What to have in the room with you
- An iPhone or iPad on iOS 14 or newer, or an Apple TV 4K or HD
- An Apple ID signed in on whichever of those you are setting up
- The IPTVGREAT login still sitting in your WhatsApp conversation
No login in hand yet? Take the free 24-hour line, or read the price table first.
From a blank screen to live television
Work out which screen is doing the work tonight
Three situations, and they lead different ways. First: the phone or the tablet is the television, because you are in a train seat, a kitchen or a spare room and there is no better screen. Second: the Apple TV in the room is yours, so install on it properly and be done. Third: the set in the room belongs to somebody else and you would rather install nothing on it at all, in which case you play on the phone and send the picture across, which is step five. Decide before you start, because the first two are the same four minutes and the third is a different approach entirely.
Open the App Store on whichever device you picked
The App Store icon is where it always is on a phone or a tablet, and on the front screen of an Apple TV. Every piece of software on this platform arrives through it, so any instruction anywhere that tells you to install a file is written about something that is not an Apple device.
Install a player
Three names to search: IPTV Smarters Player, iPlayTV, GSE Smart IPTV. The first is free on iOS and on tvOS and does what most people need. The other two want a one-time payment and look considerably better for it. Watch the names while you are in there: TiviMato and Tivimax exist to be mistaken for TiViMate, which has no Apple build at all, on any Apple device, whatever a search result seems to promise.
Paste the login rather than typing it
Launch the player, take the Xtream Codes route, and fill in the username, the password and the server address. On an iPhone, copy each value straight out of the WhatsApp conversation instead of retyping it, particularly the server address with its http:// and its port, where one wrong character produces a message that reads like a rejected account. On an Apple TV, an iPhone signed in to the same Apple ID will usually offer to type into the field for you when it opens, and that offer is worth waiting a few seconds for.
Send the picture to a set you do not want to touch
From an iPhone you can push a channel to an Apple TV or to any AirPlay-capable television in the same room. In a rented living room this is the tidiest arrangement there is: nothing installed on the set, nothing to remember to remove, no account left behind, and the phone stays in charge of what is playing. The costs are real but small. It occupies the phone, it drains the battery faster than you expect, and it needs both devices on the same network.
Play it, then look at what it cost
Give a channel two full minutes, move to another category, and open the guide to check the program names against the clock. Then, if you are on mobile data, do the sum before you settle in. A stream of roughly 8 Mbps works out at about 3.6 GB an hour, so three hours of an evening is somewhere near 11 GB. A lighter 5 Mbps stream is nearer 2.25 GB an hour. Check that against your own allowance rather than against anybody's promise, because the arithmetic is the same everywhere and the allowance is not.
Where it tends to stall, and the fix
The channel list loads but nothing will play
The list arriving proves the login and the connection are both fine, which narrows this down usefully. A handful of channels use formats an Apple device will only decode when the right engine is doing the work, and the app's own settings let you change it: pick VLC or FFmpeg there, then go back to the channel that refused.
AirPlay cannot see the television
Both devices have to be on the same network and able to see each other. If the phone is on mobile data and the set is on Wi-Fi they will never find one another, which catches people out constantly. On holiday-let and hotel networks the isolation between devices is usually deliberate and is not yours to change, so either play on the phone itself or run a stick from your own hotspot.
The sign-in page for the network never appears
The phone is the right tool for this. Open any ordinary web page and the network's own sign-in page normally takes over the screen. Once the phone is through, the phone is through, but nothing else is: every device signs in separately, which is exactly why a stick with no browser needs either your mobile data as a hotspot or a travel router that does the signing in on its behalf.
Fine on Wi-Fi, falls apart on mobile
Bars of signal are not a speed. HD wants about 10 Mbps held steadily and one 4K stream wants a steady 25 Mbps, and a connection that swings between 30 and 3 is worse to watch than one that sits flat at 8. Drop to the lower-bitrate copy of the channel, and if the phone is somewhere with one weak bar, accept that this is an SD evening.
The app to use on this one
IPTV Smarters Pro
The player that reaches nearly every screen. Install IPTV Smarters Pro, sign in with three values, and carry the same login to the next television.
M3U playlist
Every plan includes a personal M3U link. What that address actually contains, which players need it, how to add the guide and why free lists die.
Every other guide
The rest of the devices and players, listed on one page for whatever you find at the other end.
A login for that Apple TV and iPhone, before the evening goes
The shortest term costs $15 and opens 25,000+ channels. Ask on WhatsApp and the details come back in under 15 minutes, ready for the Apple TV and iPhone in front of you.
Apple TV and iPhone IPTV questions people ask
Is IPTV Smarters really on Apple TV?
It is, and it costs nothing: the tvOS App Store carries it. Sign in with the Xtream details and the guide works, as do catch-up and the on-demand shelves. TiViMate, on the other hand, has never existed for Apple TV and does not now, whatever the similarly spelled listings beside it suggest, so do not pay for one expecting it.
Can I watch on a Mac as well?
Three of them. The Mac App Store has IPTV Smarters Player. VLC and IINA will each open the M3U link directly, if one of those is already on the machine. And the browser player asks for no installation whatsoever. Our PC and Mac page takes those one at a time, including which to choose on a work machine you are not allowed to install software on.
Will it work on a plane, or anywhere with no signal?
No. This is live streaming and it needs a working connection for every second it plays, so there is nothing to download in advance and nothing to watch once the signal goes. Plan a long journey around that rather than being disappointed by it at 30,000 feet.
How much data does an evening on a hotspot actually use?
Do the arithmetic rather than guessing. About 8 Mbps is roughly 3.6 GB an hour, about 5 Mbps is roughly 2.25 GB, and a 25 Mbps 4K stream is around 11 GB an hour. So a film on a middling stream is four gigabytes and a 4K evening will empty most allowances. Nothing here stops you; the meter does.
Can I give my login to a friend for their iPhone?
No, and it is worth being plain about it. Installs are unlimited so that one person can use one account across a phone, a stick, a laptop and a set at a second place, and the tier counts the streams playing at the same moment. One account is for one household, which is what the terms say and what the account is priced for.