Magenta, waipu and Swisscom set-top boxes: what they ship with and what comes off

Germany is one of the six markets on this site, and there operator TV is not watched on the television: it is watched on a box plugged into it. Eight brands share it out across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

They are all Android TV. The same Google packages, the same Play Store. What changes is not the technology: it is who owns the device. And here, unlike in other markets, there is no single answer.

Fourteen boxes on Google's list#

The official device list Google Play publishes holds 209 devices that are not televisions, from 109 brands and with 168 different platform codes. Fourteen rows come from the German-speaking area:

• Magenta TV: two rows, "MagentaTV ONE" and "TV Box", on the same HY44G. Austrostream: SEID00ORS.
• waiputv: SEI700WP (stick), SEID00BWP (box) and SEID00DWP (second-generation stick).
• HD_Plus: SEI900HDPLUS. PYUR: m377genb_pyur.
• 1&1: DIW377-1u1 and diw387_1u1.
• Swisscom: IP2300. SALT: HP4CH-NJJ.
• Net+: uzw4068nps and uzx4020nps.

The find comes from searching by code rather than by brand. HY44G does not appear once: it appears four times. The same box under Magenta TV, under COSMOTE TV (Greece), under T-Mobile-CZ-Telekom-SK, which sells it as "TV Box HY4403", and under Iskon (Croatia). The first three belong to the Deutsche Telekom group. And the list names the German product: MagentaTV One.

SEI Robotics, or who actually builds these#

The SEI prefix is not decorative either. The same list holds a row whose brand is, literally, Shenzhen SEI Robotics. That prefix is on waipu.tv, on HD+ and on Austrostream, and it travels well beyond Germany: Claro in Latin America (SEI800AMX), GOTV (SEID04GM) and MTN (SEI740DEM) in Africa, and Odido in the Netherlands (SEI800TFAS).

There is a better confirmation, and it sits in one of Telekom's own PDFs. The spec table in the manual for the second-generation MagentaTV One identifies its power supply as SEI-0502000-EU. The same prefix, in a PDF signed by Telekom.

The other two families cross over as well. DIW377 is Sagemcom naming and turns up identically at 1&1, at MEO in Portugal (DIW377-MEO) and at SFR (DIW377_ALT_FR). And Net+'s uzw4068nps shares a family with Proximus's uiw4068pxm, Altibox's uiw4054aib and TalkTalk's uzw4054ttg.

Memory: one publishes it, the rest hide it#

waipu.tv is the only one of the eight that puts the full spec table on the product page. The second-generation stick: Amlogic S905X5M, Android 14, 3 GB of DDR4 and 32 GB eMMC. The box: same processor, 4 GB and 32 GB. With power draw, codecs and WEEE number.

Telekom does publish it, but only inside the manual PDF, not on the product page:

• MagentaTV One (2nd generation): Amlogic S905X4, Android 12, 4 GB of DDR4 and 32 GB eMMC, drawing 2.4 W in standby.
• MagentaTV One (1st generation): same processor, but Android 10 and 16 GB. Half the storage, under the same product name.
• MagentaTV Stick: Amlogic S905Y2, Android 9 at launch, 2 GB and 8 GB.
• MagentaTV Box and Box Play: Broadcom BCM 7268 and 8 GB eMMC.

HD+ publishes 32 GB and Android 14, but not the RAM. Magenta Austria gives 2 GB and 16 GB with Android 10: its box is not the MagentaTV One. Swisscom only says "Synaptics Quad-Core ARM Cortex A55" and not one memory figure. Salt and Net+ publish nothing.

PŸUR deserves its own line. Its spec table does carry a row headed "Hauptspeicher", main memory. It is empty. Below it says Broadcom 72178 and 16 GB of flash, but the RAM field was left unfilled on their own site.

Is it yours? Five different answers#

This is where this market parts company with every other one. Same question, eight contracts, five answers.

Telekom is not giving it away. The last line of the MagentaTV One manual puts it plainly: "Die Rückgabe von Mietgeräten wird über den Mietvertrag geregelt" ("The return of rented devices is governed by the rental contract"). In Austria the Magenta TV Box is "optional mit Magenta TV Box (zzgl. € 2 mtl.)": two euros a month, and still not yours.

PŸUR is the most explicit. Its terms, clause 4.2: where the device is handed over on rent or on loan, "verbleibt es im Eigentum der Gesellschaft bzw. des Herstellers" ("it remains the property of the company or of the manufacturer"). Its returns page repeats it in the second person: "Die zur Verfügung gestellte Hardware ist in unserem Eigentum verblieben. Für einen Verlust müssen Sie leider haften" ("The hardware provided has remained our property. For a loss you are liable"). The amount depends on "dem Gerätealter", the age of the device.

waipu.tv lets you choose, and writes it both ways. On rental: "Der Stick wird für die Dauer der Paketlaufzeit zur Miete überlassen und ist anschließend zurückzugeben", and on cancellation "muss der waipu.tv Stick auf eigene Kosten zurückgesandt oder zum Restwert abgelöst werden": you send it back at your own cost, or pay the residual value and keep it. Bought outright it is 79.99 € for the stick and 129.99 € for the box, and then it is yours.

1&1 gives it to you over time. Its terms, clause 13.1: on a contract with a minimum term, "geht das Eigentum nach Ablauf von 24 Monaten nach Vertragsschluss auf den Kunden über" ("ownership passes to the customer 24 months after the contract is signed"). Until then it is 4.99 € a month per box.

Swisscom gives it to you on day one. Its device help page, answering what to do when you leave: "Die TV-Box ist dein Eigentum und du musst diese nicht zwingend an Swisscom retournieren" ("The TV-Box is your property and you do not have to return it to Swisscom"). And HD+ does not even include it in the service: the stick is bought for 69 €, and its terms describe a device "das im Leistungsumfang jedoch nicht enthalten ist" ("which is not included in the service"). The only thing that stays HD+'s is the card.

What a box that is not yours collects#

In Germany this question weighs more than in any other market, and it is worth handling with the terms in front of you and without alarmism.

The first thing is that the operator box does not add a new collection layer: it adds two consents. Magenta Austria puts it in the footnote on its page: "Die Verwendung der TV Box erfordert die Zustimmung der Google Nutzungsbedingungen, der Google-Datenschutzerklärung sowie der Google Play Nutzungsbedingungen". Swisscom explains the same and adds the interesting part: "Wir senden keine Daten an Google, insbesondere nicht zur blue TV-Nutzung" ("We send no data to Google, and in particular none about blue TV usage"). It is a statement by the operator, not an audit, but it is in writing.

The second is more awkward, and it is waipu.tv's: the channels it calls New-TV are ad-funded, and "Kunden, die keine Zustimmung zur Speicherung und Verarbeitung von personenbezogenen Daten erteilen, können entsprechend nicht alle New-TV-Sender und Mediatheken nutzen" ("customers who do not consent to the storage and processing of personal data cannot use all New-TV channels and catch-up services"). Saying no costs you channels.

What can be turned off and what cannot is in what data your smart TV actually collects.

ADB: nobody documents it, and there is a clause next to it#

I searched for developer options, ADB debugging and the word "sideload" across everything downloaded: Telekom's five manual PDFs, the product and help pages of all eight operators and their terms and conditions. Not one occurrence.

What does turn up is the other side. PŸUR's terms, clause 4.7, oblige the customer to make "weder Eingriffe in die installierten Anschlusskomponenten, die überlassenen Endgeräte noch die darin befindliche Software" ("no interventions in the installed connection components, in the devices provided, or in the software inside them"). On a box that is not yours, that is signed.

Another figure that does not appear: the energy label. Set-top boxes are not in the EPREL register, and none of the eight mentions a regulated label. That is not an oversight on their part.

The real way out: the other HDMI#

If you want to decide what runs on the screen, the operator box is not the place. The place is the HDMI input next to it, with a device you bought. That is in external players: what they ship with and what comes off.

And here there is an advantage other markets do not have: all of them have an app for third-party players. Telekom lists MagentaTV on Fire TV, Chromecast, Google TV Streamer, Xiaomi TV Stick and any Android TV from version 7.1, and Magenta Austria says its service works "ohne TV Box". Returning the box does not leave you without television.

If you have one#

The package list from a PŸUR TV-Box or a Net+ Box TV would be worth gold, because neither publishes anything. But first, read the contract: with several of these eight brands the device in your living room is not yours, and with at least one there is a clause forbidding you to touch its software.