So, just how is that cord-cutting going?

I keep hearing from readers who say something like “I cut the cord years ago. I only stream.” But when pressed the story generally becomes murkier. Just exactly what are they streaming? Are they paying for commercial streaming services? Are they using murky Android-based boxes? The latter tend to be supplied by “some guy” with equally murky connections.

Let’s just stop right here and point out that these Android TV solutions, some use the term IPTV, while promising to stream anything and everything, “including the latest movies”, nearly always end up being abandoned as an exercise in frustration. Unlike say a cable TV subscription, a particular channel or service won’t necessarily be found in the same location from day to day with an IPTV solution.

Essentially, these IPTV boxes, or at least the underlying services delivering content to them, are illegal. The content, the channels, the feeds, the movies, the pay-per-view content, they are all pirated and packaged and resold to unwitting end users.

Not only basically illegal but of varying quality, sometimes looking re-recorded, sometimes having poor sound quality, sometimes having text overlays in foreign languages. Anyone used to the pretty uniform quality of a cable TV feed quickly tires of the unpredictable nature of these IPTV solutions.

On the other hand, in some cases the pirates steal directly from the legitimate service providers, taking their streaming IPTV and “splitting” the signal directly from an encrypted satellite feed

Readers may find it strange that the boxes themselves aren’t illegal. They are, after all, nothing more than a collection of electronics parts which can be used for other legal purposes. It’s the services which feed these boxes that are illegally obtained.

Here in Canada there have been several high profile “busts” of IPTV operators who pirated commercial content and repackaged it for Android TV boxes. These busts were largely driven by the big telcos, the likes of Bell, Videotron, and Rogers.

Rather than targeting individual home users of Android-type TV boxes, the high profile cases have pursued retailers and large-scale content piracy operators, and some of these have exacted heavy penalties, both financial and involving incarceration.

Essentially, in one ruling, the federal courts eliminated advertising for these devices, or at least advertising specific pirated content which could accompany such boxes. The net effect is that advertising for these devices moved underground and to word-of-mouth formats.

In the UK, a particularly high profile piracy case back in 2023 involved Premier League Soccer matches. Six people behind the scheme were sentenced to jail time, the leader to eleven years. In Canada we have seen several multimillion-dollar penalties levied against pirates. 

With ever-increasing monthly cable TV subscription fees the big telcos have become everyone’s favorite whipping boy target. Who remembers when Vancouver-area cable TV could be had for $5 a month? Who remembers when a Netflix subscription was $5 a month? Hardly anyone of course.

In recent years many have eliminated cable TV altogether, opting to use various streamed services such as Netflix, Prime Video, CraveTV and the like, but eventually finding they are spending as much, or more, as they did previously. The big telcos in Canada are also the internet service providers and they shown no hesitancy to make up for revenue loss on the TV subscription side by gains on the internet service side.

No wonder there’s still a market, illegal though it may be, for pirated IPTV. Equally, no wonder that some households forgo TV of any sort altogether and pay only for internet service and use it to watch content through Alphabet’s YouTube platform, perhaps coupled with free ad-supported TV, known as FAST, such as Pluto, The Roku Channel, and Tubi.

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