the app as it came from the factory)
I did all three, and it still did not work. So one thing that I noticed was that indeed the visual behavior of the app seemed like it was unable to playback the video.
So I tried one thing: I went to my box configuration and I remember I saw a setting category called Screen. And within this category, there was an option to change the resolution playback which was set to be 4k60hz. I changed it to 1080p60hz.
Once I configured this, I forced to stop the YouTube app, and I opened it again, and it worked! :) BUT not so quick, sound was out :(.
I moved back to 4k60hz and repeated the operation (forced stop, and opened the app), and at least now the app does playback the videos but still without sound.
So, as always, the mother of all solutions, I unplugged the topbox from the wall, waited some seconds, and plugged it in again.
And now it indeed worked!
PS: It could be the restart of the topbox that did it, or perhaps both steps did it. I don’t know right now. But at least you now have one solution that can make it work.
I’d be glad if you could write a comment saying if this worked out or not.
Happy streaming!
