To replace a Vigica C90S box that went south I decided to try out an MXIII (MX3). The MXIII is sold under umpteen different vendor brands and it would be easy to assume they are all identical, but they aren't as I ended up ordering another one for the bedroom. Since I have no plans to add any apps (I actually removed many that were pre-installed) I opted for the more common 1Gb/8Gb version. The main reasons I picked the MXIII were because it has a physical power switch and a physical reset button.
After connecting it up the first thing I did was clean as much of the bloat apps as possible then it was on to Kodi. The first one I bought came with Kodi 14.2. I uninstalled that and installed 16.1. The second one came with 15.2 installed so it too got upgraded to 16.1. Next came the launcher. Out of many alternative launchers I picked HALauncher. Easy to set up and it allowed me to create the minimalist interface I wanted. The background is a wallpaper I downloaded and the colors are custom. I then installed the Amber skin for Kodi. That allowed me to go into the settings and define the default file list format for the Video Add ons (except Exodus, which annoys me because it defaults to thumbnails no matter what you do).
So, to the meat of it, this little box works great. It detected my wi-fi and connected with no problems. I have accessed multiple sources for movies and TV shows with great results with only one or two sources having buffering issues (I'm going to start maintaining a list of those sources in order to avoid them in the future) but a change to a different source cured it in every instance.
Now, as to the pre-loaded package. I ordered the first box from Amazon and a few days later bought one from Ebay. I was a bit surprised to see some different apps and a slightly different configuation on the second box. I had mistakenly assumed these were identical generic Chinese boxes being sold by various vendors but that appears not to be the case.
One more note, if anyone goes shopping for one of these be carefull of the model ID. There is also an MXIII-G which is a totally different box.
HALauncher
After connecting it up the first thing I did was clean as much of the bloat apps as possible then it was on to Kodi. The first one I bought came with Kodi 14.2. I uninstalled that and installed 16.1. The second one came with 15.2 installed so it too got upgraded to 16.1. Next came the launcher. Out of many alternative launchers I picked HALauncher. Easy to set up and it allowed me to create the minimalist interface I wanted. The background is a wallpaper I downloaded and the colors are custom. I then installed the Amber skin for Kodi. That allowed me to go into the settings and define the default file list format for the Video Add ons (except Exodus, which annoys me because it defaults to thumbnails no matter what you do).
So, to the meat of it, this little box works great. It detected my wi-fi and connected with no problems. I have accessed multiple sources for movies and TV shows with great results with only one or two sources having buffering issues (I'm going to start maintaining a list of those sources in order to avoid them in the future) but a change to a different source cured it in every instance.
Now, as to the pre-loaded package. I ordered the first box from Amazon and a few days later bought one from Ebay. I was a bit surprised to see some different apps and a slightly different configuation on the second box. I had mistakenly assumed these were identical generic Chinese boxes being sold by various vendors but that appears not to be the case.
One more note, if anyone goes shopping for one of these be carefull of the model ID. There is also an MXIII-G which is a totally different box.
HALauncher
