请问HN：免费（非法）流媒体应用是如何覆盖运营成本的？
我最近接触了一些与法律视频点播和直播服务相关的技术和财务细节，这让我对一些不合法的免费应用程序是如何运作的产生了疑问。
在和朋友的电视盒子玩耍时，我发现他们似乎安装了多个应用，这些应用提供全球直播电视（包括商业和付费频道，而不仅仅是免费频道）。他们还有一些应用可以访问看似庞大的视频点播库，流媒体播放各种电视节目和电影。大多数内容似乎都有多个可用来源。
这些应用似乎是免费安装、免费使用的，我没有看到任何广告。他们是如何盈利的？
如果他们没有盈利，那他们又是怎么负担得起提供这些服务的呢？
我可以想象制作和托管一个允许用户从流媒体/播放列表数据库中选择的安卓应用相对简单，但总得有人在某个地方托管这些媒体内容。仅仅是直播，我想就需要大量的调谐器或采集卡来获取内容，还需要一定的处理能力来重新编码，以及某种级别的内容分发网络（CDN）或代理来支持大量的同时观看者，还需要大量的带宽。视频点播虽然没有采集的问题，但却需要巨大的存储需求。
持续的成本肯定是巨大的。即使是自托管，你也会消耗大量的电力和带宽，毫无疑问还需要持续的工程时间。
我很天真，但我不理解是什么动机或财务状况让这些应用程序首先存在。我（和其他在HN上的人）确实曾经犯过建造一些无聊的东西并仅仅为了好玩而让它们持续运行的错误，但持续的成本让我觉得这一定比几个“为了好玩”而做的人要复杂得多。
有人能告诉我我遗漏了什么吗？
查看原文
I've recently been exposed to some of the technical and financial minutia involved in hosting a legal video on demand and live streaming service, and it's left me wondering how some of these illegitimate free apps work.<p>Playing with friends TV boxes, they seem to have installed multiple apps which offer live-streamed worldwide TV (including commercial and premium channels, not just free to air). They also have apps that give access to seemingly massive video on demand libraries, streaming a wide range of TV and films. Most content seems to have multiple sources available as well.<p>It seems to be free to install the apps, free to use and I can't see any advertising. How are they making money?<p>If they're not making money, how the heck do they afford to host the service?<p>I can see it being relatively easy to make & host an Android app that lets you pick from a database of streams/playlists, but someone, somewhere has to be hosting the media content. The live-streaming alone would (I assume) require a vast amount of tuners or capture cards to get the content, an amount of processing to re-encode it all, some level of CDN or proxies to support large numbers of simultaneous viewers and a large amount of bandwidth as well. The video on demand doesn't have the capture problem, but it swaps it for massive storage requirements.<p>The ongoing costs must be massive. Even self-hosted, you're burning large amounts of electric and bandwidth, and no doubt ongoing engineering time.<p>I'm very naive, but I don't understand the motivation or the finances that cause these apps to exist in the first place. I (and others on HN) have certainly been guilty of building silly things and keeping them running only for the heck of it, but the ongoing costs make me think it must be something bigger than a few people doing it "for the lols".<p>Can someone please tell me what I'm missing?