Everyone is stealing TV

[Coventina]

Walk the rows of the farmers market in a small, nondescript Texas town about an hour away from Austin, and you might stumble across something unexpected: In between booths selling fresh, local pickles and pies, there’s a table piled high with generic-looking streaming boxes, promising free access to NFL games, UFC fights, and any cable TV network you can think of.

It’s called the SuperBox, and it’s being demoed by Jason, who also has homemade banana bread, okra, and canned goods for sale. “People are sick and tired of giving Dish Network $200 a month for trash service,” Jason says. His pitch to rural would-be cord-cutters: Buy a SuperBox for $300 to $400 instead, and you’ll never have to shell out money for cable or streaming subscriptions again.

I met Jason through one of the many Facebook groups used as support forums for rogue streaming devices like the SuperBox. To allow him and other users and sellers of these devices to speak freely, we’re only identifying them by their first names or pseudonyms.

SuperBox and its main competitor, vSeeBox, are gaining in popularity as consumers get fed up with what TV has become: Pay TV bundles are incredibly expensive, streaming services are costlier every year, and you need to sign up for multiple services just to catch your favorite sports team every time they play. The hardware itself is generic and legal, but you won’t find these devices at mainstream stores like Walmart and Best Buy because everyone knows the point is accessing illegal streaming services that offer every single channel, show, and movie you can think of. But there are hundreds of resellers like Jason all across the United States who aren’t bothered by the legal technicalities of these devices. They’re all part of a massive, informal economy that connects hard-to-pin-down Chinese device makers and rogue streaming service operators with American consumers looking to take cord-cutting to the next level.

https://www.theverge.com/streaming/873416/piracy-streaming-boxes

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High prices for trash service is right.
Providers are way too greedy.

[MineralMan]

1. Well, those boxes are semi-legitimate,

except when they aren't Basically, they are Android TV boxes. they work something like a FireStick or the built in Android operating system, in, say, a Vizio TV. As such, they can connect, using apps, to a lot of streaming services. However, some of those apps are connecting you to services that require payment from users. Like NetFlicks.

You might be able to access those paid networks, at least for awhile, but then they might just go away when the app your box is using gets found and blocked by the paid service.

So, is it OK to use something to access things without payment that require payment from users? You might not get caught, but it's also not OK to do that.

Yes, everything should be free. Great idea, but that's not the case. I cut the cable quite some time ago. Now, I receive broadcast TV with an antenna. I use the buillt-in Android OS on my Vizio TV to access free streaming services and various paid services. I pay for the ones I use. My household has passwords for those, so we're using them legitimately. We also subscribe to HULU, which offers a whole list of streaming programming for a single subscription cost. Lots of current movies, sports, etc.

What we don't do is attempt to watch what most people pay for without paying for that content. If we watch, we pay.

Those watch but don't pay for content that is only available through paid sources are essentially stealing the content. I suppose I'm paying for them to watch in some cases. I don't think that's fair, either.

Honestly, there is so much free content out there that stealing content seems quite unnecessary. So we never do that. I don't think anyone should. Maybe I'm just an old fogey, but I don't make movies and programs. I imagine that's a pretty expensive thing to do.

[hunter]

2. That brought back a memory...

Years ago I had a temp job at a place that had odd shifts; mine was 11:00 AM to 7:00 PM. This was convenient for commuters because they could avoid rush hour traffic, and a few years before every hour became rush hour. Mostly it was so the company's West Coast operations would be in sync with their East Coast operations.

There was this guy at work, maybe forty years old, who was always bragging that he could get all the premium cable channels for free on his magic cable box and he'd offer to set you up with some guy he knew who would sell you one.

This was the same guy who'd tell you he'd park his truck in front of the high school to eat his lunch as school was letting out because it was great girl watching.

[Sogo]

3. "...and you need to sign up for multiple services just to catch your favorite sports team every time they play."

This is the one that gets me.....grrrr.....