this post was submitted on 29 Feb 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I've owned four different android TV boxes from AliExpress over the years, from different manufacturers, different sellers, and different versions of Android. None of them ever came with malware. I'm a member of the CoreElec community forums where thousands of people own android TV boxes, hundreds of different models and hundreds of different firmware versions, and nobody ever once talked about having malware on their device. That LTT video is ill-informed and out of proportion. Anyway, nobody ever buys the Android TV box to use whatever crappy old version of Android they include, they immediately wipe the partition and install CoreElec on it, with kodi and all the plugins you'd ever want.
I have two of them running CoreElec for my media centres, and one with Armbian OS with HomeAssistant installed, running my home automation. They're the best bang-for-buck ARM powered Linux hardware you can get, miles better than a raspberry PI.
I do agree it's out of proportion. Most people are just them to stream content after all not do their taxes and send corporate emails. I mentioned it because the possibility is there for something malicious and some people consider that due to security or privacy concerns.
I feel like the average consumer uses their Android TV boxes the way that they come. This is the first time I've even heard of CoreELEC despite using LibreELEC. Thanks for mentioning it. I have doubts every obscure cheap Android box is supported though.
LibreElec reduced official support for SBCs with Amlogic Cpus (like the Odroid C2, Odroid C4, and Odroid N2) in 2018, that spawned the fork called CoreElec. Then LibreElec removed Amlogic support entirely in 2019 (they wanted to just focus on Raspberry Pi SBCs). That caused a mass exodus of users and most moved to CoreElec. That was around the same time cheap TV boxes started appearing on AliExpress, and a lot of them happened to have Amlogc CPUs like the s905X, s905X2, s905X3, and s922X, these are the same CPUs in Odroid C2 and Odroid C4 and Odroid N2, so CoreElec was able to add support for most of them.
CoreElec remains tied to LibreElec upstream, receiving the same updates.
They have a comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date hardware compatibility list. They don't support all Chinese TV boxes, but if it has an Amlogic CPU, there's a high chance it is supported. If you're unsure, just look at any one of the hundreds of "will this cheap TV box work?" threads on their forum.
Thanks for the heads up. I was trying to install LibreELEC on some SBC a while ago but support for ended before hand so I ended up using some old computer. I might have to give it a go.
The average consumer doesn't buy android TV boxes from AliExpress. They use a Google Chromecast or a NVidia shield, or Amazon Fire TV.
The people who buy these devices from China are those deliberately looking for specific hardware to use for a specific application.
I would say they are buying them from Amazon, not Ali Express. From what I've seen they've become less common as smart TVs have become more popular but people still buy them instead of Chromecasts, Fire TVs, and Nvidia Shields. It might have to do with them falling for the marketing claims of a 6K resolution and being great for gaming but a majority of the time it seems like they just need a burner device to add some kind of additional feature to their TV.
They'll plug in an external hard drive and watch movies, use them for emulation, or use it for Netflix because they have an older "dumb" TV.
I don't typically see people going through the effort of installing another OS. Maybe we are just in different circles.