Quote:I've had both, and prefer Fire TV. If you have a Kindle Fire there is a remote control app, essentially giving you an extra remote control (admittedly a minor benefit to most) plus you can mirror your Fire to your TV. Great for adult entertainment.

 

Not that I ever use it for that.

 

The Roku model I had did not have the voice search feature, but the Fire TV feature works great.

 

The  downside of Fire TV is the sometimes annoying marriage with Amazon Prime content. It's great if you have Prime, not so much if you don't.

 

I pulled the trigger and ordered a Fire TV Box instead of the stick.  I have Amazon Prime so I figured this would be the better device for me.  It also appears relatively easy to install other applications such as Kodi on it.

 

Quote:Maybe I'm too paranoid. But with it being illegal, how do you stay in the clear? Do you use a VPN? Are those legal? Or is it just one of those things that aren't really enforced?

 

I'm certainly no lawyer, so take my opinion however you want.

 

Technically speaking, you are not downloading anything as in saving it.  You are only streaming content that is on the internet.  Think watching youtube or videos on break.com.  Now if you are hosting copyrighted material on the internet allowing others to stream it, then that is what is really illegal.

 

Also, the default addons included with and supported by Kodi are perfectly legal and there is quite a bit of programming available.  Most of it is just an easy interface to youtube as well as free legal content from CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS and FOX.  There is also content from other sources such as the Smithsonian Channel, HGTV, Food Network, etc.  It also has an app to stream video from various websites including NFL.com and Jaguars.com.

 

Check out the official website for Kodi and look at their wiki for more details.

 

My personal next step is to set up a MythTV server for recording content.  At this point I would only be able to record over the air broadcasts, but I can probably hack a way to record from other sources including streams.

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