What Is an IPTV Line? URL, Server and EPG Explained

Every IPTV provider hands you the same small bundle of things and almost none of them explain what any of it is. You get a line, or a URL, or a username and password, plus a mention of a server and something called an EPG, and you are expected to know which of those is which.

They are four words for three ideas, and once you have seen them laid out the setup screen on any player stops being a guessing game.

The short answer

A line is your subscription, expressed as credentials. A URL is the web address your player fetches it from. A server is the machine at the other end of that address. An EPG is the programme guide that fills in what is on now and what is on next.

Your player needs the first two to show anything at all. The third is infrastructure you never touch. The fourth is optional, and it is the one that most often looks broken when it is simply still loading.

What an IPTV line is

A line is one subscription's worth of access, issued to you and to nobody else. The word comes from the trade rather than from any standard, which is why you will see it used loosely.

In practice a line arrives in one of two shapes. Either a username and password that you type into a player alongside a server address, or a single long URL with your credentials already embedded in it. Both carry the same information. Which one you get depends on the player you are setting up rather than on what you bought.

Two things follow from a line being yours specifically.

It is not a public list. We do not publish playlists and there is nothing to find on this site that would work without a subscription, because a line is generated per account when the account is created. If a page is offering you a working line for nothing, whatever else is true, it is not yours.

And it counts. Your line permits a set number of devices to watch at the same moment, which is the number our plans page is describing when it talks about connections. One connection means one screen playing at a time, not one device forever: you can set up the stick and the tablet and the telly, you just cannot run all three at once.

What the URL is, and why yours is yours alone

The URL is the address your player asks for the stream. It usually ends in something like .m3u or .m3u8, and that extension is the one part of this that has a published specification behind it.

The M3U format is a plain text list. Apple's HTTP Live Streaming specification, which is what most modern streams are actually delivered with, describes playlists as UTF-8 text files where "each Media Segment is specified by a series of Media Segment tags followed by a URI", and requires the first line of every playlist to be the tag #EXTM3U (RFC 8216, HTTP Live Streaming, R. Pantos and W. May, August 2017).

So a playlist is a list of addresses, not the video itself. Your player reads the list, then fetches whichever entry you selected. That is why a URL that loads a channel list instantly can still take a second to start playing: those are two separate requests.

The practical consequence is the one worth remembering. Treat the URL like a password, because with the credentials embedded it effectively is one. Anyone holding it is holding your subscription. If you have shared it and things start behaving oddly, that is a sensible first thing to mention to us.

What "server" means here

The server is the machine your URL points at, and for most people it is a field on a setup screen that gets filled in once and never thought about again.

Some players ask for it separately from your username and password. Others want the whole address in one field. Neither is more correct; they are two interface conventions for the same three pieces of information.

You do not choose your server and there is nothing to tune. If a player asks for a port number as well, it is part of the address we gave you, and typing it somewhere other than where it belongs is a much more common cause of a failed setup than anything on our end.

What an EPG is, and why the guide is sometimes empty

EPG stands for electronic programme guide. It is the grid of what is on now and what is on later, and it arrives as a separate file from the streams themselves.

That separation is the thing worth understanding, because it explains nearly every EPG complaint. The guide is a different download from a different place than the video. A channel can play perfectly with no guide data at all, and a guide can be fully populated for a channel that is not currently working. They tell you nothing about each other.

Three ordinary reasons a guide looks wrong:

• It has not finished loading. Guide data is large and some players fetch it in the background on first run. Give it a few minutes before concluding anything.
• The player has its own EPG setting. Several players let you point at guide data separately, and a blank field there produces a blank grid regardless of what your subscription includes.
• Not every channel carries it. Guide data is supplied per channel, so a gap on one row is normal rather than a fault across the service.

If the guide is still empty after all that, it is worth a message rather than a reinstall. Reinstalling the player is the thing people try first and it almost never helps, because the guide was never stored in the app.

Putting the four together

When you open a player for the first time it will ask, in some order, for a name for the connection, then either a URL or a server plus username and password. The name is yours to choose and means nothing to anyone else. The rest is the line we sent you, typed exactly as it appears.

Once it connects, the channel list populates from the playlist, and the guide fills in afterwards from the EPG. Those two arriving at different times is normal and not a sign that something has gone wrong.

Our setup guide walks through this on each device we support, and the player apps comparison shows which apps ask for which of these fields.

Common questions

Is a line the same thing as an M3U?

Nearly, and the distinction is worth one sentence. The line is your access. The M3U is one of the formats that access can be delivered in. A player asking for "your M3U" and a provider saying "your line" are talking about the same thing.

Can I use my line on more than one device?

Yes, on as many devices as you like. What is limited is how many can play at the same moment, and that number is the connection count on your plan. Setting up a fourth device does not use anything up.

Why does my player ask for a port number?

Because some players split the address into parts and want each one in its own field. It is already in the address we sent you. If you are unsure which part goes where, send us the screen you are looking at and we will tell you.

My channels work but the guide is blank. Is my subscription faulty?

No. The guide and the streams are separate downloads, so one working while the other does not is expected rather than contradictory. Work through the three causes above before assuming anything about the account.

Everything loads but keeps stopping.

That is a different problem from anything on this page, and it is usually the connection or the device rather than the line. Our buffering guide takes the causes in the order worth checking.

Still stuck?

If you are staring at a setup screen and cannot work out which of your details goes in which box, send us a photo of it on WhatsApp. It takes about a minute to sort out when someone can see the same screen you are looking at, and it is very often one field in the wrong place rather than anything wrong with your subscription.