The Legal Alternative to “Fully Loaded” Kodi
A complete TV experience, free from piracy.
The so called “Kodi boxes” have been on the TV industry’s radar for a long time. Marketed as home media devices, the Android-powered set top boxes have long been popular with media pirates, but are now under siege from authorities amid a crackdown on piracy.
“Fully loaded” is the codeword common on eBay, Amazon, and other ecommerce sites to denote a device that’s ready to stream illegal content right out of the box.
The TV and movie industries, needless to say, are not pleased with these devices. Their crusade against them is finally starting to pay off, as courts world-wide look to crack down on the Kodi boxes.
Once in a legal gray area, the manufacturers, sellers, and users of these devices are now facing blowback from the legal problems surrounding their potential for misuse.
What is Kodi?
Formerly known as XBMC, Kodi is in fact a rather benign piece of software, made for media management.
Kodi itself is not illegal.
However, the open source software is compatible with an extensive and unregulated ecosystem of third-party add-ons that, while not officially endorsed by the software’s designers, have made Kodi synonymous with piracy in many media circles.
These add-ons make it easy to access pirated content: premium TV shows, movies still in theaters, live streams of cable networks, and even sports.
And with nearly 70% of Kodi boxes configured for accessing illegal content, they’ve become public enemy #1.
A Pirate’s Life
Given Kodi’s dubious distinction, you might assume (as I did) that the user experience would be less than ideal. The idea of ‘piracy’ itself conjures ragtag images; just-good-enough and improvised solutions born in the shadows, and requiring tribal knowledge to navigate.
Kodi and its add-ons might lack some of the polish of commercial software services, but upon witnessing them in action for the first time, they’re not a far cry from the legal services that they ape.
For any rough edges, there are also some things that Kodi does better than its legal alternatives. If you’re a cord-cutter, legally accessing content can require a lot of jumping through hoops.
One show’s on Netflix, another’s on HBO. Some shows aren’t available at all, while others are pay-per-view. Oh, and you’ve got to memorize all that, and even keep track as content moves around from one service to the next. And each month, the multitude of streaming services can nearly add up to what you might pay for cable TV.
Streaming with Kodi boxes cuts out all that. HBO’s Game of Thrones and Netflix’s House of Cards can be accessed through the same system. One search can turn up content (ripped off) from multiple sources. It’s an easier experience, and costs nothing. The downside is that it’s a crime, though one that most people might rank somewhere between speeding and jay-walking.
This is not an endorsement of piracy, but an indictment of the media industry. Without any official support, open source software of dubious legallity has created, in many ways, a superior experience to that of paid products from multi-million- or billion-dollar corporations.
The irony is that the very mechanisms intended to protect content are exactly what makes pirating it all the more appealing.
The Blueprint for Reducing Piracy
The typical Kodi box represents piracy made easy in a media world that’s otherwise a disjointed mess.
But strip away the lightning rod of controversy and debate surrounding piracy, and what have you got? A unified media experience that users generally like.
While you can never stamp out piracy completely, most consumers just want convenience. If piracy is easier than accessing content legally, you’ll see far more of it.
But the opposite is also true: make it easier to access content, and piracy loses much of its appeal to all but a few. Just look to the music industry for an example.
When consumers could download a song for $0.99 at the push of a button, they embraced that model. Ad-supported and subscription music services also gained popularity because they made it easy. None of this would have happened if the goal of so many was simply to steal content.
Follow the Kodi box blueprint, but make it legal, and you’ve got a service that consumers will flock to. And more importantly, it’s a service through which they can be monetized by the content providers.
Essentially, that’s what we’ve built with SelectTV. Like the Kodi interface, it allows you to browse ALL of the content out there: Game of Thones, House of Cards, The Man in the High Castle, and so much more, not spread across a dozen apps, but on one page.
Choose what you want to watch, and SelectTV includes a vital step: it gives you your legal options for viewing. If the content is freely available on a network’s website or ad-supported service like Crackle, those options are there. If they’re available through a subscription service like Netflix, those options are there too. And last but not least, pay-per-view options, with price comparisons from all the possible providers: Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, Vudu, and more.
Select your preferred source, and as simple as it is with Kodi, you’re taken straight to the page, either on the web or within an app, where you can view your video.
It’s the same easy experience, and it’s entirely legal for all involved.
And with the exception of pirates, all those currently in the business of these Kodi boxes can benefit from it! SelectTV can run on the very same hardware. If manufacturers and retailers who currently sell Kodi boxes were to pre-load SelectTV instead, they’d be able to offer their customers a legal TV experience, and their current legal headaches associated with Kodi would disappear.
Curious to try SelectTV for yourself? You’re in luck! For being a reader of OTT², you can save 33% on a year of service. Just visit this page and use the promo code OTTSquared for the discount. Thanks for reading, and enjoy!
