Full Disclosure: Published a year after writing. WITHOUT EDITS.

Best TV for retirement & streaming in India

7 min readSep 6, 2019

Context and budget

We have a Sony CRT 17" from 2003. At the time, Sony was known for not needing repairs, and over the last 15 years it has lived up to that reputation. However, the picture quality is diminishing and the audio-visual entertainment industry has evolved from direct cable to DVD players, to satellite TV, to set-top boxes, to live streaming services, and smart TV content. An upgrade was long overdue.

My parents are 60 year olds. They are used to buttons on the familiar Hathway remote, are attached to our DVD player, and enjoy regional channels. We 20 somethings know that Netflix, among many other streaming services, is the future without which life is going to be difficult. Therefore, varied forward and backward compatibility would be desirable within the 20k budget. Seemed tricky.

Initial research

The Wirecutter provides, for almost all electronic devices, a detailed study of necessary considerations and thorough reviews. The problem is that sometimes their suggestions are not valid for India. There seemed six parameters for our purchase.

Size and resolution
Audio and video
Sound quality
Smart capabilities
Backward compatibility
After-sales support

Many brands and their many TVs were one click away from purchase. TLC is recommended by The Wirecutter, MiTV is immensely popular, Marq is Flipkart’s entry based on consumer behaviour on their platform, Vu is a decade old Indian-American brand, Sharp which is on offer at Reliance Digital, and among others, BPL and micromax. The higher end TVs are by Samsung, Sony and LG.

Size and resolution

Our TV viewing distance is 6–10 feet. A 32" TV is a good fit. With this viewing distance and screen-dimension, a full HD (1080p) would not be distinguishable from an HD ready TV (720p). We’re hardly into gaming. A HD ready 32" TV would work well for us.

Audio and video

Sound is based on the wattage of the speakers and the technology of the sound system. The video is based on the display technology and the calibrations. Based on many online comparisons and in-store experiments, in comparison with Marq, Thompson and BPL, Vu came closest to the sound and video performance of LG and Samsung for its price.

Future-proofing

A smart TV is a TV that can connect directly to Wi-Fi in order to access streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon. This usually means a built-in wireless module, processor, RAM and some storage. However, most of the smartness in TVs seemed half-cooked and devoid of context.

The remotes would only multiply and navigating with them would become more cumbersome. The smart TV content is not ready for an Indian audience, and many of the channels are not available over the internet. The best idea seemed to wait for one of the content platform companies like Apple or Google to get their act together in India before jumping into the smart TV pool. This would let us keep options open.

Devices like Apple TV and Chromecast come with wireless modules, computing electronics, their own remotes and subscriptions. Any processor or RAM or wireless capability in the TV itself would be unnecessary. This would bring the price down considerably as well. Therefore during my initial search, I completely filtered out smart TVs. However, I came across a product 2 years into addressing these very challenges in India.

The Mi TV, and its Patchwall OS in collaboration with Sansara’s Sensy app, maintain a list of all TV channels in India and their channel numbers for the various set-top box providers. With the help of an IR blaster that can be requested at the time of installation of the TV, one remote enables the control of the smart TV and the cable TV seamlessly. The remote is a pretty sleek 11-button device that operates over bluetooth. While doing all this, they left the Google Playstore out. However, they have allowed sideloading of apps over USB using APKs.

Mi’s TV has the desired size, the better sound and video, relevant and compelling smart capabilities at an attractive price. It also comes with 3 HDMI ports for mirroring from a computer, or faster connectivity to a set-top box, and 2 USB ports for pen drives, the IR cable and more. Very impressive.

Backward compatibility

Our Hathway set-top box comes with 3 pins. It has its own remote. This is the one my parents are familiar with. The Mi TV seems to allow either the set-top box remote or the Mi remote.

The DVD player comes with 5 pins, It has its own remote too. Until purchase, I wasn’t sure how this would work out.

It was time for user testing with my parents to test their comfort with the Mi TV remote. My mother visited the Mi store with me, and got a hang of it pretty quickly. The audio was clear and loud, and the brightness and contrast good. The interface is responsive, reasonably resolved, and understandable.

After-sales support

Finally, with processors, operating systems, and updates, TVs are not just electronic appliances. They are electronic devices, like smartphones. They are part of a larger trend where everything from cars to entire homes come with hardware as well as software. It is not a standalone product like a CRT TV. It is a network of integrated services with many potential problems. A robust and reliable after-sales service network is as important as the product.

Redmi with its hugely popular phones in india and remarkable display technology, have many services centres across India. Any problem, and help is just a phone call away.

The winning purchase

The Mi TV 4 was a clear winner. However, the TV had run out of stock offline and online, both with Mi and elsewhere. A sale opened on a Tuesday on Flipkart at noon. We bought the TV along with a 2 year extended warranty by Jeeves. Jeeves is a decade old company based in Bengaluru that handles after sales support for a variety of electronic devices and brands. Flipkart bought a majority stake in the company in 2014.

Though bought together, the delivery of the TV, the extended warranty, and the installation and demo were listed separately with separate dates on Flipkart’s orders page with separate subsidiaries involved.

Delivery and installation

On the Tuesday of purchase, the earliest delivery slot available was 5 days later, on Sunday. However on Friday, we were able to prepone the delivery to Saturday. The package was easily trackable on Flipkart and upon delivery, it was opened to check for damages by the delivery person.

Installation does not happen at the time of delivery. Once delivery is accepted by the customer from Ekart (Flipkart’s supply chain arm), the installation is handed over to Jeeves. We were informed that the installation would be done between 2–5 days after delivery. However, we were pleasantly surprised to see the installation take place the same evening as the delivery. And yes, we requested for the IR cable.

The installation was prompt, smooth and professional. Quite unlike the poor reviews about Jeeves on Flipkart. As soon as we connected the TV to the internet, it updated to the latest version of the Patchwall OS but presented some glitches. A simple system reset solved the issues. After addressing all our queries, the installation person left his phone number with us for any further assistance. He also assured that the extended warranty would be on its way over email. The warranty card is the Flipkart generated invoice also received over email.

The verdict

The absence of the high-pitched static noise from out old CRT when the TV is plugged-in is very welcome. We realised that our set-top box is not enabled for HD content. That would need to change. Reviews on the internet suggested that to use the set-top box remote with the Mi TV, the IR cable would need to be removed. I am relieved to say that that is not true. I use both remotes without a problem. To make it easier for my parents, I have set the TV to skip the Patchwall home screen and open the cable connection directly.

The TV comes with 5,00,000 hours of free cumulative content on Hotstar, Voot and other streaming services. I was excited to watch One Strange Rock on Hotstar. However, there is a distinction between regular content and premium content. To watch the premium content a Hotstar subscription would be required.

The DVD has 5 pins of which 3 are the same as that of the set-top box, and the other two are additional for sound. The first three do the job. So that is resolved.

We side-loaded Netflix. The problem is that navigating it with the remote is a no-go. Nothing scrolls or selects. The good news is that if we connect a mouse, a computer like navigation of the app is possible. It also works well connected to my macbook over HDMI to play Prime.

The interface lives up to expectations. I wish the Sensy app and the TV channels therein were easier to access, and more customisation was possible. Doing that with the 11-button remote does seem a little tricky. But I am very excited to see how this evolves into a versatile and inclusive platform for consuming content in the living rooms of india. All-in-all, a couple of days into the purchase I am a very happy customer.

True a year later as well! There’s so much potential in the OS though. I wish it was realised.