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Comment by LordKano | Hacker News Reader

The future of these pirate TV devices is so uncertain that I don't understand why people are willing to pay so much for them.

I recently saw something called an ISTV that was selling for around $400. I can't imagine investing that kind of money in a product that can be shutdown in under a year.

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If you pay $100/month for cable, than I could see someone justifying $400/year as worth it. Especially considering you probably have more options.

Here in the UK, a fully-loaded Kodi box costs less than £50. Another £30 and you can have it installed and set up. A Sky TV subscription with movies and sport costs £72 a month. The cost savings are immense, even if you just buy a new box when your streams stop working.

I looked up ISTV - it appears to be a completely ordinary loaded Kodi box with a $300 markup.

They're around £40 on Amazon (one-off cost), so not very expensive.

I avoid piracy, and I'm personally spending way more than that on a monthly basis for multiple legal services that provide less content.

I have acquaintances who have the Kodi box, and they work impressively well, so I can see why they're very compelling.

Maybe I just don't have the right connections, or know the right plugins... but when I've looked, the quality has been abysmal, consistency horrible, and just not worth the hassle... maybe just me.

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding how these work, but how could an external force stop them from working? Aren't they just a pretty GUI on top of long-standing content sources like bittorrent networks?

I'm referring to the company who made and provides updates for the device. They can be shut down and the users won't get automatic updates that point them to new stream sources.

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