IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) is television delivered over the internet. Instead of arriving through an aerial, a satellite dish or a coaxial cable, channels reach your TV as a stream of data, the same way a video call or a website does. You watch them in an app, with a channel guide, catch-up and a library of films and series alongside.
The easiest way to understand IPTV is to follow a picture from the channel to your screen. It passes through five layers, and knowing what each one does tells you what you need at home, what can go wrong and what you can fix yourself.
The five layers of an IPTV picture
| Layer | What it does | Who controls it |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Source | The channel signal is received and captured | The provider |
| 2. Servers | Streams are encoded, stored for catch-up and sent out | The provider |
| 3. Internet | Data travels to your home through your connection and Wi-Fi | You and your internet provider |
| 4. App | The player decodes the stream and shows the guide | You |
| 5. Screen | Your TV, stick, phone or tablet displays the picture | You |
1. The source
Everything starts with the channel feed. The provider receives it and turns it into a digital stream. Picture quality can never be better than the source, which is why the same channel can look sharper on one service than another.
2. The servers
The provider's servers encode each channel into several quality levels, keep recent programmes for catch-up, store the on-demand library and send streams to thousands of viewers at once. This is the layer that decides whether a service holds up in the evening, when everyone is watching. You cannot see it directly, which is why testing during the evening peak matters so much.
3. Your internet connection
The stream travels to your home over the internet. As a rule of thumb, plan for about 10 Mbps per HD stream and 25 Mbps per 4K stream. Fibre and cable cover several screens easily. In most homes the real bottleneck is the Wi-Fi between router and TV, not the line itself: a network cable or a mesh access point near the TV solves most buffering.
4. The player app
The app receives the stream, decodes it and shows a channel guide, catch-up and the on-demand library. Good apps switch channels quickly and remember favourites. On a Fire TV Stick, IBO Player Pro (Downloader code 481220) and TiviMate (code 272483) are common choices. Our Fire TV Stick guide walks through the installation.
5. The screen
Finally, your device displays the picture. Most homes already own something that works: a Fire TV Stick, a Google TV or Android TV device, a Samsung or LG smart TV with IBO Player Pro, or an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV with ibo Pro Player from the App Store.
