Before you start
- An Android TV, Google TV or Android box
- A Google account already signed in on the device
- Your IPTVNinja credentials
Nothing to sign in with yet? Ask for a 24-hour test line, or read what the plans cost first.
Doing it, one step at a time
Open the Play Store
It is on the home screen, or filed under Apps on Google TV. Check you are actually signed in to a Google account before going further: the store will happily let you browse without one and then fail at the point of installing, which wastes a few minutes and tells you nothing useful about why.
Install a player
Look for either TiViMate IPTV Player or IPTV Smarters Pro. Where the destination is a television rather than a tablet, TiViMate is the better answer: its programme guide is the whole reason the application exists, and nothing else available on this platform comes close to it. Smarters earns its place only if you want one identical app across Android, Apple, Samsung and a laptop, which is a perfectly sensible thing to want in a mixed household.
Hand it your account
TiViMate asks you to Add playlist and then offers Xtream Codes login. Smarters phrases the same thing as Login with Xtream Codes API. Either way you are supplying the identical server address, username and password. Neither needs an M3U link and neither will ask for one, so if a player is demanding a playlist file you are probably in the wrong menu.
Wait for it to finish
The application now retrieves your channels together with the programme data. Expect a minute or two on a first run and rather less on subsequent ones. Give the playlist a name if you are asked for one — it becomes relevant only should you later add a second. Hold off on judging the guide until that first retrieval has genuinely completed, because a guide caught halfway through loading is indistinguishable from a guide that is broken.
Give it ten minutes of organising
Switch off every category you have no intention of opening, pin the handful you will, and set your language. In TiViMate all of that sits beneath Settings, then Playlists. It is the dullest instruction on this page and it makes more difference than any other to whether this television is still pleasant three months from now. Twenty-five thousand entries is not a television; forty favourites is.
Set the guide refresh and the decoder
Under Settings, TV guide, set the refresh to every twelve hours. Then, in the player settings, confirm hardware decoding is on. On cheaper boxes with weak processors, software decoding will stutter on anything above 1080p and people routinely blame the stream for it. These two settings between them account for most of the complaints that turn out not to be complaints.
Prove it before you commit
Open the specific channels you actually care about, at the time of day you actually watch, on the television you actually own. Every one of those three qualifiers matters. A test on a laptop at lunchtime tells you that credentials work, which was never really in doubt; it tells you nothing about what happens at kick-off on Saturday, which is the only question worth answering.
When it does not work
The Play Store does not list the app
Some cheaper boxes run the phone build of Android rather than the television build, which hides TV-only listings entirely. Sideload the APK using Downloader instead, following the same sequence as the Firestick guide. It works identically; you simply lose the convenience of the store handling updates for you.
The guide is empty
Allow the initial retrieval to complete in full before drawing any conclusion, then run Update EPG from within the application's settings. Because the guide source is carried along with your login, most players need no separate URL pasted anywhere at all. A handful insist on one regardless, and support can provide it, but exhaust the straightforward explanation first.
The box is slow and everything stutters
Cheap Android boxes are frequently sold with specifications that are simply untrue, and there is no polite way to put that. Check hardware decoding is enabled, then check what the box actually contains rather than what the listing claimed. If it has under 2 GB of RAM, the box is the problem and no setting will rescue it.
It plays but the sound is missing on some channels
An audio codec the device cannot handle, rather than a fault in the feed. Switch the player's audio decoder to software in the app settings — the reverse of the video advice, and worth knowing because the two settings are next to each other and people change the wrong one.
Apps worth trying on this hardware
TiViMate
Adding your subscription to TiViMate on Android TV, a Firestick or an Android box: the Xtream login, the guide, and what Premium is actually for. 25,000+
IPTV Smarters Pro
IPTV Smarters Pro setup for Firestick, Android, Samsung, LG, Apple TV and desktop. Sign in with Xtream Codes, load the guide and fix the usual errors.
Every guide
The full list of hardware and apps, on one page.
Try it on your Android TV before you pay
A test line costs nothing and settles whether the channels you want are really there. Plans open at $15 a month for the same 25,000+ line-up.
What people ask about the Android TV
Which Android box is worth buying?
An Nvidia Shield is the fastest of them and copes with 4K HDR without any fuss, although it costs more than a year of subscription does. For most people the sensible purchase is a Chromecast with Google TV 4K. Should you be looking at an unbranded box, hold out for 2 GB of memory and a wired network socket, and read the specification as an advertisement rather than as a statement of fact.
Does this work on Chromecast with Google TV?
It does. The device is Android TV beneath the interface, which means both TiViMate and IPTV Smarters Pro come straight from the Play Store and accept your credentials in the manner set out above. For the money it is among the neatest arrangements available on any platform, and there is very little to argue with.
TiViMate or Smarters on Android?
TiViMate, if the television is the main screen and you watch live sport. The guide and multi-view are worth the roughly ten dollars a year. Smarters, if you want one app across Android, Apple, Samsung and a laptop without learning two interfaces. Neither choice is wrong and both take the same login.
My television is Android but the remote has no app button. Now what?
Install from a phone. The Play Store website lets you push an app to any device signed in to the same Google account, which sidesteps searching with a directional pad entirely. It is also how to install on the handful of sets whose on-screen store is close to unusable.
Do I need a Google account on the television?
Yes, for the Play Store route, and it is worth signing in before you start rather than discovering it at the install prompt. If you would rather not attach an account to the set at all, sideload through Downloader exactly as the Firestick guide describes — the app is identical and only the delivery differs.
Will an Android box handle 4K properly?
A Shield or a Chromecast 4K will. Cheaper boxes frequently advertise 4K and then output 1080p, or decode 4K in software and stutter doing it. Play a 4K feed during a test line and watch the first two minutes: if it is soft or juddering on a box that claims 4K, the box is what is lying to you.