[vladman]

Hi,

I hope I'm posting in the right section of the forum, if not, please move appropriately.

I'm new to Kodi, and I hope I can get some clarification on the system in general and on some legality issues I'm unclear about.

I've read some of the posts here and elsewhere on how Kodi is a legitimate system, yet it can (and often is) used to stream illegal content. There also seems to be a lot of illegitimate hardware (boxes) that use and "promote" Kodi.

To try and simplify what I'm trying to ascertain:

I recently bought (on Amazon UK) one of these boxes that I'm now beginning to suspect is one of these illegal/illegitimate boxes. It's a Seguro Mini M8S box.

Can anyone confirm this, and furthermore, am I right in my interpretation of the stuff about Kodi I've read so far that there are legitimate boxes with Kodi on them, and illegitimate ones? Or is it not that simple?

If my box is an illegitimate one, what's illegitimate about it?

I'm just struggling to understand the whole ecosystem (if that's the right word) and the rights and wrongs of it.

I hope my question is not too unclear or badly phrased and that someone can enlighten me.

Many thanks,

Vlad.

[Ned Scott]

It's typically about what gets pre-installed on the box, and/or sub-par support from the company behind that specific brand. Sometimes you can just install a fresh copy of Kodi and there won't be any issues. The physical box itself is a whole other can of worms (quality of parts, etc), but less of a "legitimate" (or not) issue.

[vladman]

It's typically about what gets pre-installed on the box, and/or sub-par support from the company behind that specific brand. Sometimes you can just install a fresh copy of Kodi and there won't be any issues. The physical box itself is a whole other can of worms (quality of parts, etc), but less of a "legitimate" (or not) issue.

Hi, thanks very much for taking the time to reply.

The box I bought is basically an Android (5.1) box, so it runs pretty much like an Android phone (without mobile calling features obviously) with an HDMI output. Are ALL Kodi boxes based on Android?

I'm trying to decide whether to keep or return the box I bought. So far, I removed the preinstalled Kodi 16.0 and reinstalled the latest version and it seemed to go ok. No idea what (if any) future issues I might run into, in case this is one of those boxes you refer to, which I suspect it might be.

Is there a list of recommended Kodi boxes that are relatively easily obtainable here in the UK?

Many thanks again,

Vlad.

[Prof Yaffle]

Most of the cheap boxes you'll see on Amazon and eBay are based on Android, yes. I don't have much experience with them, but I strongly suspect that most manufacturers don't have the time or wherewithal to customise the OS (they barely support or patch it, after all), so that bit is probably vanilla.

The bit they do customise is Kodi itself - either with their own branding and selection of add-ons, or by installing one of the less-than-legitimate "builds" that exist. That's what introduces the dubious content, as it's these add-ons and customisations (maintenance wizards and the like) that lure you into a world of unlawful content, potential security issues, and just generally poor quality. Removing their build and reverting to stock Kodi would get rid of most of the risk, I'd say. For £50 it may well do the basics competently, although you're not going to get the speed or full feature set of, say, Linux on an Intel chip.

If you want, and it has, Google Play, and if it support the audio/video stuff you want, it's probably okay. If you want state-of-the-art Android, you're looking at 3x the price for a Shield, or 4x-5x the price for a NUC. Edge of my knowledge of these cheap Android boxes now, though.

EDIT

One issue - this box is Android 4.4.2 according to the blurb on Amazon. So it won't run Krypton (Kodi 17) when that hits the streets in the near-ish future. What you have now is what you'll stay with, therefore, unless there are third-party Lollipop+ ROMs that you're happy to flash.

http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=281332

[vladman]

Thanks Prof Yaffle.

One issue - this box is Android 4.4.2 according to the blurb on Amazon.

If with the above you meant my box, no, it's on Android 5.1. It's this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01D...UTF8&psc=1

Yes, it does have Google Play, and one of the first things I did was uninstall the pre-installed version of Kodi, and then downloaded the latest one (16.1 at the time) from Google Play store and installed that.

[aptalca]

Kodi is just the software. Kodi box is any machine that runs kodi. The operating system can technically be windows, Linux, android or osx. Most of the cheap boxes sold on amazon or eBay run android due to cost.

You can buy a chromebox or a nuc and install libreelec on it for just a bit more (libreelec is a Linux based kodi distribution that is lightweight and fast)

You can also buy a regular android based streamer like the nvidia shield or the fire tv and install kodi on it

[magao]

Thanks Prof Yaffle.

One issue - this box is Android 4.4.2 according to the blurb on Amazon.

If with the above you meant my box, no, it's on Android 5.1. It's this one: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01D...UTF8&psc=1

Yes, it does have Google Play, and one of the first things I did was uninstall the pre-installed version of Kodi, and then downloaded the latest one (16.1 at the time) from Google Play store and installed that.

Uninstalling and reinstalling Kodi may not uninstall pre-loaded addons. You have a couple of options:

1. Go into the addons (in the Kodi UI) and uninstall anything that's not listed in the Kodi official addons.

2. Delete the configuration in the .kodi directory (I don't know exactly where in the filesystem but presumably the info is somewhere off the Kodi Android wiki page) to start from scratch. There are some files in there you probably want to keep related to correct operation of Kodi on Android (keymaps, IR configuration, etc) so you'll need to do some research first.

And of course, it's always possible that some addons install services on the box that aren't properly cleaned up by either of the above options (just a guess).

[Ned Scott]

On Android uninstalling Kodi will be enough to nuke the kodi settings directory (add-ons, userdata, etc).

[DarrenHill]

Also for the original question (which is actually one of the rarer cases posted in this section that is actually appropriate for it, so well done for that ), there are a couple of blog posts made by a couple of the team members here which give some background information on the general topic, and some insight into our stance concerning items like resellers, 3rd party add-ons and streaming (especially the illegally sourced stuff).

See this blog by Nate, and this one by Martijn for more details.

[vladman]

Uninstalling and reinstalling Kodi may not uninstall pre-loaded addons. You have a couple of options:

On Android uninstalling Kodi will be enough to nuke the kodi settings directory (add-ons, userdata, etc).

This was what I observed (haven't dug deep though), but after uninstalling the old version, then reinstalling the new one, I noticed the pre-existing add-ons were missing.

Also for the original question (which is actually one of the rarer cases posted in this section that is actually appropriate for it, so well done for that ), there are a couple of blog posts made by a couple of the team members here which give some background information on the general topic, and some insight into our stance concerning items like resellers, 3rd party add-ons and streaming (especially the illegally sourced stuff).

See this blog by Nate, and this one by Martijn for more details.

Thank you.

[magao]

On Android uninstalling Kodi will be enough to nuke the kodi settings directory (add-ons, userdata, etc).

Good to know