If you can't setup your own Kodi box, I don't know how in the world you would be sold one and actually use it. It isn't simple to setup and it is more complicated to maintain (for someone who couldn't just set one up themselves).
People buy them and they work for a week, and then the streams break, etc. and these people have no idea how to update them so they come on the various Kodi support forums blaming Kodi for all the problems. Meanwhile the sellers have disappeared and are selling the boxes under a new name.
[1] https://kodi.tv/the-piracy-box-sellers-and-youtube-promoters...
Recently an absolutely non-tech-savvy friend of mine explained to a bunch of friends how he was streaming pirated movies, TV etc. via Kodi. I was blown away that he even knew about XBMC / Kodi, the classic media center I've been using for more than a decade (though never with subpar, crappy streams).
Needless to say he only knew about it since it was advertised as enabling piracy. He most certainly didn't download it from official sources and will run into problems in no time.
I just wanted to say that I was very surprised to see Kodi reach mainstream awareness and it's a little sad that this was enabled via the infamous piracy spotlight.
Yes, me included. I think that's an entirely different discussion, but let me just point out that I love to buy content that I own. I do it with music all the time. Buying about 5-10 lossless digital albums is a weekly habit for me. I can't do that with movies since content creators / publishers don't allow me to buy that kind of content in a digital, DRM-free format I truly own.
- It has to be DRM-free as I want to play it with my media player of choice and possibly long after the service I bought it from may or may not be around any longer. - While I don't care for the physical medium and would prefer to play the movie in Kodi, it could be Bluray if it wasn't for the long delays between theatrical release, US Bluray release and the release in my country. I don't care for localization. I require the original audio track / language. I'm not content with the delay between US Bluray and local Bluray release while the movie is already available on torrent sites.
Bottom line: I'd gladly pay for movies if it was as easy and consumer friendly as buying music.
But I will not get the same from Netflix. I have to get Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, etc. just to get back to what I actually want. I am not saying Spotify has absolutely everything, but it is so close to everything I don't have to worry too much. I don't even pay for Apple music because they have different content, I only do that because it works better in my car and spotify works better with Echo.
However the Kodi team has made an amazing job simplifying installation on numerous platforms, to the point where the most advanced thing you need to know is how to use a USB stick and 7-zip.
If these people (box sellers) ship it with a remote control, and a self-contained Kodi distro (Ubuntu), I have no problem seeing anyone using it intuitively as plug & play.
Maintaining is mostly an issue with your own library in my experience. If that part is outsourced to third party plugins there's not much to maintain. Though if that plugin breaks/is forked/whatever then you're boned.
I really feel for the Kodi team though, getting blame for piracy, numerous support requests stemming from unaffiliated third party plugins, and all for an amazing open source product they've made for free.
A cousin of mine, who's a dentist in his mid 40's and hmm lets say he lacks behind on technology, found a way to set it up and gave it to them.
They use it and they don't even understand that its using the internet to stream pirated data... I told them that and they were like "no, he bought it for us from amazon, why they sell illegal stuff there, its free".
So yes I have valid proof of 2 people that don't know how to Google - Google fully using it.
It gave access to just about every cable channel and every film and TV show. It cost £50 - his theory was that if he had to buy a new one every month, it was still cheaper and easier to use than the alternatives.
There's a little shop near me that sells Kodi boxes. They used to build PCs when that was a thing, now they do laptop and phone repairs. £69 for the box including installation, £20 for updates. That's a bargain compared to £70/month for Sky. Most people have a geeky nephew who'll sort it out for a bit of pocket money.
It's pretty much dead simple and "just works" - with the exception of what happens when the services they use dies. Then you're in trouble. The quality is also often abysmal.
That's why I'd rather use the Usenet setup (Sonarr/CouchPotato/Sabnzbd/Plex/Emby) and pay $10/mo to a sketchy IPTV service, I know they at least try to maintain their streams and if you hunt around you can find decent quality.
If they're selling Android Kodi boxes from China (which I suspect they are, since they're widely available, preconfigured and cheap), then I would disagree. These boxes have incredibly flaky UIs.
As for Kodi itself, it's fairly usable, but I would say the process of adding non-public repos for shady add-ons might be a little overcomplicated for a non-enthusiast who just wants to watch a soccer stream.
My Kodi install on my smart TV has one purpose: To play things out of a directory on my NAS. Yet I have it added roughly 7 different ways, and have no idea how or why things get cataloged. All I know is I'm too afraid to remove any of the sources because I'm not sure which one's being used.
And I'm not sure I know how to remove a source, either.
I struggled with Kodi on my jailbroken AppleTV2 and it never worked right. At least it does the basic job of playing media from my NAS, so I'm happy. No waiting for Plex to decide to index my content, no fuss, no muss. Open Kodi, play files from NAS.