The first hour with a new subscription, in order
A short checklist for the hour after activation. Doing these six things now prevents most of the problems people write to us about in week two.
Save the details somewhere you will find them again#
Your server address, username and password arrive by email and appear on the account page. Both of those are fine until the day you are standing in front of a television with no phone and a remote control in your hand.
Put them in whatever password manager or notes app you already use, and add the order number alongside them. The order number is the piece we ask for first in every support conversation, and it is the piece people never have to hand.
Set the device up on the screen you will actually use#
It is tempting to test on a laptop because it is easy. Do that second. Set up the main television first, because that is where any awkwardness will show, and it is far better to discover a missing setting now than at kick-off on Saturday.
Follow the guide for your specific device rather than a general one. The menu names differ enough between a Fire Stick, a Samsung set and a MAG box that a generic instruction sends people hunting through menus that do not exist on their hardware.
Play something for ten minutes, not ten seconds#
A stream that starts is not the same as a stream that keeps going. Plenty of problems only appear a few minutes in, when the buffer that carried the opening seconds runs dry and the connection has to keep up on its own.
Leave a channel running while you do something else. If it is still going after ten minutes, the setup is sound. If it stops at minute three, you have found something worth fixing now rather than in the middle of a film.
Try one 4K channel deliberately#
High bitrate content is the honest test of a connection. An HD stream will hide a marginal network; a 4K stream will not. Open one now so you know where you stand.
If HD plays perfectly and 4K stutters, nothing is broken. That is a connection at its limit, and the answers are the usual ones: a wired link instead of wireless, or accepting the HD version of the channels that matter most.
Hide the groups you will never open#
A full line-up runs to thousands of entries. Scrolling past all of them to reach the twenty channels you actually watch gets old within a week, and on modest hardware a long list is also what makes the interface feel sluggish.
Every serious player has a way to hide groups and to mark favourites. Ten minutes spent on this now is the change customers most often say they wish they had made sooner.
Note what normal looks like#
Take one look at how long a channel takes to start and how the picture behaves on a busy scene while everything is working. That is your baseline.
It sounds fussy, but when something changes in three weeks the useful question is what is different, and you can only answer that if you know what it used to be like. It also turns a vague support message into a specific one, which is the difference between an answer and a questionnaire.
The checklist, short version#
Save the login details with the order number. Set up the main television first. Watch for ten minutes rather than ten seconds. Test one 4K channel. Hide the groups you do not want. Notice what normal looks like.
None of it takes long, and between them they cover the overwhelming majority of what we would otherwise be helping you with a fortnight from now.
Send your order number, the device and app, and which of the checks above you have already worked through. Starting from what you have ruled out means the first reply can be an answer.