Does anyone know if this "free cable streaming" TV gadget works?

“Might get banned soon” is a big red flag for me.

Checked a couple of sites, it sounds like it is a higher priced Roku or Chromecast.

It is a streaming device here is a Review of Streaming Devices.

Yes, TW. I undetstand it’s a streaming device. I own two of them. The difference with this one seems to be you can bypass fees for paid streaming services. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding the sales pitch.

It do not know this device. But it sounds very much like a rooted Apple TV or rooted Roku unit. Before you spend money look those up. You might want to try experimenting and rooting a piece of hardware you already have.
Youtiube university, ;-), has a few good examples of how to do it.

I have seen Firesticks that do this; showing premium cable broadcasts, movies currently in theaters, and numerous for-pay internet providers.
They are cool, but obviously illegal.

My hunch is it is basically Android TV on a cheap Chinese box with a skinned Kodi and a bunch of plugins installed (such as Exodus and SALT)..

This is sort of my wheelhouse. Bit of a pirate and media guy here.

For fun I decided to try and play a movie in Kodi using one of the pirate sources. SALT for this example. In the end I just give up and switch to my plex server.

As these “Kodi” boxes become more popular it becomes harder and harder to stream. These are just random people pirating shit and then publishing their servers. Demand has donkey-punched supply. This actually used to work pretty good. But once you could install Kodi on the Fire TV everyone started buying one with all the piracy shit pre-installed. A victim of its own success I guess.

My experience with Kodi 30 minutes ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p736mgevTLk&feature=youtu.be