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Everyone Is Stealing TV

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Re: Everyone Is Stealing TV

#71

Post by rchaud »

pixelready wrote: post #60
doubled112 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I remember when Netflix was going to "save" us all from the cable company. When there is only one streaming service, being subscribed to that streaming service means you get everything. Now there are 15 different ones to choose from, each licensed to show a different set of content. Watching NHL hockey in Canada is a strange situation right now, but I'm not sure how it compares to the original cable situation.

Isn’t this every “disruption” story in a nutshell? The value being converted into consumer benefit is always a temporary situation.

"Disruptor" = temporarily embarrassed monopolist.

Re: Everyone Is Stealing TV

#72

Post by xethos »

kazinator wrote: post #69
Aurornis wrote: post #19

The article buries the important part further down: These boxes are often used as botnet nodes and join residential proxy networks. The TV feature is a trojan horse to get it into your house. The high price makes it feel legitimate. More from Krebs: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/11/is-your-android-tv-strea...

Maybe you don't have to use their box. The article mentions that their streaming apps don't even come preinstalled on the box. That means users have to go through some activation and installation procedure that they could probably do on a mainstream, commercial Android box. Or maybe the malware is in the streaming app itself, in which case the box is irrelevant?

You would think so, but:

> You won’t find apps for either service on Google Play or any other app store; users who have tried report that it’s impossible to run them on any other third-party device, suggesting that they were custom-built by or on behalf of the makers of SuperBox and vSeeBox.

Re: Everyone Is Stealing TV

#73

Post by kazinator »

xethos wrote: post #72
kazinator wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you don't have to use their box. The article mentions that their streaming apps don't even come preinstalled on the box. That means users have to go through some activation and installation procedure that they could probably do on a mainstream, commercial Android box. Or maybe the malware is in the streaming app itself, in which case the box is irrelevant?

You would think so, but: > You won’t find apps for either service on Google Play or any other app store; users who have tried report that it’s impossible to run them on any other third-party device, suggesting that they were custom-built by or on behalf of the makers of SuperBox and vSeeBox.

I'm lucky that I use a greymarket app for Japanese TV that runs on mainstream consumer boxes.

If the vendor is insisting that you use their box and locks the application to that, that is suspicious; it clearly indicates they are not really serious about the service and really want that specific box in your home for some reason unrelated to the service. Huge red flag.

Everyone normal who wants to sell a service would much rather just sell you the service for $200, without that having to include any hardware; dealing hardware is a hassle. Except in one sense in that you can sell a validated total configuration that requires less support.

Re: Everyone Is Stealing TV

#74

Post by standardUser »

verdverm wrote: post #22
standardUser wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A decent cable package was around $150/mo in the 90's, before streaming took hold. That's for scheduled programming only, and always with lots of ads. Do you really think we're worse off today? Is anyone paying close to a 90's cable bill for their various streaming services? And is the quality the same as we endured back then?

I never crossed $100 / month with cable + internet, that sounds like the package with many extras

You are right - I'm thinking of the package with internet. But TV alone was around $100 to get the good channels (not HBO, but Comedy Central and MTV etc) plus the absurd premium I paid for the privilege of watching MLB games for my home team.

Re: Everyone Is Stealing TV

#75

Post by myvoiceismypass »

nkrisc wrote: post #35
EtienneDeLyon wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some areas, you can 'pirate' live TV directly from the sky! You need this thing called an 'antenna' which captures invisible radio waves and decodes them into a picture with audio. You can't pause or rewind, and you have to be in front of the TV at specific times, so it is not precis the same, but you can access TV this way.

Yes, I’m well aware of that. I spent much of my childhood adjusting the antenna to get better reception. But I don’t see how that’s relevant.

Don't know your age, but today's $20 indoor antennas are pretty unobtrusive and don't require much adjustment beyond the initial placement. Its a nicer experience with digital hd antennas for sure than what we experienced 30+ years ago. Mine is a single flat antenna taped onto the wall behind my tv and shared to all other tvs and devices via hdhomerun + plex.

Re: Everyone Is Stealing TV

#76

Post by bb88 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #44
IncreasePosts wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not piracy if the people who have the rights to the content are distributing it like that.

ATSC 3 will fix that loophole.

The last time I watched OTA/Cable was over a decade ago. I remember paying $120/month for cable, and getting low quality highly recompressed HD shows, which looked terrible on the 1080p TV I had at the time. Digital artifacts made the stream not very pleasant to watch at all.

Technically it was "1080p HD", but in reality it was more like 720x480 upscaled and smoothed.

Re: Everyone Is Stealing TV

#77

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

bb88 wrote: post #76
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ATSC 3 will fix that loophole.

The last time I watched OTA/Cable was over a decade ago. I remember paying $120/month for cable, and getting low quality highly recompressed HD shows, which looked terrible on the 1080p TV I had at the time. Digital artifacts made the stream not very pleasant to watch at all. Technically it was "1080p HD", but in reality it was more like 720x480 upscaled and smoothed.

Digital cable is generally more heavily compressed than HD OTA primary channels (usually x.1 subchannel). OTA only gets bad when they pack in too many subchannels.

Re: Everyone Is Stealing TV

#78

Post by magarnicle »

ghusto wrote: post #34
nkrisc wrote: post #4

I too got tired of paying so much for TV so I canceled and just stopped watching it. I find the attitude that one is entitled to entertainment media fascinating. People like to say that it’s not stealing because there is no physical product the producer is being deprived of, which is factually true, but even so why are you entitled to it at no cost? NFL games aren’t water or food.

I don't think people feel entitled to free entertainment, they're just tired of being so badly ripped off. It used to be that you'd pay one company a little extra, and get all the extra channels you actually wanted. Now you pay multiple companies _a lot_ extra, and still might miss out on what you want. Many people still remember the original deal.

They very much do. There's an Australian streaming service called Stan that bought the rights to the English Premier League this year. They post highlights videos to YouTube.

Every single video they post is full of comments about how short the video is, how it didn't replay this or that important moment, and finishes with an ad for Stan.

Compared to 20 years ago where the only highlights you could get for free were in a news program that might spare 1 minute for just the most important match if you were lucky, these videos are incredible.

Re: Everyone Is Stealing TV

#79

Post by m463 »

nkrisc wrote: post #4

I too got tired of paying so much for TV so I canceled and just stopped watching it. I find the attitude that one is entitled to entertainment media fascinating. People like to say that it’s not stealing because there is no physical product the producer is being deprived of, which is factually true, but even so why are you entitled to it at no cost? NFL games aren’t water or food.

I think it's just a war with two sides. Media fighting for funds, consumers fighting for respect. Both feel entitled to some degree.

Re: Everyone Is Stealing TV

#80

Post by AshesOfOwls »

laleck wrote: post #70
MisterTea wrote: post #53

Going back I dumped all the streaming platforms as most of their new programming was not at all interesting. Turns out I was watching reruns of shows I downloaded years ago that were still sitting on my server. So I made my own cable channel by dumping every downloaded TV show into a single playlist then turn shuffle on. I have a low power PC hooked to my TV running Debian. The power is low enough that I just turn th…

There are a couple projects dedicated to making "tv channels" from media servers like jellyfin. See: https://ersatztv.org or https://www.quasitv.app

I've been working on my own flavor of this but it's digital media instead of local files, https://react.tv
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