Setting up on Android phone, tablet, TV box and Google TV
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.
- Android 5.0 or newer
- Your Xtream details or your M3U link
- About 60 MB of free storage
The steps
Download the installer#1
On a phone or tablet, open the Downloads page in the browser and tap the Android file. On a television box, typing a web address with a remote is miserable, so install Downloader from the Play Store and use our numeric code instead.
Approve the install#2
Android asks whether this particular app is allowed to install others, and shows a switch. Turn it on, press back, and the install continues from where it paused. The permission is granted per app, so allowing your browser does not allow anything else on the device.
Add your subscription#3
Open the player and choose the Xtream Codes option. Enter the server address, username and password from your account page. If you would rather paste a single string, the M3U option accepts your playlist link instead, though you lose the programme guide in most players.
Set the decoder#4
In the player settings, find the decoder or player engine option and select hardware decoding. On low-cost television boxes this is frequently the difference between smooth playback and a picture that judders every few seconds. If a channel then plays with no sound, switch that one channel to the software decoder and leave the rest alone.
Check it survives a restart#5
Close the app fully and reopen it. The profile should still be there and the channel list should load from cache within a few seconds. If it asks for your details again, the device is clearing app data on exit, which is usually a battery-saver setting you can exclude the player from.
- Battery optimisation on phones will kill a player that is running in the background. Exclude the app in Settings, Apps, Battery if playback stops whenever you switch away and back.
- On a television box, use the Ethernet port. Cheap boxes ship with weak wireless aerials, and their wired performance is frequently several times better than their wireless performance.
- Google TV remotes with a microphone button often open assistant search over the top of the player. Most players let you remap or ignore that key in their settings.
- If the channel list loads but every stream fails instantly, the device clock is usually wrong. Set date and time to automatic and try again.
Open the same login on a phone using mobile data. Playback there means the subscription is healthy and the problem is this device or your network, which is exactly the sentence to put in a message to support along with your order number.
Reading this before you have a subscription?
That is the sensible order. The steps above are the whole of what setup involves on this device, so you can judge in advance whether the hardware you own will cope. Activation itself is automatic and takes about two minutes.