What to have in the room with you
- An LG television running webOS, 2016 model year or later
- An LG account signed in, which the Content Store insists on
- Your IPTVGREAT Xtream login, or the M3U link if you go the MAC route
- A phone with the WhatsApp message open, so you can read the values off it
No login in hand yet? Take the free 24-hour line, or read the price table first.
From a blank screen to live television
Choose the player before you pick the remote up
How long this television is going to be yours decides this. IPTV Smarters Player is free and takes the Xtream login straight into the app, so it goes on and comes off again easily. iPlayTV and GSE Smart IPTV carry a one-off price and are better presented, which is money well spent on a set in your own living room. Smart IPTV wants the M3U sent to the set's MAC address, tying the arrangement to this television permanently. On a borrowed screen, take the free one every time and plan to remove it.
Find the store built into the television
From Home, pick out the LG Content Store, cross into Apps and use the search field there. What you will be offered depends partly on the age of the set in front of you, because the older webOS versions carry a noticeably thinner catalog than the current ones.
Install it, and read the name twice
The three names worth searching are GSE Smart IPTV, iPlayTV and IPTV Smarters Player. Read what you are about to install instead of taking whatever ranks first. A listing calling itself TiviMato or Tivimax is not TiViMate, which has no webOS build at all; those are unrelated products trading on a misread name, and buying one is the commonest way to lose money on this platform.
Type the login once, carefully, then check it
In Smarters, choose Login with Xtream Codes API and enter the username, the password and the server address, including the http:// and the port. Rest your elbow on something, or ignore the pointer and use the directional pad to move around the on-screen keyboard, which is slower and far more accurate. Read the whole address back before you save it, watching for a capital letter the keyboard added at the start of a field and for the colon before the port. If you took the Smart IPTV route instead, the set shows you a MAC address and the typing all happens on your phone at siptv.app/mylist, which on an unfamiliar remote is a genuine argument in its favor.
Let it restart and fill up
Once the player restarts it pulls the full line-up and its built-in guide. The colored buttons along the remote handle favorites and the guide, and learning which is which in the first five minutes is what makes these sets pleasant rather than tedious to live with.
Watch one channel through a break in the program
Do not judge it on ten seconds. Put a channel on and keep it there while one program ends and another starts, which is where a stream that is going to fall over tends to fall over. Then open the guide and confirm the names match the clock, and play something from a completely different group. Three checks, two minutes, and you know whether you have a television or a problem.
Leave the set the way you found it
On a television that is not yours, the last step is removal rather than setup. Remove the playlist or the profile, log out, and uninstall the player. Your username and password are the whole of your subscription, and leaving them signed in on a rented living room set is the one genuinely careless thing you can do with this account.
Where it tends to stall, and the fix
Sound plays and the screen stays black
That is a decoder mismatch, not a dead channel, and the giveaway is that the audio is perfectly fine. Go into the player's own settings and move the decoding across to native, or to hardware. If the channel still refuses to appear, take its lower-bitrate copy, which exists for most busy feeds and often arrives in a format the set is happier with.
The on-screen keyboard drops or doubles characters
This is the pointer remote rather than the television. A small hand movement while you press registers as a different key, and a long press registers twice. Switch to the directional pad for anything you have to type accurately, and always read the server address back character by character before saving. A single wrong character produces exactly the same message as a wrong password.
The store does not carry the player you were told to install
LG's catalog varies and older webOS versions carry fewer apps than current ones. Rather than installing whatever ranks first in a search, which is how people end up with the lookalikes, send support your webOS version on WhatsApp and install what they name. The version sits in the television's own information screen if you are not sure.
The set is on a guest network and the app cannot reach the server
Shared connections often keep devices apart and close ports that are not web traffic, and a television has no way to tell you that is what happened. Test it: if a phone on mobile data plays the same channel in the same room, then your account and the app are both fine and the connection is the problem. Those rules belong to whoever runs the network, so ask them, or watch on something running off your own data instead.
The app to use on this one
Smart IPTV (SIPTV)
Smart IPTV has no login box at all. Register your M3U link against the television MAC at siptv.app/mylist, restart the app and the channels appear.
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.
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 LG Smart TV, 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 LG Smart TV in front of you.
LG Smart TV IPTV questions people ask
Which player is best on webOS?
Start with IPTV Smarters. It costs nothing, takes the Xtream sign-in directly, and shows the guide in full, all of which make it the right choice on any set you are only borrowing. The alternative is Smart IPTV: leaner, and rock steady once it has been set up, in exchange for a one-time fee charged per television. Both run on webOS 3.0 and upward, which is why 2016 is the real dividing line.
My LG is older than 2016. What now?
The store on those sets is thin and getting thinner, and no amount of searching will conjure a player into it. The cheaper answer is a stick on a spare HDMI socket, which costs less than most of the paid players, runs whichever app you actually want, and has the advantage of fitting in a bag when you go somewhere else.
Do I have to pay again on a second LG television?
With Smarters, no: it is free on every set. With Smart IPTV, yes, because the activation is bound to each television's MAC address. Neither has anything to do with the subscription, which does not care how many sets it has been installed on and only counts the streams playing at the same moment.
Can I use the same login on the LG at home and a set somewhere else?
Yes, and that is rather the point. Install it wherever you need it; the account is not tied to an address, a line or a piece of equipment, and there is nothing to return when you move. Match the tier to how many screens actually run at once, and keep it to the one household the terms describe.