IPTV in the UK
What can I say? Content IP rights holders are more important than providing a legal service to the masses. We aren't even going to deep dive the freely service either.
Messy. Let's start with the boilerplate. IPTV is completely legal in the UK. The UK is the perfect market for IPTV. Anecdotally it's even doing quite well here. The technology is fairly mature and and the infrastructure exists for it's deployment.
The only problem is that getting legal Freeview IPTV is currently very difficult to come by. The new service from FreeView called Freely doesn't even plug the gap, it's just another app and it's OEM only. No provisions for IPTV clients and players. It's a wild west, there's a small handful of illegal operators in the UK and hundreds of resellers repackaging or piggy backing off these suppliers.
Thousands of channels for £12 pound a year including sports? That's a very good deal that even the established legal distributors can't even compete with. It's an upsetting situation that the only way you can get good TV without cable or an antenna is to pay a criminal or a low IQ side hustle freak for pirated "premium" digital TV.
I can't encourage it but it fills the gaps in the market where there is massive demand and no legal supply. It's the same situation as cannabis in the UK, government inaction means that foreign agents are making money off the backs of the hardworking British people. Maybe I'm just angry I can't set up Tivimate on my firestick and tune into UK Freeview channels easily without having to setup a TVheadend box with two tuner cards. I might touch on TV headend in a future post.
However there is a saving grace, the British TV Club! (https://britishtv.club/)
Which is apparently defunct now, it was a charitable organisation rebroadcasting Freeview TV in standard definition for most channels, available to use via M3U for IPTV clients. It was still copyright infringement but these are channels available free on OTA, FreeSat and Cable. It makes sense to me because of IP rights but it's still nonsense, maybe their mistake was charging for it which can be misconstrued as commercial use. Either way this is a win for the true pirates, the evil ones. The middle aged people running a non profit technical project in my heart doesn't count. But what people will turn to now are the likes of IPTV GEAR or Xtreme HD IPTV which are both illegal and bordering on being scams. You will know plenty of people using illegal IPTV services, some services may stop working as they run off with your money or are closed down by law enforcement. But honestly seeing what happened to the British TV Club it might just be worth paying a criminal for cheap pirate TV then trimming the M3U down to just the freeview channels then funnelling them into your TV sticks. Just make sure you have a tv license and pay for your service by Monero.
Can't have anything anymore, The original flash ultimate spray got discontinued, cilit bang is actually terrible in comparison. Can't buy strong HCL anymore without an explosives precursors license and the Rat poison your council uses for pest control is the same formulation and strength as the stuff you get off amazon. Wouldn't be surprised if you can still buy Potassium Nitrate in Homebase.
Read more about how pirate IPTV works, you side hustle freaks don't get any ideas. Drop shipping is bad enough as it is, you do not need access to an IPTV affiliate program or reseller panel.
https://www.friendmts.com/illegal-iptv-wholesalers-an-evolving-criminal-operation/
https://www.dekuzu.com/en/2020/07/actors-illegal-iptv-ecosystem.html