[shomari]

There's been alot of talk about pirates killing the Kodi project, and even an official blog and statement about it on the Kodi website.

Sometimes, the profiteers are right under your noses.

In two posts beginning with this one - http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=...pid2576361 I lay out how one poster here has brazenly masked his affiliations with hardware manufacturers and full blown 'fully loaded Kodi box' dealers while pretending to be an ordinary forum contributor; this poster has even gone so far as to abuse individual Team Kodi code maintainers' time one-on-one: see the Android passthrough audio v17 changes thread, e.g.

This is a case of a user directly affiliated with, and identified as, a 'key development contributor' for a fully loaded 'Kodi TV box' company's Xmedex XMediaCenter, which uses Kodi, centrally and with prominence, as its main selling point.

The 'xmedex fully loaded Kodi TV boxes' (their own words) even come bundled with a 1 click 'SuperMax installer' that adds over 400mb of banned addons to the box with one click. According to its advertisement listings, Xmedex provides monthly OTA updates of its SuperMax 1 click addon installer for buyers of Xmedex devices.

Xmedex XMediaCenter, as the bootleg Kodi is named, lists Morne Ross @mo123:[freaktab / kodi forums] as key contributor of 'enhanced features, final tweaks and customization'.

That attribution has since been scrubbed within 24hrs of my initial post, and a bizarre blurb about Koying's SPMC was added. Visit the xmedex website, youtube channel and social media pages, and you'll see conclusively that its sole existence is based on the ability to promote itself as a 'fully loaded Kodi TV Box with enhanced features and full Kodi manufacturer support'.

Webpage before







Webpage after







I could go on, but this along with my other posts should suffice to pull the cloak off this hustle. If there's any doubt about this company's activities and its motives, along with those of its (as stated on official website) 'Xmedex associate' mo123, simply search 'droidworld' in Ebay, Youtube and Google. Droidworld, based in AU, is the sole distributor and dealer of these 'fully loaded Kodi TV boxes'.

[shomari]

I went ahead and grabbed a copy of that garbage bootleg Kodi called 'xmedex XmediaCenter', the main marketing and selling point of xmedex TV boxes.

It's RKMC. No surprises. As soon as you launch it, it immediately begins downloading over 400mb of almost entirely banned addons. I did nothing to initiate the 'SuperMax Wizard' installation, it launches on its own, by default.





It includes an 'app market', embedded in the build. Knowing its origin, and @mo123's ties with Nagrace as an after sales agent, I would hazard a guess that market links to Nagrace App Store. It would be trivial to confirm.

Anyone that's seen @mo123's strident defense of RKMC and Rockchip can now understand that phenomenon; it allows profiteers like xmedex to sell boxes with 'enhanced features' - those enhanced features being the garbage hacks made to work around intentionally hobbled firmware from Rockchip.

As Rockchip engineer James Lin is also listed, alongside mo123 as 'key contributor' to xmedex xmediacenter, which is xmedex's golden goose, there's no incentive for RK to follow standard methods and public apis. Much to the contrary, all incentive is there to maintain the private hacks, and sell hardware on the side based on those private hacks. Talk about double dipping.

[da-anda]

I'm sorry to say, but at least from your screenshots etc it appears they did a full rebrand of Kodi, and given that Kodi is open source and they don't abuse our brand what they do seems fine (in the hopes they don't abuse our mirrors infrastructure or API keys). From a moral POV, it's ofc a different story.

[shomari]

I'm with you on the ethics/moral side, but there's alot you're not seeing due to my posts adhering to forum rules.

All the sales/after-sales material, in written as well as digital form, blatantly contravene Kodi trademark restrictions.

I can't post the links due to the rules, but any perusal of this company's seller listings, be it on Alibaba, Ebay, or its own droidworld website and official xmedex website, will show it to habitually mention phrases such as 'fully loaded Kodi TV box', 'fully compatible with all 3rd party Kodi addons', 'full Kodi manufacturer support', and other variations of usage of the Kodi mark.

There's evidence of some cleanup both before my posts and definitely after; with the parasites clearly edging the line most times, while other times blowing past it, in an attempt to use the Kodi name to capitalize on the 'Kodi TV box' trend for money.

I can do a ctrl+F on just a subsampling of their pages for the term 'Kodi' and get a return of dozens of matches, not including the word vomit listings they have on Ebay and elsewhere that mention Kodi ad nauseum.

[User 325245]

Their ad on ebay is RIDICULOUS, I don't know how stupid a person has to be to buy one of those. That ad SCREAMS bad taste an ripoff. So many colors, exclamation marks, underlines, bold.... over and over again.... what a BAD TASTE. Chinese ads are a example of GOOD TASTE compared to these guys

But one thing on da-anda's comment - why is moral POV dirrefent than legal? If it is legally OK - then it is moral!

[wrxtasy]

As an Australian - I'm actually disgusted - DroidWORLD (Australia) are releasing what amounts to a "Fully Loaded" fork of Kodi 16.x. with their Xtreme / XMEDEX Hardware.

And yes the XMEDEX hardware is advertised with Full Kodi Manufacturer Support to fool unsuspecting Newbie buyers into thinking that Kodi is somehow officially associated with the XMEDEX Software company.

MOD EDIT: @mo123 name removed from this post.

eg: https://xmedex.com.au/#_kodi

X-Media Center
Your All in One Media Library & Player. (KODI for XMEDEX).

[shomari]

It's true.

I wouldn't post this without engaging in due diligence, and frankly, it was his incessant pestering of my posts (both here and on freaktab for years, now) in full opportunistic defense of RK's bastardization of Android multimedia standards - as it benefits his ventures - that sparked my interest in exposing this parasitic garbage.

Because it was clear to me, and others, that his strident defense of RK's methods was not just a mere users' perspective, or an issue bounded and born of philosophical differences; it's one of masked self interest and gain.

[wrxtasy]

Yes from the Supermaxwizard forum:

Xmedex and 5.1...

The new firmware for the XTREME includes a newer version of X-media center based on Kodi 16 with specific RK patches for autoframe rate switching, 3D, 4K, External player support, HD Audio etc. There have been 2 engineers from Rockchip and Xmedex side working on this version for quite a while, since Kodi does not have any Android engineers anymore...

[shomari]

As an Australian - I'm actually disgusted - DroidWORLD (Australia) are releasing what amounts to a "Fully Loaded" fork of Kodi 16.x. with their Xtreme / XMEDEX Hardware.

And yes the XMEDEX hardware is advertised with Full Kodi Manufacturer Support to fool unsuspecting Newbie buyers into thinking that Kodi is somehow officially associated with the XMEDEX Software company.

MOD EDIT: @mo123 name removed from this post.

eg: https://xmedex.com.au/#_kodi

X-Media Center
Your All in One Media Library & Player. (KODI for XMEDEX).

As a supplementary to the screengrabs, and since we're posting links, here's this:

They did a partial wash of mo123's name since my initial posting (which shows he either has direct access or indirect access to make fast edits happen) - but look here - it's still on this page of their official site, for now...

https://xmedex.com.au/whats-new-xtreme-android-tv-box/

Conspicuously listed as one of 'four engineers' and a 'key contributor' - with an official title of 'xmedex associate'.

[shomari]

To clarify and tie some things together, Nagrace is the producer of Xmedex's off-branded hardware.

mo123 has for years operated as a masked after sales support agent for Nagrace/Ugoos, beginning in 2014 - when Xmedex boxes first appeared on the scene. EDIT: [this is not conjecture. He has his own corner on Freaktab where he releases regular firmware updates for, and even conducts obviously company sponsored giveaways of, Nagrace hardware.

http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-supp...ace-rk3368


All his firmware releases are carefully branded and packaged throughout with Nagrace branding, etc. Problem is, he presents himself and his contributions as if they're volunteer efforts, when in fact he's actually a carefully placed after-sales support agent harvesting user data and feedback. A one to one comparison of xmedex fully loaded 'Kodi TV boxes' and Nagrace firmware will show their features and bugs to be congruent]

Mo123 has given flawed, biased advice and opinions on all brands of boxes other than Nagrace / xmedex without ever disclosing his relationship to those companies. Even in these forums he's told multiple people their boxes underperform due to 'cheap components' only to lead them into a discussion of what's better so that he can offer Nagrace hardware as a premium alternative.

It all goes full circle.

I spent over two years with very little presence or contributions at freaktab due to my initial exposing of Rockchip's first publicly known then-xbmc fork here on these forums (back in '14). Nagrace, the company mo123 is affiliated with, along with mo123 and cohorts, led a troll effort that ended in me ditching freaktab due to the intolerable state of affairs and conflict stemming from discussions regarding the ethics of what ultimately came to be known as RKMC. RK never really intended to take public ownership of that GPL infringing fork. Exposing it was what gave them no choice.

Fast forward three years into the present. All the warnings I posted then about how this would end up, and how it would/could be abused have been substantiated.

Nagrace and others lied and lied about the existence of the initial GPL infringing then-xbmc fork packed in their firmware. It's no surprise they and their faux 'community members' such as mo123 continue to cheat, distort and machinate their way through the media player landscape with no scruples.

TL;DR - mo123 has ties both to Nagrace - the producer of the Xmedex branded boxes - as well as being listed as an xmedex associate and 'key contributor' to the xmedex xmediacenter bootleg kodi.

[shomari]

Their ad on ebay is RIDICULOUS, I don't know how stupid a person has to be to buy one of those. That ad SCREAMS bad taste an ripoff. So many colors, exclamation marks, underlines, bold.... over and over again.... what a BAD TASTE. Chinese ads are a example of GOOD TASTE compared to these guys

... you only say that because you haven't seen this:

[XMAU]

Hi,

This thread has been brought to my attention, by 'mo123', who is mentioned here & is frankly quite distraught by the comments - myself included.
I am from XMEDEX Australia, and would like to clear a few things up.

First and foremost, XMedia Center does not have any illegal third party addons pre-installed, bundled, or accessible in any way, shape or form. XMedia Center only comes pre-installed with YouTube, and a handful of Aussie Catch-up addons (around 5 addons in total). All XMEDEX Media HUBs are shipped factory sealed to customers & stockists - what they do with them after (ie; unboxing them to install other/modified or additional software) is not of our business. We invite anyone who questions our credibility to make a purchase directly from us.
We do not have any eBay account as mentioned by the op, nor to be confused with DROIDWORLD's store.

As for the DROIDWORLD store, its also important to note that they do not 'fully load' our devices with third party content either. What they do is pre-install the wizard/addon installer program. Their customers then have the option to use the wizard program to manually download addons if they wish (the addons are not pre-loaded by them - only the Wizard program is). As the op posted in his screenshot 'supermax wizard has been installed, success!' (although the op tries to make a false claim / sense of 400mb being installed automatically. I doubt the wizard is over 1mb in size). In essence, this is not 'fully loaded' - whether its the right thing to do, morally, is another question - and not to be confused with any XMEDEX box in its original condition. We cannot tell buyers what to do and what not to do with their purchased units. Once it leaves our warehouse, it is no longer our responsibility. I cannot see MINIX getting the same treatment, whilst they are sold by 1000's of fully loaded box sellers.

The Aussie addons in XMedia Center are free & legal (pretty much python based apps of the official ones which are available on the Google Play Store) - they are also mentioned on the official Kodi 'unofficial add-on repositories' page, under the name 'CatchUpTV AU Plugins': http://kodi.wiki/view/Unofficial_add-on_repositories

XMedia Center does not have any 'wizard' installed, nor any automatic 'wizard download' of addons.
The op of this thread 'shomari' has mentioned that he 'grabbed himself a copy' of XMedia Center.
May I ask from where did you obtain this copy, as we do not currently have any download links directly to this app. We do however have a download link to our firmware, which has XMedia Center included, located here: https://xmedex.com.au/whats-new-xtreme-android-tv-box/

I would urge you to download our firmware, and flash it onto a compatible RK3288 box (if you have one) - or extract the image to obtain the XMedia Center app inside. I hope you can post some screenshots of your findings.

Please do not slander our company, based on assumptions. Downloading a modified version of XMedia Center which has the 'supermax wizard' pre-installed inside, from the 'supermax wizard' website, is not a representation of XMEDEX. We are not affiliated with the supermax wizard, or any other third parties. DROIDWORLD is a stockist, dealer/re-seller of our devices - This is not the first time we have had such issues, as we regularly have customers purchase from us directly and then complain about 'no streams'. We make no exceptions - our devices will never come 'fully loaded' from our factory. I think we need to do something about this, as others may agree - it is not clear enough. I think you may see their software renamed soon, as i do not at all, like the bad reputation we are getting from it. To be perfectly honest, we didn't mind using the name at first - since its great exposure, but we don't need that anymore. Not that kind of exposure anyway.

As for this comment:

That attribution has since been scrubbed within 24hrs of my initial post, and a bizarre blurb about Koying's SPMC was added

I can further assist to explain that, and the 'bizarre' blurb about Koying's SPMC. It may seem 'bizarre', as I was not at all aware of this thread, at the time of Morne's request to remove his name from our website. We have always been honest and caring to give credit where we see fit - and Morne / Koying were no exception to that. Please see below screenshots between myself and Morne:
Screenshot 1
Screenshot 2
Screenshot 3

Morne is nothing but a gentleman, and this is the only reason I have gone out of my way to present the above. He is well aware that we are not affiliated with such third party addons or 'fully loaded' services - XMEDEX has no motive for including any illegal content on our devices. It is quite clear that doing so will not benefit us in any way. We do not believe in making a 'quick buck' - We are proudly representing Australia, with a passion.

Full Kodi Manufacturer Support to fool unsuspecting Newbie buyers into thinking that Kodi is somehow officially associated

We are the manufacturer, and we provide full Kodi support for our devices. This means that our hardware (Rockchip RK3288) will fully support the Kodi platform, and will continue to support the Kodi platform. We do not believe this is misleading. XMedia Center is essentially Kodi (which we do mention) - and our XMEDEX XTREME devices support 4K playback, 10bit video, automatic frame rate switching & more. You may have seen an earlier review of the XTREME in the UK in which it failed some playback tests (including 10bit) when our firmware was running Android 4.4.4 KitKat. We then released a firmware update to Android 5.1.1 Lollipop with LightBiz OS, and have also updated XMedia Center to fix the issues mentioned. This is what we believe is 'fully kodi manufacturer support' I apologise if this is misleading for some.

X-Media Center
Your All in One Media Library & Player. (KODI for XMEDEX).

As outlined in the official trademark policy for naming

(e.g., "Frobnicator for Kodi," would be acceptable

Their ad on ebay is RIDICULOUS

It is not our ad, it is our device

... you only say that because you haven't seen this (video):

Please don't show me that I really need to have that video deleted. There's a funny story behind that, but we'll leave that for another time.

I wouldn't post this without engaging in due diligence, and frankly, it was his incessant pestering of my posts (both here and on freaktab for years, now) in full opportunistic defense of RK's bastardization of Android multimedia standards

I don't believe you should have exposed his full name in public (unless ofcourse i'm not aware that he uses his name on public boards) - it is not nice, and invades his privacy.
It would appear that you guys have some kind of personal 'beef', and you should keep that personal. Im sure that others reading this thread, aswell as the Kodi moderators would not appreciate such hateful posts, targeting innocent people and companies alike.

I am not going to go into depth about RK - but what I will say is that it's RK's business on whether they decide to use Media Codec, or their own RK Codec. I have seen numerous times, posts degrading RK (while some comments may be due not good practice), other comments are simply not true. Such as 'Kodi will not work properly on RK boxes'. Let me tell you, Kodi does not work on any Android box (properly), without custom hacks, modifications, or manufacturer support. You can install Kodi 17 on a brand new Amlogic Android 6.0 box, and see for yourself. At the same time, you can install Kodi 17 on an NVIDIA Shield, and see for yourself. This is why there are forks such as SPMC, or XMedia Center. Please do not take offence, we highly regard and praise the Kodi Team - our forks are nothing but a polish of the magnificent Kodi software. I am just pointing this out to 'shomari' and other users who always comment about 'staying away from RK' boxes. When really, stay away from ANY android box which does not have manufacturer support or firmware updates.
Cheap boxes are nasty - you get what you pay for

Mo123 has given flawed, biased advice and opinions on all brands of boxes other than Nagrace / xmedex without ever disclosing his relationship to those companies.

I can assure you that this is not true. Mo123 is a great part of the Kodi community, and should be respected for that. I am not a Freaktab regular visitor, but i have seen Mo123 release custom firmware, and custom versions of Kodi to support many users devices. This goes back to even the RK3188. He's an RK fanboy, no doubt about that - as am I. There's just something different when using an RK3288 powered device - it's like AMlogic on steroids Shh.... don't quote me on that, as AML devices are on the way.

Business relationship with our company? No. I can confirm that Mo has never received any payments, or given any paid jobs for that matter. In fact, Mo reached out to us through our affiliates to give a helping hand - as we were facing a particular issue, that he helped us in resolving. To repay him, we sent him a free XMEDEX device, since he did not accept or respond to my message regarding payment for his assistance. As mentioned earlier, he is nothing short of a gentleman, and a great volunteer in the community.

As for XMEDEX devices "made by nagrace", this is also not entirely true. We sure do collaborate with nagrace & ugoos, amongst other strategic partners in the Android world. Our Pcba for the XTREME is made by tchip, which is indeed the same manufacturer of the pcba for nagrace and ugoos. Although take note; we have never been known to re-badge any product. The initial XTREME was in the production phase (by production, i mean firmware, software & design), for nearly 12 months - as we always aim for perfection, based on our own standards. Our pcba on the 2nd Gen does have a noticeable, bigger and different designed heatsink than the latter. Our companies cooperate with each other to resolve known issues and ultimately provide the best possible experience using our hardware. You can expect to see bug fixes slowly appear in all of our devices - as majority of the time, its all of us + RK + others collaborating. I again kindly request that you refrain from commenting/slandering based on assumptions.

Even in these forums he's told multiple people their boxes underperform due to 'cheap components' only to lead them into a discussion of what's better so that he can offer Nagrace hardware as a premium alternative.

Make no doubt about that - we know our stuff. I can tell you first hand that #name removed as it's not my place to mention# (which is creator of many pcba's for many of the 'best' (cheap) branded android boxes such as #removed# and #removed#) have many design flaws. The MX3 era in particular would blow capacitors quickly, due to a poor design flaw in relation to voltage.
Now the MX3 is a highly regarded device (a really good device at its time actually) - so you can just imagine no-name devices, using no-name RAM, poor WiFi & the rest - prone to failure, it's just a matter of when. The forums are full of users who have a "MxQ" , and every "MxQ" is using a different WiFi chip, different design board, different components etc. Users claim the 'others' are 'clones' or 'fakes'. In reality there is no 'MxQ' brand - they are all coming from the same factories that use cheap and changing components. Tchip is the creator of the firefly development board, aswell as other boards in various branded tablets. Our XTREME devices are using Samsung eMMC 5.0, Samsung Dual channel DD3 & Broadcomm based WiFi. I would have no concern in marketing this as 'premium' hardware.

Forgive my blabbering, it's quite late here and this thread has gotten the best of me.

I kindly request that any/all defamation posts made on this thread and the other thread to be removed. If there are any other concerns, please feel free to get in touch

[shomari]

Defamation, slander?

You'll need to qualify your quasi-legal pablum, if you think it'll help your case.

Yes, it's a Nagrace
I helped improve the firmware for Nagrace that Xmedex use, as at that time there was no dual-boot firmware.
If you are in Australia then you will get warranty if bought from Xmedex otherwise can buy from Xmedex/Nagrace as price is similar.
Video playback is perfect for me. Also Kodi on Linux works very well which other boxes can't do.
I will also release updated firmware in the next few days when I have time.

http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-supp...post514094

Directly contradicts your own assertions. I guess then, that mo123 is also a party to this supposed defamation you claim? He said it's a rebranded Nagrace for the Australian market

Kodi mostly on Android but also testing on Linux(as Linux Kodi is still very new).
Updated firmware works on Nagrace, Xmedex and UGOOS UT3 since they all use the same board.
Yes, Xmedex is rebranded box for the Australian market.
Nagrace box takes around 6 days DHL shipping and ships out 1-2 days, if you have a question can also ask on their Aliexpress page and maybe buy from them if local support/warranty is not an issue.
So if you have questions, can post in the Nagrace - RK3288 section on Freaktab, as you basically have the same box.

Yes, HDMI/SPDIF 5.1 surround sound works.
There was an issue with certain receivers not working fully but a patch was released for it that I'll use in the new firmware.
You can also use UGOOS UT3 firmware on your box, their latest firmware already includes the passthrough fix for certain receivers giving issues.

http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-supp...post514111








Do not worry about how I obtained the xmedex media center fork.

My sole question to you is, how much further are you willing to take this charade? Because you may just end up surprised with the level of access and info that is actually in existence to support anything and everything I posted.

Nobody's privacy was invaded. I cited the attribution of a developer of your company software, from a publicly available commercial webpage.

[natethomas]

As for the DROIDWORLD store, its also important to note that they do not 'fully load' our devices with third party content either. What they do is pre-install the wizard/addon installer program.

I genuinely don't want to be involved in this conversation, but I am curious to know why you think pre-installing the wizard to install the addons is any better than just installing the addons?

[shomari]

As for the DROIDWORLD store, its also important to note that they do not 'fully load' our devices with third party content either. What they do is pre-install the wizard/addon installer program.

I genuinely don't want to be involved in this conversation, but I am curious to know why you think pre-installing the wizard to install the addons is any better than just installing the addons?

Nate, I want to mention that I'll follow your lead on this, regarding this thread and anything in it.

That's just to say if you call for it to stop, or not, I'll cede to your approach.

For now, everything I posted stands on its own.