Buying EE TV Box pro from retailer

[Neil5459]

I understand that the EE TV boxes remain the property of EE and have to be returned at the end of contract, or accrue a non return charge.

It is also obvious that there are many 'new' boxes out there for sale on sites such as Ebay,  CEX, Cash Converters etc.

What happens when the original user comes to the end of contract and is asked for the equipment to be returned. If they don't return it, or pay the non return fee, would EE block the MAC address of the device concerned,  so rendering it unusable to the new 'owners? 

I ask this because I need to replace an old BT Youview box, but don't want any of the EE TV subscription content- just the box itself. 

Thanks

[harrysnotter22]

I'm not sure you really understand how multicast works here. All content selectable via the EPG is delivered via multicast. I'm not an EE subscriber but am able to access all that content via the EPG, so I am definitely getting 'the multicast'.

[Midnight_Voice]

@harrysnotter22 

I’m sure I don’t understand multicast all that well, but I do know it is very rare, and that even EETV only employ it on the Box Pro and Box Mini, and they don’t use it on their AppleTV box.

So you are perhaps thinking that any service delivered in an ongoing form - live, or as the jargon has it, linear, to distinguish pre-made programmes sent over the internet from football matches and the like - is multicast, But it isn’t; the onboarding to such services is the same as the onboarding to, say, a movie on catchup, just except that the start point is moving.

But you can pause and rewind such a service, breaking the synchronisation, and showing that really, your streaming session is as individual as if it was a movie on catchup.

But with multicast, the onboarding is different; while you still have, to a much lesser extent, your individuality, you can no more pause and rewind the multicast stream than you could pause and rewind a TV broadcast. It goes at its elected pace, and if you miss a bit, through a glitch or similar, you miss it.

The only thing delivered to a Box Pro by multicast from EETV is the EPG channels 300-600 and, if it is in IP Mode, channels 1-300, excepting the ones delivered over the internet other than by EETV.

You won’t be able to get any of those channel 300-600; won’t even see them in the EPG unless you are on BT or EE broadband. And if you try to put a Box Pro in IP Mode, you will get nothing.

You aren’t getting a sniff of multicast from anywhere. What you think is multicast is unicast, every last byte of it.

Don’t take my word for it though; see what the internet tells you. Reliable sources like Wikipedia only, mind.