UKC

Hi, Thinking of getting an Android box. Anyone have any experience of these and may be able to point me in the right direction. Do they have all the boxsets? Can you get the premiership on them through streaming etc?
are they better than getting Netflix?

In reply to goldmember:

I do have a Amazon Fire Stick which is a android based. By sideloading Kodi which is an excellent free media system you can access all the tv, film and sport you want. Just keep it simple and only put a small choice selection of kodi 'add ons' on otherwise the stick will not work properly.

In reply to Henm2:


Rephrase that to steal all the pirated TV, film and sport you want.

I have a couple of Android boxes, I don't know what brand to be honest.
One I great, one isn't.
The isn't one has a delay on the remote and loses sound occasionally but the other works a treat.
I run Netflix on both and they stream in HD with 5.1 sound no problem.
We signed up for Amazon prime over Christmas (free trial 30 days) and I can't get the app to work on either box but it works fine on my ps4.
I tried Kodi and you can stream TV shows from the US that hasn't arrived here yet, movies that are still at the cinema but being a basically honest person it didn't sit right with me and I took it off again.

In reply to Dax H:

Which box has worked best for you? Any links?

In reply to goldmember:

the rokh one is good and simple - even my 70 yr old Mother can use it... does Netflix, amazon. iplayer, youtube etc

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Roku-3500EU-Streaming-Stick-Black/dp/B00K71I68K

In reply to goldmember:

I can't find the link for the good one and don't know what it is, I gave it to my mum to use.
The crap one is an M8 quad core.
If you get a box rather than a stick get one with a USB socket and invest £10 on a small wireless keyboard from eBay. Far easier to type program names in to the net fix search.

In reply to Dax H:

Amazon have a weird policy to prime; you'd think they'd be desperate to get as many people using it as possible, and so would port it to all possible platforms. But it doesn't work on a Hudl (or many platforms). So I told them to stick their free trial...

I can only think they thought people would go out and buy an Amazon Fire thing just to run Prime. F*ck that...

In reply to captain paranoia:

I suspect you are correct.
We will be canceling before the free month is up because compared to Netflix it's very poor.
Loads of content but very little we want to watch that we don't already get on Netflix, it seems that most of the x thousand movies are all straight to TV crap that you have never heard of or the actors in them.

In reply to Dax H:
Prime is worse than netflix?? How bad can something get?? Netflix is like the dvd's for a pound bin at blockbuster

In reply to quirky:

Most of the stuff on prime wouldn't even make it through the door at blockbuster.

In reply to Dax H:


Kodi as installed from the official Kodi website doesn't come with the means to access pirated mateiral. Those must be add-ons.

Kodi itself is simply a media player that supports source material extensions. I use it to play things I've recorded on my Humax, accessing my NAS using SMB.

Back to the Android media box issue; there are dozens of Android media box things available on eBay, Amazon, banggood, etc. They cost about £30-£40, and plug into the HDMI on your TV. I have a 'CS918'. It runs iPlayer and ITV Player, but All4 and Channel 5 don't work on it, even though it's the same processor as my Hudl, where they do work.

In reply to goldmember:

Excuse my lack of knowledge - I'm not up to date with the way TV is moving - but can someone answer my question:

Do these boxes mean that people watch TV legally without buying a TV licence?

I'm quite sad that BBC recently had to make massive, swingeing cuts to its budget as its not allowed to increase the fee to make up the gap and not enough people are paying the licence fee anymore,

In reply to Babika:

To watch 'live TV'? No: you still need a licence.

To watch 'catch up TV'? I'm not sure. As far as I know, no licence is required. I'm sure Google will tell us...

To watch on-demand, pay-to-view streaming services such as Netflix or Amazon Prime, no licence is required.

There's an argument the the BBC have exceeded their remit, and spend money providing services beyond their 'terrestrial broadcasting', and that they're massively inefficient, and have wasted a lot of money outsourcing programme making... There's probably some truth behind the comedy in 'W1'....

In reply to Babika: If you watch it live over the net then you need a licence, but not if it's catch up.

It is a loophole but the BBC need to get with it. Fairly obvious, iPlayer through subscription, with subscription thrown in with a licence. Netflix and Amazon manage subscription so I don't see why the beeb can't.

I would say the argument presented by captian p is valid, they have overstretched, too many channels, too much online.... I'm not sure the public got a say when they inflated.

In reply to captain paranoia:


Thanks for the info - helpful. I feel a complete Luddite with the speed with which viewing is changing and felt distinct "TV Envy" when I went into John Lewis recently and gazed at the latest offerings. My TV is only 5 years old but it may as well be 100.

I do agree with your comment about W1A. I think that ridiculous structure of internal management is probably quite close to the truth. But selfishly I feel cross that the contract for live F1 got cancelled midway through in order to save money. I willingly pay my licence and would happily pay more than £12 a month to keep F1. I also have Sky Sports and watch most of my sport there, but the Beeb usually do it better and there's no blinking adverts when we return to find that someone has crashed/overtaken etc and we missed it.

In reply to Babika:

F1; overtaken...? When...?

I used to be a big f1 fan when I was a kid, but in the last few years, it's become a tedious procession.

ITV's BTCC coverage is much more interesting.

In reply to captain paranoia:





Hungary. Great race.
And ITV still do advert breaks, sadly, last time I looked

In reply to Babika:



They do , but not during the races (unless there's a safety car) - although they do ruin formula E with a break