Xiaomi Mi Box 3 audio & video playback (freezing) issues after recent Android 9.0 TV update come to light

Xiaomi released the Mi Box 3 (MDZ-16-AB) back in 2016. At the time of launch, the set-top box was powered by Android Marshmallow, but it has since been upgraded to Android 9.0 TV.

The latest Android TV upgrade arrived in late September 2020 after a series of beta testing, tagging along some new features and optimizations to the aging STB.

Xiaomi also bumped the security patch level to July 2020, which happened to be an older version at the time of rolling out the said Android TV OS.

On the brighter side, a newer version was released late last month, tagging along October patch as well as some bug fixes and optimizations. Below is a summary of the changelog:

Supporting peel Mi remote which helps you control your Mi Box from your smartphone.

As noted from the changelog above, no much was mentioned. But looking at the 677MB file size of the OTA, one would imagine there’s more to the update than just support for peel Mi remote.

Indeed, as per the many reports doing rounds, it appears that build 3175 has brought more damage than good to the Mi Box 3.

So I just updated my Mi Box and Mi Box S the other day and now I’m having issues losing audio entirely when I put my box on standby. When I go back to my box and hit the power button to wake it up, all audio is muted. The controller audio control works and reflects the volume is turned all the way up, but everything reflects that their is no audio. The home screen, Netflix, Kodi, YouTube, not a single app will work until I restart the box. Anyone else having this issue, and have a possible fix?
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Another mishap with regards to update, my mi box 3 received an update 3 days back, with October sec patch but it as a terrible bug where in the audio gets muted after resuming from standby everytime, only a restart solves it. Kindly release a fix soon.
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Apparently, affected Mi Box 3 users say a recent Android 9.0 TV update broke audio and video playback on the device. This issue affects multiple apps that include YouTube and Netflix.

In fact, it is possible that other Mi Box units are also affected by these or related issues, at least as per some reports from various quotas.

Strange enough is that the Mi Box 3 only struggles to play audio or video soon after coming back from sleep. So far, affected users have found that a reboot solves the problem, but only temporarily.

Others have found that rolling back to the older Android Oreo permanently addresses these issues, but of course, it is less than ideal to go back to an older OS just so as to fix a problem in a newer version.

If anything, we expect that Xiaomi will soon push a bug-fixing update to address the audio and video playback issues on the Mi Box 3.

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