[Nick B]

We have a home and garden expo at our convention center in so. Utah. Yesterday, I saw a gizmo called a KBOX. It is a linux based box the size of an Apple TV box and has an HDMI connection. It will search and pull in all the free available cable and TV broadcasts nationwide. It was quite impressive. As I'm again going through price increases and loss of channels with my local cable company, this idea really interests me. The firmware is upgradeable and it is being sold for $399 versus me finding it on the web for $599  Please let me know if anyone has any information on this
Nick

[ctviggen]

It looks to me like it's a hardware box running linux that supports (and implements) Kodi.  Or at least that's what it says here:

http://watchkbox.com/

I have Kodi on my Windows 7 computer, and that's what I've been using to watch movies and may use in the future to watch TV (currently using Windows Media Center for TV).

[srb]

I had not heard of the KBox, but it doesn't seem much different than running Kodi with TV Add-ons on a PC, MAC, Raspberry Pi or certain Android boxes such as Fire TV.

KBox claims there is no copyright infringement when viewing copyrighted content that is only streamed versus content that is downloaded and stored, but I'm not sure that's true.  It is true that many people get away with it undetected, but some people (and what I've heard so far is mostly from Comcast Internet customer) have been notified to cease and desist after the content owner notified the Internet provider after determining that your IP address was logged streaming copyrighted material.

You can read KBox's legal explanation in their FAQ.

I suppose you would be safer and more anonymous using a proxy website, but all of the free proxy service accounts I've seen have very low data bandwidth limits not suitable for TV or movie viewing.

Steve

[Nick B]

Thanks for the info. Makes a bit more sense now. I had not heard of KODI either. This kbox, connected to the TV, seems more user friendly than running the software through the computer. For the vast majority of viewing, we'd prefer seeing stuff on the TV rather than an iPad or laptop. 

If I do that, then $399 isn't a bad price. I wouldn't want to pay that for each TV, so today I just went to a Best Buy to check out Slingbox. But the Best Buy salesman couldn't' give me a clear explanation of what that is capable of and if it would work with a kbox.

As to copyrighted material, I don't have any interest in that. Neither my wife and I care about HBO, Cinemax, pay per view etc. If that's what kbox is doing, then that's for all the lawyers on both sides to discuss.

[Odal3]

Be careful. Some (not all) of the repositories they talk about on that website with the add-ons for free streaming of movies and tv shows may be illegal and are neither endoresed by the developers of the Kodi developers. Some of the claims on that website are completely bogus and I would stay away from that product just because of that. For example, "we have an exclusive right to the 100% pure linux and that sets us apart from everyone in the industry." I don't know the exact software they are using, but Kodi is 100% free shareware that everyone can use.

As SRB points out, there are many excellent KODI boxes out there that are much cheaper (and with better spec) and that only comes loaded with legal software. If you are comfortable with installing the software yourself, raspberry pi, chromebox (or a laptop) or something like a NVIDIA shield are three popular alternative. For one with excellent support with everything preinstalled, check out wetek core.

BTW: What exactly are you trying to watch? Let us know and we can maybe help you out.

Running standard KODI is mainly designed to view your local content of movies and shows. It also have many addons for legaly free shows (but don't expect to find any mainstream modern TV shows or holywood movies - for that you need to install the questionable add-ons which I don't recommend).

You can learn about more hardware alternatives here: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=252916

and here are the features of kodi: https://kodi.tv/about/

[Nick B]

Well, I bought it at the expo this afternoon. Haven't hooked it up yet. My wife and I watch Salt Lake City PBS a lot, Fox and Fox business, History, TLC, Nat Geo, USA, CNN, BBC etc  and I like sports especially college football. As I said above, we're not into pay per view or any subscription channels legal or otherwise.

I like the idea of all this in a central location like a box and I want to view it on the TV, not on my computer. If there are other similar and cheaper boxes out there, great, I'll try and find them and maybe use them for the other TVs in the future. Right now, I'm fed up with cable and constantly negotiating pricing with the new cable company. I'll be getting Ooma or Vonage or dump my landline completely.

I'm hoping the FTC can clean up this mess and make this all more consumer friendly 

[ctviggen]

This might not be a bad box if you don't have a lot of time to set up a Kodi system yourself.  For me, I'm using Kodi to view movies, pictures, and home videos.  I have to switch to Windows Media Center on a Windows 7 computer to view recorded TV (recorded via an HD homerun prime, from cable, on our network).  WMC acts like a PVR when using cable.  I would like to change the "skin" of Kodi and also transition to using Kodi for PVR and Internet-based services, but it seems I never have time to do that. 

[orientalexpress]

Just buy a Mbox with 1g memory only $60.00 ship from China ,install the latest Kodi 16.0 and you are set.$399.00 is rip off.


Lap

[Nick B]

I set up the kbox last night in wireless mode. Not a good idea as I had to reboot a number of times. I am using the cable company's modem/router right now and will get a new router as mine is 10-12 years old. I always prefer to go wireless if possible. There's a lot of content on the kbox, but I'll need to contact customer support for a few issues. I'm impressed so far.

Maybe a Chinese version would work for some and that's great. The idea of a raspberry PI is intriguing, but I'm not extremely knowledgeable with computers, so that doesn't seem like an option for the other TVs in the house if I do dump the cable at some point.

PS. What's a PVR?

[srb]

PS. What's a PVR?

PVR = Personal Video Recorder.  DVR = Digital Video Recorder.

Same thing, recording video to hard drive, SSD, memory card, etc.