So I can shed a little light on this one for those that are wondering how it works. I picked one up as a gift when it was on Woot! earlier because I was hooked by the “your own personal Blockbuster” line (I miss Blockbuster!), and ended up returning it. It worked great, but we were conflicted about it. There’s not a whole lot of info out there about it, the best article I found was here: https://uktvservicesabroad.com/renegade-tv-box which also recommends buying a VPN to cloak your identity.
And that is your first indicator of how it works. The device is legal because it does not store illegal content, and best as I can tell, the streams are technically “legal” at the moment, but they are not authorized by the owners of the content nor do they receive any compensation for it. So in our ultimate assessment, it’s stealing that the law hasn’t caught up with yet. The subscriptions included simply provide you with better bandwidth for the streams, not an authorized “subscription” like you would have with a service like Netflix.
That being said, the 4k was truly 4k, the library was downright enormous, having everything from still-in-the-theater movies to every old Columbo episode, and the buffering on live cable channels was minimal with my internet connection. But it is stealing and you’ll always be keenly aware of it due to the underground, folder/file searching, renegade (pun intended) feel to the OS and every stream you connect to. So at the end of the day, is it ok to do the wrong thing if the law hasn’t found a way to pin it down yet?