Guides for IPTV newbs...like me

by Neflhiem

So ive been running KODI on my HTPC for about a year now but never looked into the IPTV thing. With football (US) season starting i decided to dig into it.

I got my first "trial" with Epicstreams last night and it did pretty good.. great quality for a while.. second half had a bunch of stutters. EPG sucked

So looking through here i dont really see that there is any consensus on provider. I may look at ACE and Rocket streams and Smooth streams.

Epic played HBO HD very well.. im really only looking for English and mostly US but UK/Canada is great too.. primarily for sports but i, like everyone wants the most bang for the buck.

So, provider (would love to find one with a better epg-ACE?) aside. Im using the PVR simple in Kodi because Stalker failed to authenticate.. With such a huge list though of PVR addons .. i have no idea if there is something better.. not sure if stalker is better. Not sure if i can improve the EPG either.

Ive seen other addons mentioned for different things from browsing here.. TVheadend and i saw something else to make it look/perform better (and i cant find it now since ive been reading so much stuff).

I guess what im asking, is there some guide or something that breaks all this down somewhere? i feel like im stumbling around. I get the stream providers all change but it seems like the front ends wouldnt.. like How to optimize KODI for IPTV or something.. as i have no idea what many of these other things are or even where to look for them other then the "whats your IPTV build" posts... which are actually kinda sporadic.

thanks

-bumbastick-

https://www.reddit.com/r/IPTV/comments/6u46ns/fabiptv_tvheadend_complete_setup/?st=J6HVLZNX&sh=cd35ec87

stokedcrf

Unfortunately when it comes to kodi we are at a huge disadvantage at this point in time. Generally speaking, epic is one of the better ones for HD that focuses on English. The very best epg and most reliable server of all time is ipguys hands down. The issue here is that the quality is dvd quality. This looks ok on my parents 42" but on my larger 65" 4k I needed something else (enter epic).

Buffering can be causes by many issues so I personally would do some more extensive testing before the season actually begins.

And, as bumba has posted... That guide there to tvh is the bomb and that's the only way to make kodi badass. No joke.

If that guide isn't your cup of tea, i highly suggest getting a proper supported stalker device. Consider the video reviews in the sticky over at /r/iptvgta

christhebaker

I have a subscription to IPRocket and Smoothstreams. I run the lastest LibreELEC on an x86_64 NVidia ION based HTPC. I don't use any VOD or time shifting features.

Rocket is an IPGuys reseller and using the Stalker Client PVR add-on, I've found that it works great in Kodi. The EPG works great and I can't watch live channels without issue. The servers are very stable.

SmoothStreams is the choice if you want HD sports though. All their feeds are 720p 60fps [I think], and the unofficial Kodi add-on works great and includes a functioning EPG. The new official add-on with EPG is still in beta. There were some issues with stability recently, but their infrastructure was just upgraded and it seems to be working good now.

If you just want to watch live TV with an EPG, Kodi is fine. If you want all the bells and whistles that your cable provider would have, try the TVHeadEnd thing or grab a Mag box.

Tamar1nd

Kodi, Android boxes, Andoird Mobile phone Apps made to run on TV, all a bad joke not meant for TV viewing.

I'm happy with my Enigma2 Box that is made for TV, don't understand all these Kodi stuff just so one can watch shitty quality CAM rips of movies on 50 sources that none work, when same can me done torrenting and watch TV on a box made for TV.

Throwing things like Headend's sounding like a Cable Company lingo on a Chinese Android box, out of this world.

Just my 2 cents.