I pay $12/mo for about 1000 channels. It's not a box, but an app installed on my TV. I wasn't paying for cable before I had it and I won't once it inevitably gets shut down.

This is where it gets tricky. In recent years, an emerging trend in the world of TV has been for enterprising parties and individuals to establish illegitimate IPTV services. For a lot of people, these services may come across as completely legitimate subscription TV services.

After all, they are paying a monthly subscription fee for it, they're just conveniently and inexplicably much lower than those charged by literally any "legitimate" or "official" domestic service provider or, for that matter, their American counterparts which may be accessible to residents of Canada through the grey market.

This is, again, where it gets tricky. The simple thing that distinguishes a legitimate streaming service (i.e. Netflix, Paramount+, Disney Plus or Amazon Prime Video, etc.) or service provider utilizing Internet Protocol TeleVision technology (i.e. Bell Fibe TV or Rogers Ignite) from an illegal one is that the illegal ones are basically re-transmitting channels without any sort of permission from the owners of said channels or the intellectual property owners of the programming itself. In some if not many or maybe even most cases, the technical quality of the streams through illegal services will be inferior to those of legitimate ones, regardless of the speed and stability of your internet connection.

Back in 2015 or '16 I actually saw a "demonstration" by an entity selling generic Android TV boxes at Central Parkway Mall in Mississauga. From what I can remember, rather than a "service" requiring any sort of ongoing payment, they were actually just selling boxes that had been loaded with software that loaded up pirated streams of TV channels and "on demand" shows and movies entirely for free, the latter of which are basically just non-downloading streams from peer-to-peer file sharing networks. The picture quality was poor with the visible screen resolution being what I can describle simply as noticably less-than-HD and the framerate was jerky. This was highly noticable when looking at CNN's news ticker.

Often, in the case of sports and other specialty programming, these illegal IPTV services are also at odds with domestic holders of program distribution rights, such as TSN and Sportsnet. These exact same truths apply in the U.S and other countries as well. The Antenna Man on YouTube made an excellent video describing illegal IPTV services and why they should be avoided by anyone looking to stay out of legal trouble, and of course the advantage of having an antenna as part of your TV setup.

Last edited by tdotwriter (April 7, 2025 5:21 pm)

Some of my friends have these boxes and receive a pile of channels.  My opinion is owning the boxes is legal, however most of the channels received are not, as the CRTC has not cleared these channels for Canadian consumers.
I would love to see the Canadian broadcast system survive, but these boxes are slowly killing the media business.

I don’t use IPTV services very much due to buffering very often. My parents use it to watch the american channels like the Food Network, iON, CMT (My mom loves watching the Golden Girls), Paramount Network since all Canadian providers dropped it last year. My dad watches the Discovery Turbo channel and Al Jazeera. Sometimes it buffers most of the time it does not. I just watch TV on Pluto TV or my cable TV provider.

Dave The OTA guy wrote:

"Those Boxes" aren't just for accessing an IPTV service. They were originally designed for the installation of apps before 'smart tvs' came with many pre-installed. Unfortunately people only think of those boxes for use with grey or black market apps. I still use an android box for legit apps as well as an IPTV service, I even still use Kodi (XBMC) to stream too. If I'm not watching TV with my antenna (~50 channels in Niagara) I'm watching something on my Android box.

In this day and age when live TV is pretty much on life support, you'd think it would make sense to offer hundreds if not thousands of live TV channels from all around the world for a low price to people all around the world, but of course it would be impossible to get every broadcaster on board and it would never happen: You need half a dozen streaming apps to be able to watch everything and then if you want sports, you're easily in over $100.00 a month.

But of course it all boils down to money and "rights issues". I'm so tired of geo-blocking still being a "thing" in 2025.

These IPTV 'pirates' do it right, but the industry is too busy shutting them down to realise they could capitalize on something like this.

I wonder if the introduction of Next Gen TV which includes stations being able to scramble their signals was an attempt to reduce the number of channels available on the IPTV boxes. Also, you mentioned that you receive 50 channels with your antenna in Niagara. Would the rarely seen WBBZ and never seen  WBXZ [in the GTA] be two of them?

Having worked in television, firstly with a cable provider and then various channels, I have a problem with signal theft. You’re stealing, plan and simple, and there is no grey area. With the state of broadcasting these days, they need all the revenue they can get, so stop stealing from them or there will nothing left to steal!

Shorty Wave wrote:

Having worked in television, firstly with a cable provider and then various channels, I have a problem with signal theft. You’re stealing, plan and simple, and there is no grey area. With the state of broadcasting these days, they need all the revenue they can get, so stop stealing from them or there will nothing left to steal!

I hear you .. &, even though i'm quite capable of finding other sources, that's why I've always bought & continue to buy Sportsnet & TSN so I can watch all the Leafs & Jays games.

.. but .. 

Then the powers-that-be took some of those games away by giving/selling them to PrimeTV & AppleTV which would cause me to pay more to get what I already had.  I didn't see a fee reduction when they reduced my Sportsnet/TSN sports package.

I saw somewhere that a Yankee fan would have to buy 6 separate services to see all the Yankee games .. that's insane.

get too greedy & folks become more flexible with what they're willing to do.

i have no qualms watching the Leafs/Jays Prime/Apple games via alternate means.

mace wrote:

There are some U.S. channels that the CRTC will not authorize to be available in Canada. If they were available, I would gladly pay for them. Since they aren't, I will watch them illegally and not feel guilty at all.

I get the logic and I hate that the CRTC keeps many great U.S. cable stations from getting to Canadians, primarly over rights issues. I vastly prefer "open skies" and letting everyone complete for a viewer's dollar. 

But how would you judge a fence who sells stolen jewelry? He didn't actually swipe the gems, so is he off the hook for selling them to someone else just because he's not the one who took them?

I have IPTV. Main reason why is because in my building Rogers is included and it is a decent cable package but I enjoy watching Canucks and Oilers games but they are usually blacked out. So I subscribed to the Sportsnet+ but that was problematic as even certain games were still blacked out. I was able to get more American games but rarely the games I wanted. So I switched to IPTV. I also watch a lot of Rugby and Aussie Rules Football so I watch that on this service. I pay less for the IPTV then I did for Sportsnet+ and I get the games I want within Canada. 
I do know that not every regional game is blacked out on the app but there were to many that it was not worth it. What I like about my IPTV is I can skip back on channels (not all) and I usually can get a lot of shows on demand as well. Now I will say, I do have Crave (included with my free Rogers), Netflix, Disney+ Prime Video and Paramount. I also use Youtube Premium so I have the majority of the services I need and I get most of the shows I need. Through Telus (my cell phone provider) I get Prime Video, Netflix and Disney+ for 40 or so a month, plus the cost of Paramount at 10 a month plus family YouTube Premium, I end up paying 75 or so a month for all the streaming services which is less than what my monthly cable would cost if I paid for the package I actually have. So illegal or not I use the IPTV service mostly for sports. I also enjoy the 24/7 streams of certain TV shows or movies. There is one that is all Tarantino movies, some that are all Tom Hanks, or Samuel L. Jackson, or whatever, some by genre, and then there is the streams of the TV shows and there are lots. So I use it. I also primarily use all my streaming services on the Apple TV box that I have. I have one on each TV and it keeps track of the shows I am watching and when there are new episodes available except on Netflix for some reason. The IPTV service works with an app I can install to the Apple TV. If IPTV were illegal and companies wanted it stopped they should go after Google and Apple that have apps in the stores to stream IPTV services. 

Whenever the next round of USMCA talks happens, Trump and company will be on the warpath about culture.  They will want to do away with cancon regs, and any limitations on US programming or culture entering into Canada either on cable or any other form.  To me this is absolutely wrong.  The US should never dictate what another country sees on TV or on radio, especially on our own broadcasting systems.  They would be out of their lane and overstepping their authority. Let's hope the "Canada looking out for itself" trend continues. 

I know at times myself, and maybe more than a few others are getting tired of American culture being constantly rammed down our throats.  

The digital tax will be part of negotiations, this will be another area where we are "treating them terribly."  Canada isn't the only country that has a digital tax.  And you are correct depending who wins the election, the tax would likely be scrapped anyway. 

The Republicans don't like cancon and some broadcasting regulations since it is seen as putting US programming and music at a disadvantage and blocks out their media.  The fact that Canada has had more access to American media and culture for over 100 years than any other country, other than the US, seems not to count or matter. 

Open skies would put Canadian media at a disadvantage and the Trump government really couldn't care less.

...and to expect anyone forgoing sending $50/month to a company that is going to pay a single baseball player $500million should be in a moral quandary is nuts. 

We know where that money's going.

Last edited by RadioAaron (April 9, 2025 6:43 pm)