I found it hard to get a straight answer. How does the use of this device stumble into illegal use or is it totally legit?
It looks an awful lot like a more expensive version of a Roku box. HBO and other premium services will require individual paid subscriptions.
Not a debate and likely has a clear answer.
Off to GQ.
It’s also capable of streaming pirated movies from servers in Kazakhstan or wherever. That bit would be the illegal bit.
I’ve done a bit of digging. The FAQ has the following under the heading “Is it Legal”
This seems to be saying that they are not breaking the law by selling the device (which may be true), as they are just linking to it, not that it’s legal for the user to use the sites they link to. It also suggests they don’t do anything that a similar box/stick (e.g Roku) can’t do, or you can’t do on your computer. I wonder if the cost is because it needs a large hard drive to download movies, whereas similar devices just stream content, but that’s speculation.
It appears that the device uses XBMC (now Kodi), and you need a suitably powerful system to do video encoding/decoding to use it: http://kodi.wiki/view/Supported_hardware.
Looking at their Getting started video (https://vimeo.com/110537303), they mention USTVnow, GoTV, Glow Movies, and MovieStorm. Moviestorm seems to be a piracy site, as they show a copy of Expendables 3, which says DVDRip (see about 4:24 on the video), and they advertise movies that are currently in theatres, which is another red flag). GoTV seems to be an African TV network, which seems an odd choice.
It seems that it might be legal to sell or buy, but the only way to get virtually unlimited movies and tv shows they are implying (100,000 movies and TV shows), is to pay for them (which you could do anyway on a Roku, or your computer) or pirate them, or they could have just pulled the figure out of their asses. It seems from the marketing to be aimed at the gullible, who think it’s a magical box that gives them free tv and movies, but it might just be aimed at people who are fine with piracy, but I think the more technically-minded would buy something that actually listed the technical specs.
I’ve just tried to go to Project Free TV, and I’m redirected to this website this website, informing me that it is blocked (in the UK at least) due to a high court order, probably for copyright infringement.
It seems that the question about whether it is illegal to sell or buy the device is complicated, as it seems it has legitimate uses (they show NHL on demand, a pay service, and Youtube, for example), so it seems like it would involve deciding whether there are enough legitimate uses, what duty/ability they have to prevent copyright infringement, whether they encourage copyright infringement, etc, etc. It seems it would be legal to use it, if you only use legal websites, and illegal if you use it to pirate movies.
If something in the Faq mentions legality, I am going to assume that its the same type of disclaimer that torrent sites use. But nothing on this box does anything different than my zbox or pc does. The only real difference between this and a Roku , is the assumption that the jetstream will be able to handle really large librarys , and use all supported codecs.
I doubt that they are going to break down your door and serve a warrant for using one. But pulling them from shelves and banning the import of said devices would be more than sufficient for the law.
Before you buy one, read the testimonials, and make sure it does what it says, and what problems and annoyances other folks are finding.
Declan
Note that there is very little difference in capability between that device and other devices like Amazon FireTV, Google Chromecast, and any suitable personal computer or tablet.
All the stuff that it can get, you can get with a host of other devices. (And a lot cheaper as well. These knockoff Android media devices are overpriced and/or underpowered. The one in the OP is terribly overpriced.)
I have an Amazon FireTV Stick. While the Amazon store, of course, does not carry the apps needed to watch iffier stuff, they are easily downloaded and installed via sideloading. The XDA forums have lots of threads about doing this.
Note that you can legitimately install your cable company’s streaming app, HBO Go, etc. on FireTV, Chromecast and such if you are a paying customer, etc. On many of these knockoffs, forget about it. The apps can usually detect an “unsecured” setup and refuse to run. (One headache people have is the apps refusing to run on legit devices.)
I see no reason whatsoever to go with such an, well, “off-brand” device.