[konto]

I was reading a little bit into the alternatives and the Tronsmart seemed to be good value! Now I understand the issues posted above, but from a pure technical standpoint, all the moral and ethical issues aside, is the box any good?

No you do not understand at all, not in the slightest. I remind you that this is a Kodi forum.
Lets get one thing perfectly clear here, these are NOT Moral or Ethical issues. They are not some minor disagreement over differing points of view. This GPL matter is a legal violation of the licence , VidOn can actually be prosecuted in the eyes of the law.

Then there is this:

VidOn does not only violate the GPL license, they also violate the Kodi/XBMC trademarks and copyrights by not fully and completly rebranding their applications.

VidOn are the worst of the worst offenders that I can see. Please do not just brush their behavior aside under the carpet and dismiss it as a minor "moral and ethical issue". If you do, you are offending and upsetting the entire Kodi Open Source community.

Tronsmart should be ashamed of themselves
Do you think for one moment we want to discuss the technical merits of their device and possibly further their number of sales after everything I have just explained ?
Take your discussion matters over to a Tronsmart forum if you want to debate the technicals of their device

The question I ask, is what is the XBMC Foundation going to do about it ?
Where is their response ?

I get it, I get it. Let's put it this way: The first time I heard about Kodi was last week! I've been reading into this stuff almost daily, at least as much as time allowed me. And I've been studying all boxes that I could find including specs and what else not, half of which I probably don't even understand before owning an actual box.

So before I found your post that I originally quoted, I thought it's all the same stuff. But up to that point the Tronsmart box seemed to check all my requirements, including a low price. The european HiMedia Q5 box was my original favorite, but ordering it from the UK is going to cost basically double what the Tronsmart would cost me, expecting pretty much similar performance.

What I am trying to say here... I am not picking sides with anybody, I am just trying to learn. And I am not deep enough in any community to understand what kind of uproar this is about VidOn and what else not.

So let me ask you, all of you: would it be possible, and obviously acceptable within the Kodi community, to flash the Tronsmart box with a clean Android 5.1 and the latest Kodi version?

If not acceptable, I would be happy to look for an alternative in a comparable price range... I just don't want to upset anybody now that I just joined.