[mxlance]

Am I missing something (more than normal for me I mean)? 

Recently I replied to a skin question here. Part of the question mentioned an install (name omitted) I new nothing about. A quick search revealed this to be “the greatest kodi build on this planet”. Wow that is amazing, right. So it appears to be Kodi with a fantastic skin, modified to be a little less fantastic, with lots of add-ons preloaded to make kodi less fantastic. All in order to view Cable TV for free, some of the time, inconsistently from an application that is produced and somewhat maintained by a very honest and trust worthy unknown person somewhere who out of the goodness of his/hers/their hearts are sharing pirated “golden television” with all of us, free of money, time and risk. That is so cool-right? 

So, back in my early days of Kodi I looked at some of the add-ons of questionable legality and found them mostly useless. Unstable, unreliable and a massive waste of time. I admit it was kind of fun to watch a channel or program that I never had access to before. But that quickly faded as problems with instability and program inconsistency/unreliability revealed this approach to cord cutting to be all but useless. This does not even take into account the possible hacker/virus/malware risk involved. So, I must be missing something, because with a little reading and a few youtube videos watched It looks to me like nothing has really changed. Other than the volume has gone up, in more ways than one. It appears to me to be “to good to be true or even good”? I get that sorting out the BS is not always easy, yet watching just a few of “the greatest kodi build on this planet” videos with a grain of salt added, my BS detector was going off like mad. 

So, obviously I am missing something, right? 

 As always thanks for all the help and advice

[DarrenHill]

We don't support or discuss builds here, as you've already noted they're almost universally stuffed full of piracy banned addon (wiki) crap that we want nothing to do with.

Plus depending on how they are distributed, they can be a violation of our Official:Trademark Policy (wiki) if they are released as part of an overall Kodi install (pre-installed).

But of course in this day and age common sense doesn't seem to be that common, and it takes almost a blunt application of force to make people stop and think that there might be something dodgy about receiving stuff for free that they should normally be paying for. The builds are generally for the lazy and/or greedy who seem to think they are entitled to receive whatever they like and watch whatever film/show/channel they wish, and because it's on the internet (and especially if some moron with a YouTube channel told them to) it must be legal and legit.

The forum rules (wiki), and especially the piracy policy (wiki) and banned add-ons (wiki) list are all quite clear on the subject.

[da-anda]

I'm glad that at least some of our users are still sane and notice utter BS when they see it

[tjay260476]

Problem is, and I’m using myself as a case study, I was on the media center scene, took a 4 year break, and now back on, so knew of XBMC, and of Kodi. when looking for a legal home brew PVR/local library setup you will end up looking at Kodi and use Google and YouTube as means if research, and I know I’m preaching to the choir, this does lead you down a dodgy path, and it is very easy to see how people get confused with Kodi being a piracy app.

I still have problems today, I can’t find realiable information on certain legal third party addons (some are packaged into banned repos) and when trying to find out how to start writing an app, I get info on how to hack one instead.

Unfortunately @da-anda it’s not that clear cut, even for us enlightened users. I’ve even had forumesque discussions both at work and at home about Kodi (don’t worry, I’ve set them right!) it’s just insane on every angle 😢

[scott967]

At this year's CES the new US broadcast standard, ATSC 3.0, was discussed as finalized/released.  In looking at the info on it, it appears that traditional one-to-many broadcast is going away in favor of streaming solutions which offer the prospect of 2-way communication, so the broadcaster can get analytics, feedback, manage DRM, etc.  IMHO this will further blur the traditional "time shift recording" of terrestrial broadcast which US has determined as "non-infringing".  I think in the public mind "streaming" is being equated with broadcasting, but I don't know if the legal and regulatory bodies (let alone content owners) see it that way.  So for apps like Kodi that allow more-or-less seamless streaming from mulitple originators, it will be harder and harder to define what is "legitimate" streaming.

Of course, this is different than the concept of "builds" designed to relieve the user from understanding what he/she is doing.

scott s.
.

[mxlance]

@scott967So if I grasp, OTA broadcast will continue for some time. Yet local streaming service may be added?

My original post was my sarcastic vent about builds which I do not get the attraction to. But after reading your reply and comments by tjay260476 I would like to see a new thread that delves deeply into your comments and what a Kodi cord cutter is to do now and the future.

I do my best to stay as “legal” as I can but I also stretch it at times. I do get pissed off at times with the DRM BullS***. INHO the industries goal to control and charging for every view of everything forever has created the piracy monster.

When my 65 year old neighbor ask for help with cord cutting and tells me he has had it with cable/satellite, netflix, amazon, hulu and the lot. He wants to watch the new star trek but damned if he will pay another fee. The industry is making pirates out of people who never imagined they would think of it.I have started to rely on our local library for films and series we do not own. I record everything I can OTA just in case we may someday want to watch it. We are future proofing (so when the day comes that everything is on a cloud and streamed for a fee and “broadcaster can get analytics, feedback, manage DRM, etc” and use of a VPN is outlawed), we can still watch the old shows we like when we want and not pay again and again.

The VCR is not looking so bad now is it.
thank you for allowing me this vent.

[Klojum]

Please don't play with fonts if you can't handle them...

[mxlance]

i cut and pasted the text and it went crazy, not sure how or why. fixed now. sorry

[scott967]

@scott967So if I grasp, OTA broadcast will continue for some time. Yet local streaming service may be added?

Not clear to me how this gets actually implemented. I assume the US FCC has to weigh in. I do note that the ATSC 3 spec calls for a new OTA modulation scheme replacing 8VSB and is supposed to be more reliable. So at least some of the functionality remains broadcast. But I don't know if some Over The Top service is also needed or optional to provide "value added".

scott s.
.

[mxlance]

thank you for the reply