Every guide on this site was written after a support conversation, which is why they cover the awkward parts instead of skipping them. Search below, or pick your device further down the page.
Menu names differ enough between platforms that a general instruction sends people hunting for settings their hardware does not have. Pick the one you own.
The device we answer most questions about. The install itself is straightforward once the unknown-sources setting is out of the way, which is the part that catches people.
The most forgiving platform of the six. One installer covers a handset, a tablet and a television box, and the settings you may need to change are all in one place.
No sideloading and no extra hardware. Both platforms have suitable players in their own stores, though the televisions themselves are the slowest devices we support.
Different from everything else on this list. There is nothing to install and no password to type, because the box identifies itself to the portal by its hardware address.
Useful for testing more than for watching. When you need to prove whether a fault is the subscription or the television, a laptop settles it in two minutes.
Apple does not allow installers from outside the App Store, so the approach is different. You choose a player from the store and hand it your subscription details.
Roughly two thirds of the faults reported to us are solved by one of these four steps, and the fourth one turns a slow conversation into a fast one.
Open your subscription on a phone with wireless switched off, so it is running on mobile data. If it plays there, the subscription is healthy and the fault is inside your house.
A spinning circle, a black screen and an error code are three different faults. Note which one it is, and whether it happens on one channel or on all of them.
Open the same subscription on a phone using mobile data. If it plays there, the fault is in the house rather than in the subscription, and that halves the search straight away.
Find your device below and follow the numbered steps in order. They are ordered by how often each one turns out to be the cause, so the early steps are the ones worth trying first.
If it is still broken, message support with your order number, the device, and which of the checks above you have already done. That single message usually gets a fix rather than a list of questions.
Most first-week support tickets trace back to something skipped in the first hour. Here is what to do while everything is still fresh.
A stream that pauses, recovers and pauses again is a different fault from one that never starts. The order you test things in matters more than the tests themselves.
An invalid login message rarely means the details are wrong. Players report several unrelated failures with the same wording, which is why this one is worth working through in order.
People assume these are different products. They are three ways of handing the same line to a player, and the right choice depends entirely on what your device accepts.
Upgrading your broadband package is usually the least effective thing you can do. Consistency, not headline speed, is what keeps a picture moving.
Both get reported as a channel that is not working. One of them proves the stream reached you, and the other proves it never did, which is why they are worth separating before anybody starts changing settings.
Check the expiry date on your account page before anything else, because an expired line looks exactly like a broken one. If the date is still in the future, open the same login on a phone over mobile data. Playback on the phone means the subscription is healthy and the problem sits in your home network or in the app on the television. No playback anywhere means the login details or the line itself need looking at, and that is the point to message support.
Sign in at the account page with the email address you ordered with. Your active subscriptions are listed there with the server URL, username, password and M3U link, each with a copy button so you are not retyping a long string onto a television with a remote control. The same details were emailed to you when the order completed, so searching your inbox for the order number usually finds them too.
Nine times out of ten this is a stray space picked up when the details were copied, or a capital letter that the on-screen keyboard has helpfully corrected. Delete the profile in the app and type the username and password by hand, watching for the difference between a lower-case L and the digit one. If the app has an autocorrect or auto-capitalise setting, turn it off before you start. If it still refuses, check the expiry date, because an expired line reports itself as an authentication failure in most players.
One per device slot on the subscription. Each slot has its own username and password, so two televisions using two slots never interrupt one another. If a stream stops the moment somebody else starts watching, you are running more screens than slots, and the fix is either to add a slot or to stagger who is watching.
They are three ways of handing the same subscription to a player. Xtream Codes takes a server address plus a username and password, and it is the option to prefer because the app builds its own menus and pulls in the programme guide. An M3U link is one long URL that carries everything, which suits players that only accept a playlist. MAG is for set-top boxes that identify themselves by hardware MAC address rather than a login, so you send us the MAC printed on the box and the portal finds it.
Almost certainly not. A connection problem affects everything you open, not a single entry in a list of thousands. When one channel misbehaves on its own, the source feeding that channel is having a bad night. Try the HD and SD versions of the same channel, or the copy in a different group. Then tell support the exact channel name, because that is precise enough for the source to be swapped rather than for you to be sent through generic checks.
Useful to know whether you already subscribe or are still deciding, because most of these answer a question people ask us after the fact.
Each article here started life as a real conversation with a customer. If a paragraph exists, it is because the same question arrived often enough that writing it down properly was faster than typing the answer again.
A Fire Stick fix is almost never a MAG box fix. The guides are split by the hardware in front of you, with the menu names spelled out as your device actually labels them.
Activation, renewal and password resets all run automatically. When a page tells you something takes two minutes, that is the software doing it, not a promise about our working hours.
Every subscription carries the same line-up. Which groups sit at the top of your list is a preference we can change on request, free, as many times as you like.
Payment happens inside the gateway frame and is verified by your own bank through 3-D Secure. We store a name, an email address and an order history, and nothing that could be used to charge you again.
Extending a subscription keeps the same server address, username and password. There is nothing to retype on the television, the tablet or the box in the spare room.
Everything above applies whether you buy from us or not. If you do want a line, the plans differ only in length. There is no cut-down tier and no automatic renewal.
Send your order number, the device, the app name, and one sentence describing what is on screen. Those four things let the first reply be an answer rather than a set of questions.