I've learned a ton in the last 24 hours, and even set up my new livetv subscription.
I feel like I still need to visualize how this android box thing breaks down, as some aspects are still fuzzy.
KODI is an App on the android box? What are the "add ons" on Kodi? An app on an app?
I set up my live tv using STB emulator. Frankly because I cant figure out add-ons yet, and the emulator felt more direct, instead of setting up the subscription as a kodi add on.
So how does the box break down? It's all just apps? or Kodi is more than just an app?
I'm trying to visualize how all this maps out to follow the layout.
On a PC, Windows is my OS, and I install the software's to execute things, firefox, chrome, word, excel, quicktax... whatever.
how does it layout in an android box if you put it in those terms?
Ok. I will give it a go for you. First the Android box is a generic term. Everyone has an opinion on what are the best ones and what aren't. But lets break them into three categories. First there are real Android TV boxes, that is they use a flavour of android designed specifically to be run on televisions. These are limited today mostly to the Nvidia Shield, Xaomi Mi Box and the now retired Nexus player. The next category is the generic and generally offshore android box. They are versions of Android that were designed to work on telephones and are now operating on these standard arm processor boxes. They can usually be identified by the crappy remotes, oddly stretched screens and the generic version of android that they run. My experience has been they don't receive new updates to the operating system easily and are generally cheaper knockoffs. The third category is smart streaming devices using a supported OS similar to or often a derivative of Android but well maintained and updated. The devices that come to mind are the most popular FireTV and Firestick by Amazon and Roku in it's various forms. Any and all of these boxes have there benefits and short comings. From price to open architecture the argument can go on forever and is largely opinion based. This is similar to the Mac or PC argument.
So now we have established that Android is the operating system or a flavour of it depending on your device FireOS, linus or OpenElec would also qualify depending on the device.
On you device you load apps. Just as you would on an android phone or Apple product. In the old windows world we called them programs. Regardless what device there are many many apps available both from the app store or independently. Some apps are not designed to be used on specific devices either because the author chose not to support it or the screen orientation doesn't translate well to a 16X9 tv or sometimes do to listing or copyright issues. In those cases people can sideload apps. This a the process of loading an independent app on the device by a means other than the authorized app store for the device. Best example of this is the Amazon products which do not support the Google Play App Store by default. Those devices use Amazons App store. Amazon, for their own reasons have chosen not to authorize certain apps, like Kodi in particular. This means those apps must be loaded manually using some sideload process. In most cases it's not that hard. Other more common apps are readily available on most device app stores. Things like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, iHeartRadio, Spotify, PLEX, YouTube, Esfile Explorer Kodi and STB Emulator. These are all apps.
Each of these apps has its purpose. Some are to stream music, some to watch locally store video, some to watch streamed video services. In fact, these is even a Reddit app available to read awesome notes like this.
Kodi is one such app. Kodi is the evolution of an app that was developed many years ago under the name XBMC or as it was known as Xbox Media Center. It had no official affiliation with Microsoft but there was always an issue with naming convention so the open source program was renamed Kodi thereby losing the potential that Microsoft would get upset. The original releases were designed to stream video libraries that were stored locally. There was no issue of weather the content was legal or not because it was being used to stream files that were on your home server or pc. How you came to acquire such files, whether they were home movies or pirated downloads it was your content streamed inside your own home. Over time, the open source team developed new functions, like weather updates, RSS feeds, movie trailers, imdb movie lookups. Rather than make a very complete but complicated app that could do anything and everything these functions were developed as add ons. Add ons could be loved so you only loaded the one you needed. For example not everyone cared about cricket tests, or NASCAR news, or Victoria Secret Swimsuit promos. Add ons used the core program KODI to stream video and organize content. All the content provided by the Kodi Team was free and legally available on the internet. Addons were scrapers that consolidated free and legal video and audio from the internet and made it easy to watch on a PC, and later linus and android devices.
At some point developers began to write add ons that could access paid content on the internet. For example there was an add-on that allowed you watch Hulu if had a valid account. Not long after there were add ons written that would allow you access torrents, or file servers that hosted pirated or copyrighted material.
The Kodi app developers did not support these add ons and accepted no culpability to how people chose to use their core program. These third party add-ons are kept in repositories not associated with KODI but continue to grow in popularity and use. The argument is much the same as the manufacturer of a vehicle can not be held responsible for who drives or how it is driven or if it used to rob a bank.
That lands us to today, where Kodi is used by a great number of people to access what is arguably copyrighted or illegal content and have it streamed to there homes.
Lastly we have your question about IPTV. While there are legal iptv services most of the ones we discuss here are not legitimate liscenced rebroadcasters of the material they offer. No matter how hard you try to justify it. It's not grey. Its black and white and your watching unlicensed copyrighted material and thats why its fractions of the price of cable. That said like any other stream or file on the internet is can be accessed through a number of different methods. Some offer specific programs or apps, others use an emulator that makes the computer look like a set top box, and some use KODI with a very specific add-on . Some even offer specific Roku channels to do the same thing. I hope that helps.
Sorry for the long answer but it's not an easy set of questions.
Cheers