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bobrooney
Pirate stuff and hurting the Kodi image is only part of the problem. There's also:
• bad firmware support form the box sellers - not every S905 can use the same image. A lot of people are having a rude awakening to that fact.
• poor quality parts - power supplies that actually catch on fire, buttons that snap off the board when you press them, heat sinks that fall off. All of those issues have happened to me in the past.
• unlicensed hardware - things like forged or a lack of CE marks, FCC certification, etc is getting a lot of boxes held up in customs. The growing popularity of these boxes is increasing the spotlight on them, so this is actually happening more often.
and various other reasons that go on and on.
As for pirates using old versions, actually no. When XBMC got renamed to Kodi, we thought for sure the XBMC brand was dead because so many people were associating it with piracy streams at that point. However, the masses are like goldfish and they quickly forget these things. As soon as a new name for something pops up, everyone goes over to that. The association of piracy and Kodi is shallow. It can be undone. The Kodi project and the community will not stop fighting that fight.
If someone can't afford a WeTek or a Shield, then why the hell are they not buying a Raspberry Pi or an ODROID-C2? You can get a damn Pi for $5. If someone is so poor that they can't afford something like that then I think they have bigger things to worry about than getting 4K video with HD audio on an S905 box.
Their boxes aren't completely legal (see licensing example above) even when they wipe the pre-loaded crap off, but even then, I agree that education is the better option. If a cheap no-name box works great with a fresh Kodi installation, great. I have no issue with that. However, people are being realistic here. There's no reason to
encourage hardware that is likely crap (including a ton of boxes with early and flawed versions of the S905) over other options that have none of those issues and are nearly as cheap. Hell, before the ARM port people would actually do things like convert an old PC into an HTPC.
If people want to say "that device is trash" then let them. Why do you care? It's an opinion.