Before you begin
- An Android TV, Google TV or Android box
- A Google account already signed in
- Your VISNOVAA credentials
- Nothing cancelled — your existing apps stay exactly as they are
Nothing to sign in with yet? Take a 24-hour trial and keep every subscription you have while you check what this covers, or see what it costs first.
Getting it running
Open the Play Store
It is on the home screen, or under Apps on Google TV. Check you are signed in to a Google account first: the store lets you browse without one and then fails at the point of installing, which wastes a few minutes and explains nothing about why.
Install a player
Search TiViMate IPTV Player or IPTV Smarters Pro. On a television rather than a tablet, take TiViMate — its programme guide is the reason the application exists and nothing else on this platform comes close. Smarters is the right answer if you want one identical app across Android, Apple, Samsung and a laptop, which is a sensible thing to want in a house full of different screens.
Add your account
TiViMate asks you to Add playlist, then offers Xtream Codes login. Smarters phrases it as Login with Xtream Codes API. Either way it is the same server address, username and password. Neither needs an M3U link and neither will ask for one — if you find yourself hunting for a playlist file, you have taken the wrong branch.
Let it finish before judging it
It now retrieves channels and programme data, which takes a minute or two on a first run. Hold off forming an opinion until that has genuinely completed: a half-loaded guide looks identical to a broken one, and a great many first impressions are formed thirty seconds too early.
Add the second and third screens while you are at it
The same three credentials configure the bedroom television, a tablet and a phone, and each takes about two minutes once the first is done. Your plan limits how many play simultaneously rather than how many are signed in, so there is no reason to leave a screen unconfigured. Households that set up only the main television tend to under-use this and then judge it against subscriptions that are on every device they own, which is not a fair comparison.
Spend ten minutes organising it
Switch off the categories you will never open, pin the ones you will, and set your language. In TiViMate that all sits under Settings, then Playlists. It is the dullest instruction on this page and it makes the largest difference to whether the television is still pleasant in three months. Streaming apps do this curation for you; a channel list does not, and the ten minutes are the price of the other trade-offs.
Set the guide refresh and the decoder
Under Settings, TV guide, set the refresh to every twelve hours. Then confirm hardware decoding is on in the player settings. On cheaper boxes with weak processors, software decoding stutters on anything above 1080p, and the stream gets blamed for it. These two settings account for most complaints that turn out not to be complaints.
Then watch normally, and count
Use it for a fortnight alongside everything else on the device. The useful measurement is not whether you like the interface — it is which of your existing apps you did not open in that time. That is the number the whole decision rests on and it cannot be guessed in advance.
When something misbehaves
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 through Downloader instead, exactly as the Firestick walkthrough describes. It works identically; you simply lose the store handling updates for you.
The guide stays empty
Let the first retrieval finish, then run Update EPG from within the settings. The guide source travels with the login, so most players need no separate URL pasted anywhere. Where one is needed, support can send it, but exhaust the obvious explanation first.
The box stutters on everything
Cheap Android boxes are frequently sold with specifications that are simply untrue. Check hardware decoding is enabled, then check what the device actually contains rather than what the listing claimed. Under 2 GB of memory and no setting will rescue it — and your streaming apps were probably struggling too, you just did not notice because they buffer ahead.
Sound 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 — the reverse of the video advice, and worth knowing because the two settings sit side by side and people change the wrong one.
Players worth using on this hardware
TiViMate
Set up TiViMate on Android TV, Firestick or an Android box with your Xtream login, load the guide, and see what Premium adds. 25,000+ channels.
IPTV Smarters Pro
Install IPTV Smarters Pro on Firestick, Android, Samsung, LG, Apple TV or PC, sign in with Xtream Codes and load the guide. Free, 25,000+ channels.
All of them
Every device and player covered, on a single page.
See what it covers on your Android TV
A trial costs nothing and runs alongside everything you already subscribe to, so you can work out what would genuinely go and what you would keep. Plans open at $15 a month for the full 25,000+ line-up.
What people ask about the Android TV
Does this replace anything already on the device?
Nothing. It installs beside your existing apps and they continue untouched. Bandwidth is the only shared resource, so two things playing simultaneously on a marginal connection will compete — which is equally true of two streaming apps and is worth knowing before blaming anybody.
Which Android box is worth buying?
An Nvidia Shield is fastest and handles 4K HDR without complaint, though it costs more than a year of subscription. Chromecast with Google TV 4K is the sensible purchase for most people. For an unbranded box, insist on 2 GB of memory and an ethernet socket, and read the specification as advertising rather than fact.
Does it work on Chromecast with Google TV?
Yes. It is Android TV underneath, so both players install from the Play Store and take the credentials as described. For the money it is among the tidiest arrangements on any platform and it is what we would suggest to somebody starting from nothing.
TiViMate or Smarters?
TiViMate if the television is the main screen and you watch live sport; the guide is worth roughly ten dollars a year on its own. Smarters if you want one app across a mixed household without learning two interfaces. Neither is wrong, both take the same login, and changing your mind later costs a download.
Will it drain the device's storage?
The app itself is small, around 100 MB, and the guide data it caches adds perhaps another 50. That is less than most streaming apps hold in offline downloads. Where storage becomes a genuine problem is TiViMate recordings, which go to internal memory by default and will fill a cheap box quickly — point them at a USB drive if you plan to record.
How long before I know whether to cancel anything?
About a fortnight, and the reason is that a household's viewing habits show up weekly rather than daily. One evening tells you whether the picture holds; two weeks tells you which apps on this device you stopped opening, which is the only measurement that decides anything. Cancelling in week one on the strength of a good first night is how people end up resubscribing in week three and feeling foolish about it.