Should I buy the Monster Box? Well, it all depends on what you actually want out of an investment in a streaming box. What is the Monster Box you might ask? The Monster Box is an android-based streaming box that is being marketed (as usual) as an all-in-one streaming solution with multiple apps and over 1000 TV channels for $399.00. It boasts perfectly nice specs and a sharp-looking profile on top of it but for those who have been observing the streaming industry for the last decade such as the Streaming Advisor we’ve seen this all before. The Monster Box it’s nothing other than a cell phone attached to a TV pretending to be a connected media device. And on top of that, its claim to fame is nothing but illegal content packaged and sold like it’s supposed to be there.
The kinds of things offered through Monster Box are getting people thrown in jail. Why? Because lots of the content offered on Monster boxes stolen plain and simple. Sure the people who push “services” like Cyberflix and so on will say it’s just streaming. And that streaming content is not illegal. When you see devices like Monster Box sold at fairs and RV shows and other events, they’ll say it’s fine it’s just coming from the internet. I mean nothing on the Internet could be illegal to view right? Well, it is illegal to distribute it. And that’s what many of the pre-loaded apps on the Monster Box do. And because of that, they are subject to being shut down. Take a look at this snippet from a published review on the Monster Box website.
“I am getting more while I can because this is honestly too good to be true, real live tv y’all!! Premium cable channels no b.s. Don’t ask me how, I just know it works like a M.F.!! Fo real..” Antony J. Hancock MI, US. Really, “Don’t ask me how it works” should be the company motto. Because if they explained it, they would likely be automatically liable for piracy.
Red Flag Alert!
Monster Box promises users that they will be able to watch well over 1,000 channels and record them if they pay a one-time fee of $399.00. HBO for life, Showtime for life, ESPN for life, and I mean that’s just 3 of over 1,000 channels. Is that too good to be true? Of course it’s too good to be true. If all those things could be legally packaged together and sold in this fashion Apple, Amazon, Roku, and Google would already be doing it. Monster Box integrates channels from something called Sterling TV. Sterling TV is not a legitimate distributor of the content it markets. Simply looking over the website for either Sterling TV and Monster Box should raise red flags. First of all, there is not a normal phone number. Instead, customers are provided a number from What’s App. Second many of the reviews on its website are written in broken English. And third, the website uses European spellings for words like center. It has the Monster Box Support “Centre”. This all points to the idea that you would be paying for American TV from a company based outside of the US. Those should always be red flags. Boxes like these rarely if ever get updates. Case in point, it should be a big red flag that The Monster Box is built on Android 9.0. Google/Android is currently in beta testing for Android 12. That should tell you something immediately. Would you buy a brand new computer that was running Windows 2000?
Does Using A Monster Box put me at risk legally?
Will you get in trouble for owning a Monster Box? Probably not. Users are rarely if ever prosecuted or punished for accessing content. The worst thing that would happen to anybody who would buy something like this is that they would have a device with a bunch of services on it that gets shut down by the movie industry. And that is happening at a rapid pace. The problem with boxes like this that unless they are using the services that keep getting the people behind them thrown in jail, they don’t have much use.
What could get you in trouble is if your Internet provider hits you for it, which is why most of the time when you see products like The Monster Box advertised you also see a VPN advertised as well. VPN’s are programs used to prevent a user from being identified via their IP Address, which you can think of as a digital fingerprint of sorts. Providers keep an eye on data use. And if your data use patterns appear off they may ping you to see what is happening.
Why are they useless without illegal content?
This is because they do not run Android TV or Google TV. The operating system is a stock version of Android that’s intended for touchscreens on phones and tablets. Its app store will not provide you with access to apps enough legitimate apps designed to be used on a TV. Want HBO Max? Great unfortunately you probably won’t be able to control it with the provided stock remote. Netflix? You might not even be able to download it at all. Sure there are some apps that you can access there might be an APK available somewhere that can provide a user with the Android TV version of an app. And maybe it will work on Android 9.0. But that takes some digging. For people willing to do that kind of digging they may as well purchase an actual Android TV device and watch a few YouTube videos about stealing content. They are still all over the place, being monetized by both the publishers and the streaming app itself.
What should I do instead?
If you want to be able to watch TV with a connected TV device you are going to be much better off purchasing one designed for a TV. And if it’s the Android environment you prefer there are a number of products on the market running Android TV that would be a much better fit, that will even run the same elicit apps that can be found on the Monster Box. The thing is though that they will also stream all of the legal services that will outlast whatever the latest “best movie service” is. Something like the NVIDIA Shield TV Pro for $199.00 brings a hefty powerful performance with real 4k HDR support along with the ability to stream content from mobile devices to the console. Users can also attach hard drives to the system to increase storage far beyond the 128GB that the Monster Box supports. And in the end, they will have a device that can run every modern streaming service, mirror their PC and utilize built-in Chromecast support. More so if they want to play with illegal services (which we do not recommend) it is still an Android device and open to it.
Monster Box advertised specifications
- Stable Android 9.0 OS for Streaming
- 4GB DDR3 High-Speed Flash Memory
- 128GB eMMC Large Storage avoiding crashes caused by insufficient memory
- Quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 Processor
- 2 Transmitter, 2 receivers, Double Antennas, 2.4G/5G Dual Band WiFi, also 10/100M Ethernet LAN
- Playback function for last 7 days
- Support 3D, 4K/6K@60fps
