Let`s say you live in the U.K and you are a fan of Sky UK channels. The broadcaster normal provides the service through satellite dishes or cables inside UK. Now what if you are on a job conference abroad and have no access to the satellite broadcasted content. How would you tune to the favorite show? This is possible only through IPTV.

IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television so basically we will have our favorite TV program over the internet. In other words it`s "watching favorite TV program without any location boundaries. You simply need internet. So thats the whole explanation we will be giving you as it is enough. What this article`s about is a bit more practical:

-How is IPTV provided? who are providers?

-How to choose the right provider?

-How can one find and subscribe to the service?

-What are the necessary equipments to run the service?

By understanding the above, you`ll be having enough knowledge to find, subscribe and run IPTV almost the easiest way.

 

How is IPTV provided? who are providers?

IPTV is the technology of streaming programs. The data being streamed usually includes Video, Audio, Subtitle(if enabled) and EPG(if provided), but this can be provided in two general ways or let`s say by two general groups:

Legal (official) Providers: Above as an introductory example, we named Sky UK. In recent years (since 2006) Sky itself has been broadcasting it`s programs over IPTV too using their official app called SkyGo. This enables the company to keep their subscribers happy letting them tune to their favorite program any where, anytime. Now this is the company who owns the service and clients must subscribe legitimately for a fixed number of channels, in a single language and mostly circulating the content which concerns British people.

Illegal Providers: To anything legal, there is an illegal side! there would be no fun without it ;) As they say, illegal exists so legal would not lose the meaning and law it`s use! enough jokes now ;) the same technology which enables a broadcasting company keep their clients happy, can and do enable a special group of people earn money too. In this method, the illegal re-streamer captures the feed from the official source and re-stream it to a specific streaming management system and re-broadcasts it to it`s own clients. By doing so, a single provider can provide vast number of programs with different content from different countries in a single package. Assuming the provider does it1s job right and provides a high quality re-streamed service, that is way more economical and way more interesting.

 

How to choose the right provider?

When a provider is a huge well-known company, you can be 99% sure that they will provide what`s best as they are the genuine source of that content, but here we mainly focus on the 2nd group explained above in which the readers of this article [yeah you ;)] are more interested.

Being prompt: The first contact is highly important! you either jump on their website and start a live chat or you may send them and email expecting a response. Either way, a good provider should respond soon and be quick in correspondence throughout the whole first steps. If you don`t find them that way, just press the cross shape button on top right/left of your browser and find another. It has to be said that even a fully automatic subscribing and request submitting and trial providing system should not mislead you as you need to make sure there is a human being monitoring the whole system since there will be times when the automatic system needs an administrator to intervene and fix the problem.

Try it first, for free: A confident provider always provides a free trial, at least for 24 hours and lets you fully evaluate the service. If not, then you have every right to be suspicious. Another thing about evaluating a service is that clients should do that during peak hours when there is/are live event(s) going on as during that period, there will be tons of clients connected and servers of the provider will have to show how strong their are and how properly they are configured and even more, how much free network bandwidth, CPU and RAM they have to handle peak hours.

It is good to be close: A client should always choose the right provider also by making sure that the servers which the provider has hosted and streams his service on are near him. For instance if you live in the USA, it would not be a good idea to subscribe to a provider whose servers are hosted in Europe UNLESS you find his servers reachable just fine by pinging them or making sure that the provider has multi-continental server locations. Yes, nowadays Content Management Systems enable providers to route clients to the closest servers if the provider has, as mentioned above, multi-continental server locations.

Who does not love a neat list: Aside from finding a high quality service, a well categorized and ordered channel list is the best possible thing that can happen to a client. This will enable you find your desired channel or Video On-demand quickly.

Payment options: Most providers try to keep their identity safe by using payment methods like Bitcoin, Credit Card and so on but there are others providing other methods like Bank Transfer, Paypal and ... . Make sure the provider has the right payment option for you before you fall in love with the service because if that happens, you might force yourself into paying a provider in a method in which you don`t have refund option and that provider turns to be not as trustworthy as you thought.

 

How can one find and subscribe to the service?

They are all over the web, just search google, follow the steps you just read above and then pick one to subscribe with. Reading some non-fake reviews about the provider you want to choose would be a smart idea. This is also available on Cardsharing, IPTV or satellite forums. Never forget a legit provider must have a well looking website which is being kept up-to-date and contains some worthy infos about the service.

 

What are the necessary equipments to run the service?

This is mostly the trickiest of all, although it is not like that and you can be sure that there are apps, softwares and plugins which enable you to install and run IPTV on your devices just fine. IPTV can be run on almost all devices: Smart handhelds like Phones, Tablets, PC`s or Satellite boxes which have enough ram and cpu like the most enigma 2 boxes including Dreambox, VU+, Gigablue, Zgemma or even Smart Tv`s like Samsung and LG which have a Smart Hub and let you install apps like Smart IPTV App on them to run IPTV.

In future articles, tons of choices will be provided regarding IPTV friendly devices with detailed explanation on how to configure and use them. A well-organized provider should have these options outlined on their website, usually in "Tutorial" or "knowledge base" sections.

 

That would be all. Hope you have enjoyed the article though some of the facts there are known to you but there are some who are new to this and we hope they make use of these stuff.

 

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