SPECIAL REPORT: Is Stealing the NEW WAY of watching TV?

[Scott Greczkowski]

It was a nice bright sunny day and I decided to take my family to the Big E which our big multi state fair here in New England. The weather was perfect for a day walking around and viewing all of the great displays at the fair.

As I walked through the main gate I could see a big red DISH tent at the other end of the midway.

Since the ride was long we decided to go into the Young Building first. Since I have worked at the Big E in years past I knew of a bathroom where there wouldn’t be a mile long wait. Walked inside to go to the bathroom and was shocked at what I saw… a booth advertising “All-In-One Streaming TV Box” “No Monthly Feeds” and a person on a microphone asking why you’re paying DIRECTV to NFL Sunday Ticket when with their box you can watch each and every game in full HD each week live and for FREE?

I went and used the restroom and then came back to watch the sales pitch. They demonstrated how you could watch almost any cable or satellite channel plus showed you how you could even watch live TV from England.

Next they showed you how easy it was to watch almost any movie you wanted. The man demonstrating the system then said you heard about that new movie that came out last Friday… well we have it here and you can watch it for free.

The crowd was going nuts watching the demo and then someone shouted out that this can’t be legal. The person giving the demo didn’t stop a second and said it was all perfectly legal and pointed out that it’s so legal it even is FCC approved and showed a label on the box.

People were lining up shelling out the $299 or $399 for one of these boxes. I saw some folks walk away with two of three of them.

So what was the box? Well it was a Chinese made Android TV box. The box was pre-loaded with the latest version of KODI (formerly know as XBMC) and included with KODI was all the plugins you need to get all the free TV and movies one could want.

In seeing this I was angered because in my humble opinion there was no way this could be legal. I am smart enough to know that just because a piece of electronics has a FCC certification on the hardware it is not a license to ignore the copyrights of the TV channels and Movie companies.

I asked some questions but they wouldn’t answer, they wouldn’t tell me the name of their company or if they had a number to call if I needed help. They had zero litature on display that you could take with you. But if you love TV you would want one.

Some older people were looking at buying one and I told them they could get the software for free on the Internet and pulled up my phone and showed them, they thanked me and walked away. The guy giving the spiel said that the version I showed them has lots of Viruses in it and only their box was guaranteed to be virus free.

I decided I didn’t want to make more of a scene and took some pics and walked away. I couldn’t believe that such a major fair such at the Big E would allow such a product to be sold there.

I walked out the door and we walked around to more places. I walked to the giant DISH booth and talked to the guys running the booth. They told me they were not selling anything because of the box being sold inside. One told me they made a few sales but then a few minutes later people came back and canceled their orders and had one of these boxes in their hands. They were upset and they had a right to be. We left the DISH booth and continued to talk, as we walked towards the state building at the other end of the park we were surprised to find another booth for this box outside… as we kept working there was another one.

We then went into the Better Living Building that’s where they have all the demos for stuff you have seen on TV like the Super Shammie, Vegamatic, Super Car Wax etc… Imagine my shock as when we walked around in this building there were not one of these box booths not two of them but THREE of them in the same building. And they had big crowds around them and were selling them like hotcakes.

I noticed that different booths were selling different boxes, some booths had a dual core Android box for $299 and other booths had a a quad core Android box for $399. But all the booths were giving the same spiel, get free TV and movies for life.

I have known about XBMC / KODI for a while now and admitting used it in the past to watch live BBC and ITV from England. The Kodi program itself is not illegal, it’s the add ons that take a legal program and device and turn it into a pirates dream come true.

Now will the sales people say these boxes are plug and play, I can only wonder if they get it home and turn it on and it only has Kodi loaded and no plug ins. If this was the case then honestly they would be legally selling these boxes, however if they are selling these boxes fully loaded then they would be in violation of the law.

As I was in the better living building I stopped by the DIRECTV booth that was there, and just like the DISH tent outside it was dead in the DIRECTV booth. In talking to those in the booth trying to sell DIRECTV it was the same story no sales because of the illegal boxes being sold.

I even stopped by the Comcast XFINITY booth and same story there, it was a ghost town and no one was buying anything.

It is obvious that these boxes are causing an issue for them. In all my years I have not seen such blatant stealing of service then what I saw here at the Big E.

What if anything can these companies do? Most consumers who were there believed the boxes were legal just because they were FCC certified.

What will this due to the future of TV? I mean why anyone pay for it when you can get one of these boxes or build your own and watch TV and any more for free.

Is stealing TV what the industry is being reduced to?

As I left the fair feeling full my stomach was in a knot over what I saw here as I am not sure what can be done about this… if anything.

I ended up seeing 6 of these booths setup around the fair and it honestly shocked me what I saw. My only hope is that people who purchased one find it not as easy to use as they saw at the fair and the quality will not be as good and many of the channels might not work when they want to watch TV. If this happens then hopefully these folks figure out that free service isn’t worth the money they paid for it.

Sometimes FREE isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be. Buyer beware!

 

[Tampa8]

I can tell you most anything you want to know about Kodi, and you don't need one of their Android boxes for hundreds of dollars.

A simple $39 Fire Stick will work. There is a division on the illegality of the actual Kodi app. Amazon stopped allowing the app feeling it is illegal. But the Google Play store does have the app, in fact added recently. Problem is the app itself is very legal no question about it. And many things you can do with it are legal. But then there are services, mostly free that can't be legal for those streaming them. You can watch all the episodes of Netflix shows for instance, or a huge variety of movies including very recent ones. In many to most cases if you have the bandwidth the picture quality is very good, same as using Roku for instance. You can even get locals from NY, Miami, or LA but they are not reliable. The more well known ones from PA are reliable, not HD however unless you pay. That service is mostly legal.
With not 100% reliability you can get many of the Cable channels.

It isn't all that easy to set up, so there is where some make money by setting it up for you. But even at that you sometimes have to change services to get programming. I can envision many giving up using it after awhile.
I completely set mine up with some trial and error. I like watching BBC programs and it is easier with Kodi and very reliable than doing it on your own, though you can do it without Kodi. Is that legal either with or without Kodi, probably not, in fact no it can't be for those who are streaming it. Virtually any news channel from many many Countries are available, some not available anywhere else others more easily available.

Kodi also is a home media center and an excellent one.

 

[JUCJ85]

No thanks, I rather pay my DirecTV monthly bill, which isn't as high as some others, and know I have a legit source, and it's all Legal.

I have an Apple TV, and gave my Dad a Roku 2 so he could watch his NFL Games from my ST subscription.

Never actually heard of Kodi before, don't know what it is. My issue with this is what happens if the streams get shut down, then those who paid $299-$399 are out the money.

If I want something bad enough, I will pay for it, like season passes on iTunes, or the latest movies on iTunes, and I fully support streaming sites like Hulu and Netflix.

 

[stardust3]

The android iptv boxes are $100 give or take & are all over the internet. Showbox is biggie for android. It's unbelievable what these boxes are capable of.

This will without a doubt bring the industry to its knees. Not sure it can be stopped without some serious intervention from big brother and isp's blocking ports etc.

 

[EarDemon]

I’d be curious to see the quality and reliability. It probably sucks.

I’ve streamed and downloaded my fair share of illegal pirated content (on a POS junk computer or in a sandboxed VM), and the quality has always had a lot to be desired. Here in Buffalo, we’ve had many many years of meaningless December football where the Bills don’t sell out and are blacked out locally. The quality of the pirated streams I’d watch has always been fairly poor and the host of these streams would go down randomly and I’d have to look for other feeds.

I really don’t care about the legality of it. I’ll gladly wipe my rear end with the piece of paper that the DCMA was written on while ripping a BD and jailbreaking an iPhone, I just want my digital entertainment to have above decent quality, with high reliability and enjoy it with minimal effort. Hence why I would rather pay what is equal to a small mortgage between my cable and satellite services then pirate it. It’s generally not worth the effort to me.

 

[tdti1]

These iptv things are all over the place and are very popular, it reminds me of the pirate fta days, with hundreds if not thousands of different brands/models, same thing except all via the internet, and the capability's of these things seem to be endless.

 

[ancient]

I've been using Kodi (formerly known as XBMC) for several years now, and I've been following some of the recent developments. First of all, the Kodi developers would very much prefer that you don't use Kodi to facilitate piracy, and that if you feel that you must use it that way, that you not try to mislead people into thinking it is a piracy app.

The basic Kodi app is strictly legal. There is also an official Kodi repository where you can get addons. All of the addons in the Kodi repository are believed to be fully legal, in that they only access free and legal content that could be accessed by anyone with a web browser.

The problem is that there are a few different groups that operate their own addon repositories, and they have a heavy social media presence. If you stumble upon one of their sites before you happen upon the official Kodi site, you may well be misled into thinking they are an authorized Kodi distributor and have a legitimate Kodi repository, neither of which is true. The sites offer addons that can be used in Kodi but that are in no way authorized or supported by Kodi; in fact mere discussion of such addons in the official Kodi forums is banned. Those addons for the most part facilitate piracy in some way, usually by obtaining copyrighted material that's NOT freely available on the web (or that normally requires a paid account with a logon and password) and making it freely available. Those are the addons that get loaded onto those boxes.

The situation is somewhat analogous to the free-to-air satellite receivers that can be used to receive free and legal programming, but if you obtain alternative firmware that facilitates piracy, the receiver can be used in that way also, at least for a time. In the case of Kodi, it's not firmware, it's addons. And just like piracy firmware for a satellite receiver, these addons come from unknown sources and could be carrying a malicious payload that will render your device unusable. There have already been cases of one third-party developer's addons sabotaging another third-party developer's addons.

One of the very legitimate uses of Kodi is to use it as a frontend for software like TVHeadend or Mythbuntu, or some other PVR software that has a Kodi addon that supports it. So if you have one or more free-to-air satellite dishes and a PC Tuner card (such as the DVB-S2 capable cards made by TBS), or a tall TV tower and a HDHomeRun device or two, you can use TVHeadend to receive and either provide live streams of those signals or record them for later viewing. Then all you need is some type of small computer device that will allow you to install Kodi at each of your TV's (I prefer one that runs Linux, but there are Android boxes that also work, though if the CPU isn't beefy enough it may not be able to handle high-bandwidth free-to-air streams).

As just another example, in much of North America you could obtain a TBS6704 ATSC/ Clear QAM Quad Tuner PCIe Card to use with your TV antenna, and a TBS6905 DVB-S2 Quad Tuner PCIe Card to use with up to four LNB outputs (or more if you use DiSEqC or 22kHz tone switches) and install those cards in a backend computer that runs TVHeadend, and then watch any local or free-to-air channel you can receive at any location on your local network using Kodi as the frontend. There are versions of Kodi for tablets, laptops, dedicated home theater PC's or whatever; it is cross-platform, so it will run under many different operating systems. And of course you can still use the legitimate Kodi addons, so you can watch free and legal streaming content in addition to local and satellite TV.

It really seems to tick off the Kodi developers that Kodi is sometimes viewed as a piracy application, especially since Amazon (unfairly in my opinion) kicked Kodi out of their app store, yet they have at times sold devices similar to the ones you saw that have Kodi and a bunch of piracy apps installed. The Kodi developers appear to feel they are being discriminated against, and I tend to agree. It would be like a legitimate free-to-air receiver manufacturer making a receiver that's intended only for legitimate free-to-air reception, and then some third party developing a firmware hack that allows people to pirate commercial satellite services (without the manufacturer's consent or support), and then that manufacturer getting banned by satellite dealers just because some unaffiliated third party had figured out how to hack their box in that manner. It's a bigger problem for Kodi because all their software is open source, so even if they attempted to implement some checks to make sure that only legitimate addons from the official Kodi repository were used, the sellers of those piracy boxes would likely either just use an old version without the checks, or remove the checks from the source code and recompile it.

I think it also ticks them off that unscrupulous people are selling such devices at ridiculous markups, yet never contribute anything to the development of Kodi. I don't think they actually want contributions from piracy vendors, but how would you feel if someone took software you wrote to help improve the quality of people's lives (or some other altruistic reason), and used it to gouge people by putting it on an overpriced pirate device, when you never wanted your software used that way in the first place? That is at least the drift I got from some other the things they have posted recently.

The sad part is that it won't be the sellers that get in trouble, it will be the clueless users that buy such devices. When one day they get a certified letter demanding that they must pay thousands of dollars for a copyright violation (because their ISP got subpoenaed and handed over their account information), that vendor will be long gone, and he's smart enough not to leave any information that would allow people to contact him after he's gone, which is why he wouldn't give you a company name or number.

 

[fred555]

Scott, that really stinks, but as a Network Engineer, this is what I have found. First I am in no way any kind of IPTV expert. I also do not stream IPTV content, legal or otherwise.

Anyway, you sign up for a channel on lets say a Roku, jump through all, the hoops, pay or whatever.
That process basically places a url on the box. With the proper equipment you can discover the url.
Then you can use the url on lets say VLC. I think part of the problem is providers are using "Security through Obscurity." After jumping through the hoops in the end you find an unencrypted, unauthenticated url, able to be used to watch free TV where-ever an when-ever and its hardware independent.

So problem number one rests with the content providers, they must, and I think it is inevitable that they come up with a common encryption/authentication scheme. I have seen legitimate and official streams of pay cable channels being served by Akamai that use no encryption or authentication what so ever. So in part I can say part of the problem rests in the naivety of the providers.

Problem number two appears to be pirate streaming servers, serving up some illegal content to feed content to the pirate boxes you mentioned.

The IPTV industry has to and will go through some changes pretty soon. I have been reading that content providers are beginning to wise up and come up with authentication and token schemes.
They may already have begun to use them, I'm no IPTV user or an expert in that field.

 

[. Raine]

It's probably legal for them to sell the box, but is illegal for the customers to use the illegal addons after they've bought it. Kinda like people that sold hacked cable boxes years ago, they could buy a box, hack it and sell it with no consequences. But when the customer used it, that was illegal. Legal to make and sell the box, but illegal to actually use it.

Which is stupid, there does need to be something done to stop crap like this.

 

[Juan]

I can tell you most anything you want to know about Kodi, and you don't need one of their Android boxes for hundreds of dollars.

A simple $39 Fire Stick will work. There is a division on the illegality of the actual Kodi app. Amazon stopped allowing the app feeling it is illegal. But the Google Play store does have the app, in fact added recently. Problem is the app itself is very legal no question about it. And many things you can do with it are legal. But then there are services, mostly free that can't be legal for those streaming them. You can watch all the episodes of Netflix shows for instance, or a huge variety of movies including very recent ones. In many to most cases if you have the bandwidth the picture quality is very good, same as using Roku for instance. You can even get locals from NY, Miami, or LA but they are not reliable. The more well known ones from PA are reliable, not HD however unless you pay. That service is mostly legal.
With not 100% reliability you can get many of the Cable channels.

It isn't all that easy to set up, so there is where some make money by setting it up for you. But even at that you sometimes have to change services to get programming. I can envision many giving up using it after awhile.
I completely set mine up with some trial and error. I like watching BBC programs and it is easier with Kodi and very reliable than doing it on your own, though you can do it without Kodi. Is that legal either with or without Kodi, probably not, in fact no it can't be for those who are streaming it. Virtually any news channel from many many Countries are available, some not available anywhere else others more easily available.

Kodi also is a home media center and an excellent one.

Yet amazon sells the boxes

 

[Juan]

It's probably legal for them to sell the box, but is illegal for the customers to use the illegal addons after they've bought it. Kinda like people that sold hacked cable boxes years ago, they could buy a box, hack it and sell it with no consequences. But when the customer used it, that was illegal. Legal to make and sell the box, but illegal to actually use it.

Which is stupid, there does need to be something done to stop crap like this.

Anybody remember the early big dish days?

 

[fred555]

Anybody remember the early big dish days?

History is repeating itself all over again. There will always be "FTA" IPTV streams on the internet I suppose.

 

[Juan]

I was reading other forums. .a lot of the pirates who built illegal satellite boxes moved to iptv tv..in reality when you watch these free iptv channels you are watching pirated dish network signals.and dish is now suing people who are stupid enough to subscribe to these services..to the tune of 10 grand. I would advise to stay away

 

[eurosport]

I'm not condoning this behavior, but I will say this: Content owners are way too greedy.
This is not the fault of Xfinity/Dish/DirecTV because they are forced to pass the higher costs on or they couldn't do business at any profit.
Content providers need to wake up before it's too late. Because this WILL be the way of the future if things continue the way they are.

 

[Tampa8]

Yet amazon sells the boxes

Excellent point, forgot that.

 

[Nominal]

We're rapidly reaching the point where no one is willing to pay for content and the content will go away. We need look no further than what happened to the music industry. People were cheerleading it's destruction bringing up "greedy CEOs" and "spoiled rich artists". What actually happened is the label CEOs are still doing fine due to up-front licensing money from streaming companies (that they don't share with artists) and the artists at the top of the food chain continue to make bank with corporate endorsements and selling various products like designer clothing or sneakers. Where the effect is really felt is that there is no longer enough revenue in the system to support long-term artist development. That's why there's so much crap music and disposable artists now. That's also why veteran artists are forbidden in the Top 40 now. There was a time when veteran acts like Tina Turner, Aretha Franklin and Patti LaBelle could share the airwaves and have hits along with younger acts. The problem was older acts knew their worth and had the leverage to get better contracts. Better for the label CEOs to just promote young, underdeveloped acts that are just "happy to be there" and that can be pushed aside for the latest flash-in-the-pan after a couple of albums.

Soon TV will be in the same boat, with quality scripted programs being even more rare than they are now. All we'll see are a bunch of cheap to produce tawdry reality shows. That process has already begun with the former science, history and documentary channels. People who love to watch shows like "Mad Men", "The Walking Dead" and "Breaking Bad" but who don't want to pay into the system that generates the revenue that allows those shows to be produced need to ask themselves how do they think these shows get made. The Magical Content Fairy?

 

[mikew]

To Eurosport's point...There is an obscure movie from 1978 called FM. I have seen it on VH1 classics once in a while and it is in 4:3 format and quite grainy. It had me searching for a DVD version of the movie. I've looked for over four years and all I can find is an occasional DVD where someone wants north of $140. The reason the movie is difficult to buy is that the rights holder has decided not to make it available any longer probably hoping to squeeze more money out of it at a future date. Another possibility is the amount of copyrighted music that was licensed back in the day for only a short period of time (such as the case with WKRP). Long story short...I saw this write-up, did a google search and within 10 minutes I was running on my phone. After searching for distant locals and streaming them for a few minutes (another favorite hobby when I could do it "legally" with Dish or DirecTV), I searched for the movie. I found it rather quickly and saw it was in wide screen and semi-hd quality. I feel one of the problems today is there are too many pay providers who each want to suck 10-20 dollars a month from you. You'll find each has most of what you want, but none has everything. Yet...the underground streaming world has nearly anything you could want (including Jeff Dugan from QSKY-FM...Los Angeles).

 

[Dudleydog73]

How did they not get shut down? One would think that the claims would be easily refuted as illegal. With the he other legal providers being adversely affected they didn't make any calls?

 

[Troch77]

I'm not condoning this behavior, but I will say this: Content owners are way too greedy.
This is not the fault of Xfinity/Dish/DirecTV because they are forced to pass the higher costs on or they couldn't do business at any profit.
Content providers need to wake up before it's too late. Because this WILL be the way of the future if things continue the way they are.

It's Greed across the board.
Dish, Directv, Cable, and the Networks.
They have no problems taking our money, increasing our costs all the time, YET those providers show more and more Profit every quarter.
Dish and Directv don't seem to be hurting at all.
Any increase the networks give them, it just gets passed on to us,and then some.

Quarterly reports prove that numerous times.
We keep paying what's demanded, Dish and Directv will never lose out.
Only when we stop will this madness end.

 

[Claude Greiner]

Just as bad as the guys selling the FTA boxes around here several years ago that stole both Expressvu and Dish Network service.

The sad part is the guys will be gone before people get around to hooking it up, or having an issue and not knowing how to fix it.

I am surprised the Comcast guys had an issue, as you need their Internet to make this crap actually work.