Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[phi2008]

Cheap Android streaming TV boxes really seem to be taking off - probably mainly due to the use of Kodi(plus lots of free channels from add-ons) - does anyone here use them?

I'm currently running Kodi on an Amazon Fire stick but have decided to buy a
Beelink GT1 TV Box(funded by selling my Roku 2 XS box).

In the US they have "cord cutters", people who get rid of cable, do these Android boxes herald something similar in the UK(didn't stick this in the Android forum because that's mainly about phones and this leans more to IPTV generally)? 

[kitz]

I looked at some of the android boxes last year as most of my tv viewing is streamed, but at that time the android boxes were more expensive than they are now.
Yep I could see it being a cord cutter, I know a few people that have switched from Sky to the likes of AppleTV or Roku boxes.

I'd just swapped my ipad for a galaxy tab, which practically made my AppleTV useless hence being in the market for android type box.   
In the end I went cheap -  £15 for a Now TV box which included a three month pass.   When the 3 months was up, I made sure my direct debit was cancelled and now use it just for streaming with the standard non sky apps.  There isnt an app for Kodi, but there is one for Plex, youtube etc etc.   However I tend to stick with the likes of iplayer,  ITV hub and All4.

[phi2008]

The boxes can be very cheap (£20 upwards) and the killer app is Kodi, or rather its add-ons. I'm not an expert but all the UK channels seem to be on there BBC, ITV, etc - and yes Sky in all forms. "Fully loaded" Android Kodi boxes are all over eBay(think M8S boxes are most popular?), costing peanuts, and recent legal action has hit the headlines - "Pre-loaded Kodi boxes face legal challenge in UK".

[sevenlayermuddle]

BBC, ITV, etc - and yes Sky in all forms.

Tbh, the only streaming service I actually use much is Apple, streamed direct to AppleTV rather than via iPad.  They have a library of good HD material, no advertising, and no subscriptions - you simply pay for what you watch.

Netflix is OK-ish, but although technically HD I am deeply suspicious that they over compress into inadequate bit rates.   And despite paying a monthly fee, I can sometimes go two or three months, finding nothing worth watching, so two or three months of wasted money.

I do use BBC iPlayer as it is built into my Panasonic TV.   Itv and channel 4 catchup services are also built in, but I never use them because picture quality is awful, and I can't skip adverts.   Do these boxes overcome that?

[phi2008]

I'd suggest running Kodi and looking at what add-ons are available to see if there's anything that suits you. You can create an Ubuntu virtual machine and install Kodi to try things out, then install whatever add-ons take your fancy. 

[Chunkers]

I use a lot of different types of devices to run Kodi because thats how our TV at home works, I have a quad tuner TV server and all the TV is watched on devices running Kodi and streaming the TV over the network. I don't use IPTV or dodgy software to watch stuff illegally (as I believe a lot of people do) but the principle is the same. All our household TV's have some kind of Kodi box as the main driver.

You can run Kodi under Android on a phone, tablet or even a Raspberry Pi (and I have done all of these) but the best (value) Kodi boxes imho are the repurposed chromeboxes as they are quiet, neat, come with everything built in (e.g. wireless) and you can install OpenElec on them which works beautifully.  The problem with lower power devices is they can be sluggish and struggle with graphics heavy skins on Kodi, also if you are using it as a main device in a lounge or similar you want it to be nice and zippy.

From what I have read the latest generation of Nvidia Shield TV and Amazon FireTV devices are also very good, haven't tried one of these yet.

GL!

Chunks.

[sevenlayermuddle]

I'd suggest running Kodi and looking at what add-ons are available to see if there's anything that suits you.

That could be quite a lot of time and effort, which would be wasted if it fails to resolve the specific issues I describe.   Since you are abviously an enthusiast, I was hoping you might be able to save me the time, and tell me whether I'd be able to watch ITV (etc) catchup in HD, and skip ads?

I do have an extremely elaborate multi-room MythTV setup, which I use for all my live TV and recording, plus music and photos and further, MythTV has Kodi plugins I believe.  But getting MythTV to do anything new is invariably days if not weeks of work and I would resent spending weeks on Kodi  if it turned out to bring me nothing new.   

[phi2008]

I'm not an enthusiast, just have a casual acquaintance with it(mainly watch tech podcasts or YouTube)- the unique selling point is free, community provided add-ons, covering pretty much every kind of content.

As a casual user I simply don't have decent knowledge about the add-ons. There may well be a an add-on that provides advert free catch-up TV - but I honestly don't know. Probably best to keep the thread on broad discussion of Kodi/streaming boxes rather than specific questions about looking for content that is not going to be strictly kosher(prefer not to get this topic locked or deleted).

[Ronski]

Here's Kodis author's take on fully loaded Kodis boxes

https://kodi.tv/the-piracy-box-sellers-and-youtube-promoters-are-killing-kodi/

[phi2008]

That's a developer's view, but it's akin to Bram Cohen complaining BitTorrent was being used for distributing copyrighted material - that's a bit of a bad analogy since BitTorrent was actually novel software(media players aren't) - without the add-on scene for Kodi most people would never have heard of it. This meal's terrible and the portions are so small!

[Chunkers]

That could be quite a lot of time and effort, which would be wasted if it fails to resolve the specific issues I describe.   Since you are abviously an enthusiast, I was hoping you might be able to save me the time, and tell me whether I'd be able to watch ITV (etc) catchup in HD, and skip ads?

I do have an extremely elaborate multi-room MythTV setup, which I use for all my live TV and recording, plus music and photos and further, MythTV has Kodi plugins I believe.  But getting MythTV to do anything new is invariably days if not weeks of work and I would resent spending weeks on Kodi  if it turned out to bring me nothing new.   

Kodi has a MythTV PVR client addon available,  you would probably also need to add the server side changes for it to work. I also found MythTV to be clunky and difficult to configure which is why I opted for Media Portal under Windows,  not perfect but much easier.  I am pretty sure MythTV would work fine though once you got it set up.

I feel sorry for the developers  of Kodi which as a platform was not intended as the 'go to ' software for pirates but as a flexible cross - platform media player . The illegal content requires third party addons which the developers work hard to discourage, although it's certainly true that the illegal use is what makes Kodi so popular I think it has got way out of control.
The sad thing is that the legal issues and piracy put the continued development at risk and may eventually mean that legitimate users lose an excellent media player.

C

[Chrysalis]

as usual people wanting to make a quick buck on ebay are going to ruin a good thing.

[Ronski]

It's not only the legal issues that the kodi developers are sick of, it's the constant requests for support when the add ons stop working for whatever reason, the buyers of these boxes assume it's a fault with Kodi and don't realise it's because an illegal source has been shut down, or a poorly coded add on has broken.

7LM, I watch 2 to 3 films a week on Netflix in 1080 HD on a 120" screen and it's very rare I have any picture quality problems.

[sevenlayermuddle]

7LM, I watch 2 to 3 films a week on Netflix in 1080 HD on a 120" screen and it's very rare I have any picture quality problems.

Wow, 120" screen, the best I could negotiate was 55".   I'll aim higher next time.

I just seem to see more artefacts on Netflix, vs Apple or iPlayer.   A few days ago, don't remember the movie, but there was a forest panning scene.   Lots of similar looking trees and leaves.  When stationary it looked great as HD does, but momentarily melted into a grainy green sludge every time the camera moved.  Both myself and other half griped about it simultaneously.    I'm not sufficiently knowledgable on digital video to say with any authority what causes that, but my guess is over-compression.   

It is very rare, for my untrained eye at least, to see such artefacts on Apple movies or BBC iPlayer.  It's unlikely to be my TV at fault because I use the Panasonic built in Apps for both Netflix and iPlayer.

[Ronski]

Wow, 120" screen, the best I could negotiate was 55".   I'll aim higher next time.

Just Google Ronskis cinema.