Cutting the Cable/Satellite Cord

[lukethedrifter]

Which is why I used Kodi (formerly XBMC). A few tweaks and unofficial mods and the world's entertainment is yours.

Anyone else using kodi? Wife's son gave her a nexus player and installed kodi. Risks?

[cardinalkarp]

Now that AT&T has merged w/ Direct TV they've given us a 50% off discount so my cable bill is much more manageable now.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

I've used Kodi/XBMC as my media center and primary means of watching things on TV for years. By itself Kodi is 100% risk free, it's just a means to play media that is local and there's supported add ons for popular services like Hulu, MLB.tv, and you can link out to Android apps too, which is nice on the Nexus Player. However, there's a lot of 3rd party add ons for Kodi that can get into the world of questionable legality. I've used several of them for years without any issues. If there's any specific ones you're curious about I can go into more detail, but if you'd rather there be zero risk of piracy, just use your head. If you're using an add on that allows you to watch something that you'd have to pay for otherwise, or you couldn't watch in your browser because you already subscribe to Hulu, Netflix, etc, then that gets into the questionable legality area.

[lukethedrifter]

Thanks for the info. What about risks to your equipment and personal information?

Who is doing the streaming of the questionable content?

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Thanks for the info. What about risks to your equipment and personal information?

Who is doing the streaming of the questionable content?

Think of Kodi in similar terms as you would a web browser, you use it to get to the stuff you want to get to, and it's perfectly safe and reliable by itself. If you add other stuff to it(plugins, extensions, add ons) you can potentially do even more cool stuff, but that can come with the risk of installing the wrong thing.

For Kodi specifically, the downside is not particularly great. Most add ons for pirated content are basically aggregating video files that are hosted on random sites and streaming them to your Kodi box. No downloading, no torrenting, next to zero risk of getting a nastygram from your ISP. With regards to your personal info, I've not heard of any add ons doing phishing or otherwise harvesting info in that way. While Kodi is popular among media centers, it's not an overly large target for that sort of thing, and it's available on a jillion different platforms so it's not a one size fits all platform to exploit. Plus even if there was a cure all way to use an add-on to harvest personal info, many people use dedicated machines(like your Nexus Player) that aren't being used for things like email, banking, etc, you know, activities people would want to phish/attack.

Long story short: If you're at all worried about your Kodi usage, go to the settings and see the add ons that you have enabled, and disable/uninstall anything that looks at all questionable. You can use Android apps for every legitimate purpose for having add ons on Kodi anyway(Netflix, Hulu, MLB.tv, etc), so that way you can have more peace of mind even though your risk isn't all that high.

[lukethedrifter]

Interesting. Very helpful. Thanks.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Disney (owner of espn) took a 33% ownership stake in mlb advanced media or whatever their streaming software is. Seems odd as watch espn is a great streamin app. Probably the best out there as far as quality and reliability go. Maybe they want access to the fx technology?

[New Pagodi]

Disney (owner of espn) took a 33% ownership stake in mlb advanced media or whatever their streaming software is. Seems odd as watch espn is a great streamin app. Probably the best out there as far as quality and reliability go. Maybe they want access to the fx technology?

MLB Advance also runs the WWE Network. I wonder if this is going to lead to problems.

[ndistops]

Disney (owner of espn) took a 33% ownership stake in mlb advanced media or whatever their streaming software is. Seems odd as watch espn is a great streamin app. Probably the best out there as far as quality and reliability go. Maybe they want access to the fx technology?

MLBAM already is responsible for the WatchESPN streaming.

I found that move interesting from MLB's perspective, especially considering they gave Disney an option to buy another one-third stake in four years and thereby become majority owners.

[ghostrunner]

I've been entertaining the idea of getting back on with full cable, though I probably won't. The option to veg out and channel flip is no longer there, which I like. And being ignorant of 24 hour TV news and advertisements is a bonus.

Have to say though, the Netflix model hasn't panned out like I hoped. I figured eventually it would just be the online equivalent of a video store, and the rights and all that would end up being the same. Blockbuster or any video store could get whatever movie it wanted and so could the competition. But for some reason streaming has become something different. All the exclusive deals are killing the appeal. You've got to assemble 5 services to approximate the same level of choice, at least when it comes to quality. And it just plain sucks for recent movies. Online rental prices are too high IMO, and I've gone back to using Netflix's DVD service more heavily.