Television entertainment box

[aguycalledsteve]

Install Showbox on your phone. (Free)
Install Allcast on your phone. (Free)
Stick a Chromecast dongle in your TV (Not free; although I'm not even sure if you need it if the TV is on your WiFi network)

Enjoy movies, box sets etc. for free, no subscription

Showbox is ok if you can find streams that work. It's the same thing with the Kodi boxes. My experience of them was loads of channels saying they had all the latest stuff but none of them were actually working. I spent longer searching for decent content than actually watching so the kodi box went in the bin.

 

[rockweasel]

Showbox is ok if you can find streams that work. It's the same thing with the Kodi boxes. My experience of them was loads of channels saying they had all the latest stuff but none of them were actually working. I spent longer searching for decent content than actually watching so the kodi box went in the bin.

We're not talking about the same Showbox (it's not the one available on the official Android play store) if that is the case with your experience as I've never had a TV show or movie fail to stream and I've been using it for at least a couple of years now. It's a black and yellow clapperboard icon that appears when installed. I'm not going to post a link to the download as it is a peer to peer application. The quality is as good as a watching normal TV or streamed movies. I did have trouble with syncing the sound and pictures at first, but once the Allcast app was installed (instead of using Chromecast) that problem disappeared. I have only once or twice had a movie that has obviously been filmed illegally from a cinema seat.

 

[wookie]

I spent longer searching for decent content than actually watching so the kodi box went in the bin.

Thant's not the fault of Kodi, just because one of the addon's is advertising content that isn't available doesn't mean Kodi is rubbish. It's like Kodi has been getting flack recently for allowing people to watch content they haven't paid for, it's not Kodi's fault, it's like blaming Ford for committing a Bank robbery just because the criminals drove away in a Ford Focus.

I've had a HTPC running Kodi for years, it has FreeSat & FreeView tuners in it so I can legally record all the freely availble tv that I want, plus it has my entire music collection and film collection and tv boxsets on it. So called "smart tv's" are clunky as hell compared to using Kodi.

 

[aguycalledsteve]

Thant's not the fault of Kodi, just because one of the addon's is advertising content that isn't available doesn't mean Kodi is rubbish. It's like Kodi has been getting flack recently for allowing people to watch content they haven't paid for, it's not Kodi's fault,

I'm not disagreeing that Kodi isn't a good piece of software. It's actually quite good managing media that's local on a NAS. Some of the plugins are really good at what they do.

My Kodi experience was let down by the streams that were rubbish or non existent and coupled with with a poor UI from the android box vendor. Things were missing off the screen, interfaces were clunky and a pain to try and use. In the end I was spending more time faffing trying to find a decent source or fighting with the remote. So it went in the bin and switched to plex that I can control and cast from my phone. Haven't looked back since.

 

[Burdekin]

We have gone back to a recording box with Freeview, has loads of channels: https://www.freeview.co.uk/why-freeview/channels#Y5ORttZU3l5wO4eL.97

We also have Apple TV box for movies etc and I use it to play NowTV to buy a day's sport when I want to watch rugby internationals etc.

 

[reb78]

So for those who dont want a device full of apps, whats the cheapest reliable way to simply stream from your phone to the TV? Something that works equally well with Apple or Android would be good.

 

[aguycalledsteve]

I use a Google Chromecast. Most apps support them with the exception of Amazon Prime.

about £30 quid from ASDA and the like.

 

[tom 748]

you get every thing with the fire stick

 

[ukracer]

you get every thing with the fire stick

Can you cast to it?

 

[wookie]

My Kodi experience was let down by the streams that were rubbish or non existent and coupled with with a poor UI from the android box vendor. Things were missing off the screen, interfaces were clunky and a pain to try and use.

Sadly poor hardware can really let Kodi down, sure it will run on very low powered stuff but it does need a bit of horsepower to really shine, I tried running it on a RaspberryPi thinking it'd do as a slave machine in the kitchen but the UI was sluggish even with a fairly simple skin, I tried one of the fancy skins and it was really unresponsive.

The bigger problem I'm having is there isn't much on tv these days that I want to watch.

 

[ronan]

Hardly bother with tv much now, its so rare there is anything on it i can be bothered watching. Most of the stuff i like, like movies and comedies i like are from the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's. I do like the "Talking pictures" channel, and the "Forces tv" channel. The only thing i watch apart from that is "Countdown", which can be recorded.

I had all those android boxes and kodi, codes and all that rubbish, i gave up on them.