[jacanuck]

 Exactly I have no desire to play ripped blue-ray (which is ilegal) content and I have no audio system, I have a TCL 4k tv and I only use it to watch streaming services and the legal video addons for that I have had no problems. wrxtasy advice has been always invaluable. To be clear about the blue ray ripping
"The moment you crack DRM (Digital Rights Managemnt) to rip the DVD or Blue-ray, you've violated Title I of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. 17 U.S.C. 1201 prohibits circumvention of DRM . . . Some courts have tried to leaven this rather harsh rule, but most have not. While it's typically hard to detect small-scale circumvention, the question is whether bypassing DRM is legal. The statute sets up some minor exceptions, but our ripper doesn't fall into any of them. So, the moment a studio protects the DVD with DRM, it gains both a technical and a legal advantage—ripping is almost certainly unlawful."  

I'm not sure I understand what your desire to consume legal content has to do with the technical deficiency of the Mi Box S (and upcoming changes to similarly neuter the Mi Box).

There are many legitimate sources of content with high resolution audio.  Atmos/3D sound is provided by Netflix via Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA audio (one example only).

I applaud your strict following of the "Digital Millennium Copyright Act.", but your description of such has literally added zero value to this conversation.  Do you work for Xiaomi?  Why are you shilling their product? 

Atmos by Netflix is via Dolby digital +. 

It looks like it varies by device - and that you are correct.

Regardless, this is a Kodi forum.  Kodi passes through these audio formats.  Source files with these audio formats are important - and the Mi Box S ability to pass these through is broken.

This has nothing to do with legal vs. non legal content.