Android Boxes Spain
Android boxes loaded with media software Kodi allow you to access free streams via the internet.
Kodi used to be known as XBMC, XBox Media Center, (which jokingly was also called eXtreme Buffering and Missing Content, in reference to the many broken links and poor quality of the feeds!)
Kodi uses third party add-ons to access streams from the internet.
Many of these third party add-ons are not supported by Kodi’s makers, due to the pirate nature of the content on the add-ons. And in 2016, it was announced that Kodi’s makers are now going to take action against people using the Kodi name in relation to pushing pirated material.
Personally I would not recommend an Android box running XBMC / Kodi for UK TV for a number of reasons.
The main reason being because the picture image quality of these systems is simply poor.
The images below were captured directly from on a 26″ screen, to try and show the low picture quality of these Android boxes.
The following image is a quality comparison test between Smart TV Internet streaming (top) and Satellite TV (bottom), where you can see the blurry and low quality of the Android box image, and the sharpness and high detail quality from a direct from satellite TV system.
The drop in image quality from these Android Brit TV Boxes will become more noticeable when the systems are used on large TV screen that many people are using these days. The low image quality from theses system will be a lot more noticeable on large screen TVs.
Why?
Well most of the Smart TV internet streaming services use a low resolution for their streaming – this resolution is sometimes only 480. Normal standard definition TV resolution is 576. Full High Definition resolution is 1080. So the image resolution between Smart TV Internet streaming is less than half the resolution to HD TV, and about 16% lower than standard television transmissions. So for LIVE TV, satellite TV is produced the best image quality. Makes you wonder why use a lower quality resolution Android TV system rather than a high definition satellite systems on your HD TV. That is like buying a Ferrari and then replacing its v8 engine with a lawnmower engine!
The menu system on these systems is not the easiest to use. Navigation can be a bit of a pain, especially when not using a mouse.
Many of the links often return a “stream not found”, or “script error” or get stuck with the “working” logo – which when trying to find a link for a football match may mean you miss most of the first half hunting around for half decent working stream.
Many of the third party add-ons are closing down, so the number of resources for these systems is becoming less and less.
A selection of comments from various Android / Brit TV box providers Facebook pages – many of which I can see no replies to their problem.
“I’m having problems with Kodi inasmuch as from Kodi I then choose Channel Lists, then hit on Phoenix for example, the symbol ‘working’ comes up and then stops. My speed is 11.45. I’ve tried rebooting, unplugging everything but still no joy. Please help!”
“hi all ok have lost sound on all channels, tried a reboot and checked setting could not find anything wrong, internet speed is good as I ended up watching iplayer with no problems at all. any suggestions???”
“Navi x IS not workinf. HELP”
“Lost channels on brit box where can we find it?”
“Any ideas please Navi X stopped working just before xmas comes up script error I thought that it would come back but did not, last night I needed to reboot box because it reverted back to blue screen and I thought that Navi would be ok but still after reboot just comes up script error can anyone help”
“Hi, We’re not getting any sound at all today, on any of the apps, and have rebooted twice. Any ideas? Thx.”
“Can anybody advise where to watch the best football streams I have gone through all the preinstalled options and not one of the streams or links work, can’t be any think to do with Internet speed as I have fibre optic”
“Hi just reset box as we lost Internet and as we were looking for a film the box went off. It is red hot to touch and won’t switch back on again. Only had box about 6 months. Help please”
“have an android box with 10mbs but still sky channels go down a lot”
“wish I had never bought this useless android box – more trouble than what it is worth”
PC Advisor magazine comments between a MAG 254 IPTV box verses an Android based IPTV “Brit TV box” :
Unlike the Android TV Box, the MAG 254 IPTV Set Top Box does not use the Android operating system as a platform to run other useful IPTV based systems, this enables the MAG to outperform any currently available Android TV Box’s running IPTV services, far much less resources are used with Linux and this is why the MAG is able to run faster, cooler and more efficiently.
We ran the same IPTV service on an Android box and then on the MAG254, we then asked a 65 year old male who admitted he wasn’t at all tech savvy to use both systems and share with us which system he thought was more user friendly. The MAG 254 IPTV Set Top Box was clearly his choice.
The way in which the MAG 254 IPTV Set Top Box user interface was set up ensures the ease of use which is so required by many users out there who find other similar products too complicated to use, the MAG reduces complexity to a near nonexistence and this is a key selling point for the less tech savvy user.