Latest update removing dev mode

[Anonymous User]

Originally by JaBuzzard: (Post 1 page 49)

SeeMoreDigital wrote:
What???

A NOW TV branded box retails at just £15. 00. The Roku boxes cost signi��cantly more! Somebodies
taking a hit for the differences!

Yes Roku are not making a pro��t. There is a large difference between zero pro��t and a subsidy. The bill
of materials for a NowTV box is most likely well under £15, and my bet is most of the NowTV boxes sold
are not the £15 ones either , because wait a bit and you can get one with a pass for the same amount of
money or even less, to the point where people who never sideloaded anything have draw fulls of the
boxes, because even an offer of £20 for a box with a 3 month entertainment pass (and there have been
lots of better offers) is cheaper than buying three months of passes which would cost you £21 and you
get a spare remote too.

Originally by Wufflebonk: (Post 2 Page 49)

jabuzzard wrote:
SeeMoreDigital wrote:
What???

A NOW TV branded box retails at just £15. 00. The Roku boxes cost signi��cantly more!
Somebodies taking a hit for the differences!

Yes Roku are not making a pro��t. There is a large difference between zero pro��t and a subsidy. The
bill of materials for a NowTV box is most likely well under £15, and my bet is most of the NowTV
boxes sold are not the £15 ones either , because wait a bit and you can get one with a pass for the
same amount of money or even less, to the point where people who never sideloaded anything
have draw fulls of the boxes, because even an offer of £20 for a box with a 3 month entertainment
pass (and there have been lots of better offers) is cheaper than buying three months of passes
which would cost you £21 and you get a spare remote too.

I'll let you carry on with this one 🙂

I'm busy doing other things....

Besides I see @SeeMoreDigital and co have gotten out the vinyl's again... damn they must be so
scratched and broken now the amount of times they've been played. I think Violins are probably all but
worn out too...

Originally by ukbobboy:

@SeeMoreDigital

Hi again SMD

Unfortunately, your answer shows that you have made an assumption based on another assumption,
i.e. if a Roku 3 retail cost £70. 00 and a NowTV black box is £15. 00 then someone is loosing out
somewhere.

However , my experience is somewhat different, remember when video VHS recorder , way back when,
cost on average £400. 00 retail. Did you know that they only cost £71. 00 to manufacture, package and
ship from Japan to the UK, the additional costs were mainly just "mark-up", i.e. what the market will
bear .

Since retail economics has not changed since then, just the products sold, I would suggest you rethink
your "highly subsidised" mantra, unless you can prove otherwise.


UK Bob

Originally by 4268:

@ukbobboy have you considered that there is such a thing as a loss leader .

Originally by Eddie-M (NowTV Team):

Hi @Anonymous User


Thanks for raising your concerns to us here on the Community, In relation to what a Now TV agent has
said about Plex being illegal your correct it is not however the content available to use with in Plex and
other Apps like it can be seen as illegal and therefore puts Now TV in a difficult position with Studios
and Record companies and therefore the decision was made to remove the Dev Mode which enabled
the ability to install Plex via Sideloading due to Plex not being available in the Now TV app store. Also if
apps are being used via the Now T v box that are not available in the App store provided and are
installed by other means i.e Sideloading then Now TV have the right to remove that functionallity if we
wish to do so. If your complaint relates to official apps in the app store available via the Now TV box
then please do raise those concerns with us and we will do what we can can to rectify them. However if
it only relates to an app not offically available on the Now TV box then we cannot do anything further
and there would be no legal basis for us to put that function back as it is against our terms of use. I
hope this clears it up for you and if you have any further questions please do ask away and we will do
our best to answer or at least get the answer for you.


Thanks
Eddie

Originally by DessieB:

Hi Eddie,

I wonder if you could take a moment to explain how customers using Plex on a NOW TV box puts Now
TV in a difficult position with Studios and Record companies, but Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Roku
all provide Plex for their Streaming boxes and Google provide Plex for android TV boxes without this
putting them in a difficult position with Studios and Record companies?

Thanks
DessieB

Originally by Eddie-M (Official NowTV Team)

Hi @Anonymous User

This would come down to legal notices Now TV have received and therefore have had to remove the
fuction due to some Customers using Plex to watch Pirated Content. So the Dev Mode has been
disabled to prevent Pirated content in the future which in turn has disabled Plex which again can be
used to access Content which can be seen as illegal. This is the steps we found nessecerry to take to
prevent this from happening. If others have not done this then we cannot speak for them we feel this
was the best step to take.


Cheers

Originally by DessieB

Hi Eddie,

So are you suggesting that Apple, Amazon, Roku and Google have not received similar legal notices, or
that they have received similar notices but have chosen to ignore them?

DessieB

Originally by Eddie-M (Official NowTV Team):

No at all @Anonymous User


I'm not suggesting anything of the sort. I am telling you what Now TV have received and what we have
done to rectify it if other companies have recieved the same notices then i'm sure they are taking the
Steps nessecerry to rectify that however we at Now TV are not privy to that information and therefore
cannot discuss what other companies intend to do if anything or if they have recieved the same
notices we can only discuss what Now TV have recieved and what we have done to ��x it. At the end of
the day Plex is not an offical app in the App store via the Now TV box therefore Now TV have no
legal obligation to provide that app and therefore can remove any means of accessing it.


Cheers

Originally by MattPenfold:

Eddie-M wrote:
Hi @Anonymous User


Thanks for raising your concerns to us here on the Community, In relation to what a Now TV agent
has said about Plex being illegal your correct it is not however the content available to use with in
Plex and other Apps like it can be seen as illegal and therefore puts Now TV in a difficult position
with Studios and Record companies and therefore the decision was made to remove the Dev Mode
which enabled the ability to install Plex via Sideloading due to Plex not being available in the Now
TV app store. Also if apps are being used via the Now T v box that are not available in the App store
provided and are installed by other means i.e Sideloading then Now TV have the right to remove
that functionallity if we wish to do so. If your complaint relates to official apps in the app store
available via the Now TV box then please do raise those concerns with us and we will do what we
can can to rectify them. However if it only relates to an app not offically available on the Now TV box
then we cannot do anything further and there would be no legal basis for us to put that function
back as it is against our terms of use. I hope this clears it up for you and if you have any further
questions please do ask away and we will do our best to answer or at least get the answer for you.


Thanks
Eddie
So why was I told Plex is illegal Eddie? You admit is untrue, yet that did not stop your colleagues from
say Plex is illegal software. What do you intend to do about their lack of honesty?

You claim you have the right to remove side-loaded apps, but you failed to offer any evidence you have
that right. Since you offered no evidence I can dismiss your claim you have that rigjt as baseless. You
have a choice. You can either offer that evidence, or accept you lied to me.

Originally by MattPenfold: (Post 1 on page 50)

Eddie,
You have admitted that Not TV altered my box. The law, in the form of the Computer Misuse Act 1990 is
clear in this regard. Unless you can show Now TV were authorized to access my box and make
alterations NOW TV have committed a criminal offence under Section 35 of that act. It is possible that
Now TV could be considered to have committed an offence under Section 37 , if there was intend to
impair use of the computer . A Section 35 offence carries a maximum sentence of 2 years
imprisonment, and a Section 37 offence carries a maximum of 10 years. Both offences can also carry
an unlimited Ƭne.
So you can only claim that Now TV have not comitted an offence under either Section 35 or 37 if you
can show you had authorisation to access my Now TV box. If you cannot do so, you will be admitting
that NOW TV commited a criminal offence.

Originally by WuffleBonk: (Post 2 on page 50)

@Anonymous User from NowTV, I think there's an age old addidge here that relates to Digging holes and knowing
when to stop 😄

From what I can see, your just not doing ANYTHING to help here, except making up what looks like
semi plausible explanations and hoping that we'll all buy into it.

I have to tip my hat and give you points for trying though. As myself and my co-conspiritors have
recently discovered, we can actually use the official, authourized apps that ARE in the NowTV store,
and pre installed on the box, INCLUDING YOUR VERY OWN NOWTV APP , to play ANY CONTENT we
want, including pirated content should we so wish, I wonder what the recording industry and
music/movie producers that sent NowTV those cease and desist plex letters would do if they found out
about that fact???

I think you'd be forced to remove your own apps, and every official app from the box, IF what your
trying to spin to us all, is actually true....

[Anonymous User]

Agreed - Now TV have simply amended their software not to include dev mode. I just so happens that this also removes any other software that was accessing it.

There are only two options and the legal route is not one.

1) Leave Now TV (And if perhaps enough people do in protest maybe just maybe it would be magically re-instated.)

2) Buy a dedicated box such as Android that you can add whatever you want to it.

[Anonymous User]

So tonight, I got hold of an as yet, NOT updated black now TV box.

I tried the trick to stop it updating, which sort of worked, but then didn't..... let me explain.

As you all should know by now, the trick is to change to the staging server, let it boot , enter your username and password, change it back from staging server to api.roku.com, go back to password screen, hit continue, let it auth, then as soon as you see the updating screen pull the plug so it cannot update your apps and thus the firmware to disable anything.

All well and good, that worked fine, then I blocked the devices mac address on my router, so it couldn't get out of the network, plugged it back in, booted it up and as expected got the long wait, followed by the black screen with no apps installed, as expected.

All this time, I had running on another computer a copy of wireshark watching everything the device was trying to do.

Now at this point, I'd like to make clear, I run my own DNS server.  This means that, beacuse the device is NOT trying to get to a DNS server outside my network by itself, it is in fact able to request an address and get an answer (as it's my DNS server doing the actual look up), this means that my NowTV box, can find the IP addresses of the various servers, but its unable to talk to them beacuse it's blocked from doing so.

So now onto the interesting part....

I was watching it, obviously testing for a network connection, to do whatever it is that it was trying to do, and I saw somw of the usual things taking place that Iv'e seen before while Iv'e been deconstruction how these things work.

It was evident that it realised something wasn't quite right, beacuse it's able to DNS, but not able to connect.

Out of no where, it suddenly started, well the best way to describe it is.......going mental

It decided to hit the DNS, look up an IP address, then proceed to slam that IP address as hard as it could for about 30 seconds.  It backed off for 10 seconds then did it again.

Over and over and over, consistantly looking up 

captive.roku.com

then hitting the IP address obtained with as much traffic as it could (as fast as my net would allow it... I'm on a gigabit lan) for 30 seconds and repeat.

I sat watching this with some mirth, UNTIL.....   the damn thing upset my router, which propmptly did what it's designed to do when it thinks there's a dos attack against it, and rebooted.

Ok, nothing major, it happens, but then I watched my wireshark trace, the box continued to test, dns lookup and try.... and guess what.

There was a very brief gap in my routers boot up sequence, before the MAC security came up properly, that the now box managed to get a connection out of the network, I mean literally 10 maybe even 5 seconds or less, what ever it managed to grab was enough for it to disable developer mode.

It can't have been more than a few K of data, but the unit now no longer has the dev mode keypress on the handset enabled, and since I didn't yet get around to enabling the dev mode web server, this box is now like all my others locked out.

As far as I can see, this box has basically just smashed it's way out of my network to grab a tiny small file that obviously disbled the keypress.

I may actually be, that this was not a full blown rom/firmware update as we've all been thinking, but simply just a small executable script of some kind to change the required settings.

What I do know is that this box will now not side load anything, so I'm screwed in what I was going to try and do (Iv'e written a file system explorer using the SDK which I was going to side load and see what ws on the file system) and unless I can get hold of another unit that's not been updated, I can't do that now.

Anyway, that's been my evenings entertainment, lets see what comes of it.

[Anonymous User]

---

@Anonymous User wrote:

This thread is completely pointless dev mode isn't coming back get over it, if you want to get angry then be angry at the greedy criminal element that were selling plex servers on the boxes, they are the reason you can't use plex on now tv boxes.  

---

Dev mode may not be coming back, but that doesn't mean you can't still play movies from your plex server on it.

The fight goes on, and believe me, I can still play movies from my plex collection on my units, even though they've been updated....

AND YES, before you point it out, I know what I said in my previous post about the boxes now being useless, by that I mean there now no use for me to run abritrary code , not useless for streaming media.

[Anonymous User]

WARNING TO ALL

Iv'e just been sat here working away, when out the corner of my eye I happened to see one of my black NTV boxes reboot itself.

It was just sat there in the background doing nothing, screen saver is disabled, so it was just sat on the home screen.

Anyway, I went into the system/about menu's and sure enough:  Last checked for update: 5/5/2017@10pm , Last updated 5/5/2017@10pm so the damn thing just did another update.  Nothing on the screen to tell me this was happening, and for once I didn't have the packet capture running beacuse I was sitting analyzing an already previously captured trace!!!

Anyway......

I set about doing a few tests, and NOT ONE of the secret screen or secret menu key presses now works on this box, it would appear that every single one of them have been disabled.

Looks like NTV are attempting to block every single avenue of exploitation.

To boot... this box was NOT configured for the usual api.roku.com , it was set to api.qa.roku.com (Or one of the alternatives) , anyway... on restarting the box after this happened, with the packet trace running, I saw it try to access "api.roku.com" so it appears not only are they blocking everything, but also changing the settings back to the standard/uk ones in the process.

[ukbobboy]

@Anonymous User

Hey WB

Give it up, you're on a hiding to nothing.  Besides, most of us have given up on the NowTV box and either bought a Roku 2 or 3 box, which I have.

Personally, I am never again going to let an organisation reach into my home and dictate what I should or should not play on my equipment. 

Right now, I have Plex back , I am playing my digital music again and I going to have a beer.

Anyway, I wish you all the best in your endeavours.

UK Bob

[Anonymous User]

---

@ukbobboy wrote:

@Anonymous User

Hey WB

Give it up, you're on a hiding to nothing.  Besides, most of us have given up on the NowTV box and either bought a Roku 2 or 3 box, which I have.

Personally, I am never again going to let an organisation reach into my home and dictate what I should or should not play on my equipment. 

Right now, I have Plex back , I am playing my digital music again and I going to have a beer.

Anyway, I wish you all the best in your endeavours.

UK Bob

---

Not gonna happen.....

🙂

Once a tech head, always a tech head, and i WILL NOT be beaten, it's as simple as that.

I WILL crack this, one way or another.

Then I'll happily rub the results right in sky's face, with a big middle finger to them.

[Anonymous User]

---

@ukbobboy wrote:

@Anonymous User

Hey WB

Give it up, you're on a hiding to nothing.  Besides, most of us have given up on the NowTV box and either bought a Roku 2 or 3 box, which I have.

Personally, I am never again going to let an organisation reach into my home and dictate what I should or should not play on my equipment. 

Right now, I have Plex back , I am playing my digital music again and I going to have a beer.

Anyway, I wish you all the best in your endeavours.

UK Bob

---

PS: I do have plex back on my upgraded boxes, or at least the ability to use them to stream films and music from plex, so that part of the equation I solved, and that part I can and do stick a middle finger up at Sky, with a big ol Na Na Na Na...

However, it's wrong that they should get away with doing this.  Got nothing to do with getting plex back, but everything to do with shoving it to the man.

[ukbobboy]

@Anonymous User

Hi WB

Yes, I know where you're coming from, and I do agree with you.

But, as you know, Sky/NowTV has made a commercial decision to "lock down" the NowTV boxes so that users cannot choose any app or facility other than those on offer in their app store.

This also shows that Sky/NowTV will not implement any ideas or suggestions from users that ask for this "lock down" to be loosened, i.e. UKTV Play, use of the USB and SD ports, etc. I suspect there will be continual small incremental improvements but nothing big will be allowed.

With the above in mind I've decided to cut my loses, ditch my NowTV box, and buy a Roku 3, it has lots more facilities and more enjoyable to use.

Still WB, as long as you keep on keeping on then more power to you.

Cheers.

UK Bob

[Anonymous User]

Hey Wufflebonk,

Can you now tell us how you crackedit? (Plex on NowTv box) ?

Thanks

[Anonymous User]

Adding my two cents.... Considering I've now lost the ability to watch my homemade movies via the now tv box I shall eventually be cutting off sky for everything... Worthwhile decision by the suits as I'm sure they don't want me as a customer anyway!