Whether you are a normal PC user or you work on your personal computer, it might be the only device you can watch IPTV on. Although Your options are kind of limited, there are still some softwares and application to use. VLC Player is the most basic option.

VLC Media Player from Videolan is one of the best, if not the best, media players in the world and you can take that to the bank :) you can play any media content whether it is an audio (MP3) or video (MP4 or MKV) files and also you can play online media streams. The media player engine used in this software is so light and efficient which results it a quick stream load and smooth playback.

In this article, I'm gonna go through some key features of this which is handy to single users and even IPTV providers. This player, although looking simple in the interface, is very versatile and full of handy features.

 

How to use VLC Media Player on PC?

  

First, go on the official website of VLC Media Player which is https://www.videolan.org/ . Download VLC should appear in the middle of the screen and it automatically detects your Operating System, meaning by clicking on that button, the compatible version for your OS will be downloaded.

 

Download will start automatically. Click on the installation package and install the software just the way you do for any other softwares on your machine.

Note: Videolan is a non-profit project so if you enjoy the software, consider donating.

 

This is the beautiful look of VLC. It's neat, it's organized and running it is pretty easy, how?!
What do you want to play? is it a MP3 audio file? a MP4 or MKV video file? or is it an IPTV M3U file? just drag and drop the file in the middle of the app where it says Drop Media Here and your content should load and starts playing if auto-play is enabled.

 

 

Here you can see I have dragged and dropped a M3U file onto VLC and the channel list is loaded. If I double click any of those channels, or just highlight it and then click play, it will start streaming that channel.

Needless to say, the M3U file is downloaded from the M3U url provided by your IPTV provider.

 

It is possible to open a Media Stream Link, too. If you have an online media stream address, you can play it via VLC as well.

An example of this would be streaming addresses inside the m3u file. YOu can see them if you open your m3u file with a text editor.

Whether you are on Windows or MACOS, from the top toolbar, click on File > Open Network.

 

Now paste the link of the streaming content and click Open to play.

 

How to use VLC Player to analyze IPTV streams?

 

From the top toolbar go to Window > Media Information.

 

Media information page has 3 tabs.

General includes some basic information like the stream name and the URL address to the stream content.

 

Codec Details is a deep insight on the material of the stream content. You can find out the actual resolution of video, the codec and audio channels and sample rate. So if you get into an argument with your source like they claim the feed is 4K but what you see has lower resolution, you can play the stream in VLC and send them a screenshot of Codec Details page as a proof of the content being 1080pHD. The reason I made that example is that sometimes stats on IPTV CMS might not be correct, but testing the actual stream in VLC is the best to verify that.

 

Statistics page consists of 4 blocks.

Input is the stats for the data flowing (Downloading) into your device from the streaming source. Read at Media is the total amount of data downloaded from the moment you started playing the stream. Stream Bitrate is the live current bitrate of the stream. The higher the bitrate, the more the picture quality.

Video is about video blocks (Chunks of video data) and frames. It is not necessary for these two numbers to match, sometimes some video blocks contain more frames. Lost Frames is what you need to pay attention to. It is possible that few frames get lost every now and then and by that I mean in long intervals, maybe every 30 minutes or so, But if every few seconds you notice Lost Frames number piling up, then there is definitely an issue between your device and the streaming source. It could be network speed (either yours or server's), could be CPU or ram issue (either yours or server's) ... for sure something is wrong and you need to investigate.

Audio is the same as above but related to the sound. Usually Audio Blocks and Buffers number correlate. Noises in audio or audio loss can be identified by Lost Buffers in this section.

Streaming is for when you stream something during your broadcasts using VLC. Since we are playing a stream (Downloading) and not broadcasting anything with it, the Streaming section is inactive.

 

Any questions? post it on WDS Community Forum and let us help you.