Comparisons
BeeTV vs Kodi
Kodi is legitimate open-source media centre software. BeeTV is an unofficial aggregator. Why the distinction matters.
Last reviewed · Reviewed by the editorial team
These are not the same category of software, and conflating them does Kodi a disservice.
What Kodi is
Kodi is a free, open-source media centre developed by the non-profit XBMC Foundation. It is distributed through Google Play, the Microsoft Store, the Amazon Appstore and the project's own signed builds. Its purpose is organising and playing media you already have, and it ships with no content whatsoever.
The XBMC Foundation is explicitly opposed to piracy add-ons and prohibits their promotion in official channels. Third-party repositories exist outside the project and are not endorsed by it.
What BeeTV is
BeeTV is a closed-source Android application with no store presence, no verifiable publisher and a built-in scraper layer aimed at third-party sources. Aggregation is the product rather than an add-on someone chose to install.
Side by side
- Publisher: named non-profit versus unknown.
- Distribution: official stores versus loose mirror files.
- Source code: open and auditable versus closed.
- Content: none included versus scraped index.
- Platforms: Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, iOS, tvOS, Fire OS versus Android only.
- Updates: signed and automatic versus none.
Recommendation
For a personal library, Kodi, Plex or Jellyfin are all excellent and entirely legitimate. Keep them to licensed content and official repositories and the whole category of problems described elsewhere on this site disappears.