Explainer

What is IPTV, in plain English

5 minute read

IPTV means television that arrives over your broadband instead of down an aerial or from a satellite dish. If you have watched iPlayer or Netflix you have already used the same idea — the difference is that IPTV carries live channels too.

Three ideas, and that is the whole thing

Internet Protocol Television is not a gadget or a brand. It is a delivery method: your television travels the same way a web page does, as data over your internet connection.

  • It arrives over your broadband. No dish, no aerial, no engineer and no cable run into the wall.
  • You request one stream at a time. A broadcast tower pushes every channel at everyone; IPTV sends only what you asked to watch, which is why the list can run to tens of thousands of channels.
  • Any screen becomes the television. A streaming stick, a smart TV, a phone, a tablet or a laptop all work, because they all have a screen and a connection.

What you actually need

How steady the picture is depends on your connection, your device and the channel. Test it during the free trial rather than on paper, with a modern device and the app installed.

Nothing needs installing on the wall, and nothing needs a fixed term. If the picture is good, you keep the plan; if it is not, you stop.

Where the picture quality really comes from

Most buffering is not the service — it is the last few metres. Wi-Fi at 2.4GHz in a busy street at eight in the evening is the single most common cause, and it is why we suggest 5GHz or a cable for sport.

The second most common cause is an underpowered device decoding a 4K stream. A current stick or box handles it; a ten-year-old one will not.

What IPTV is not

IPTV is a delivery method, not a licence to watch anything. What you can watch depends entirely on the service you choose and the rights it holds, so it is worth checking that a provider is clear about what it supplies.

It is also not a way to avoid needing internet. The connection is the whole service, so a stable line matters more than any other part of the setup.

Common questions

No card for the trial

Test it yourself for 24 hours

Message our team on WhatsApp and we will set the trial up on the device you watch on. Nothing renews on its own.