You need a VPN if you are being throttled by your ISP. More ISPs in the states are doing this selectively.
you need a VPN if you are geo blocked to circumvent that
some prefer a VPN so the ISP doesn’t sell the info on what you are watching and buying (privacy)
not just for iptv I'd recommend using one for all things if you care about your privacy. which one is the best is a very huge debate where a lot of people don't know what they're talking about and are wrong and just buy the cheapest promoted one from and untrusted source.
personally i use NordVPN and i made that decision based on this website that compares VPNs and gives a vert detailed breakdown.
No, change your ISP away from the big 6 to companies like idnet or AAISP
The purpose of a vpn is to hide "your" connections from prying eyes. Whether the provider has a vpn is irrelevant. It's what you are connecting to that you want to encrypt. The drawback may be less bandwidth depending on your vpn provider and type of encryption.
It can be difficult to find an honest vpn review. Most of them are sponsored. Check out Tom Spark on YouTube. I find his opinions pretty reliable and honest. But to answer your question. Most providers run their services through a VPN already. If you still find it necessary, well, that's up to you. 😉
vpnily.com - free 7 day vpn trial :)
Unfortunately im with one of the big 6, choices outside are laking speed wise in my area, i have to use it for the football, using ipvanish, works really well
Yes, most of the iptv providers are putting your username and password into the url and they are using HTTP. Every node that your request is routed through can sniff these values.
I have found with BT even though they claim no traffic shaping, that without a vpn, buffering does increase.
As for which VPN, thats hit and miss, for example I used Surfshark before they went mad on sponsoring youtube videos. As they have got more popular their service obviously deteriorated. Fair enough it was like only £3 a month or so, so you get what you pay for
So in the end for IPTV only, i fired up a VPS in Amsterdam via my cloud provider, install Pritunl which is a OPENVPN server and 20 minutes later set up my devices. Benefit is that you are the only user and since i moved this way i virtually have zero buffering.
For obvious reasons this is just used for hiding packets so to speak, the fact you have a dedicated IP at the cloud host end means it's no good if you want to do stuff thats proper against the law (but none of us are like that anyway !!) as you are not as anon as a provider where the IP is shared amongst hundreds of people. But for general day to day stuff like IPTV (they hardly gonna come knocking for that) or general protection on the web and at public wifi hotspots, it works a dream.
I uploaded a step by step set up video which has been used by others in the IPTV providers discord server and they all came back happy as a pig in ....... the hardest bit is ordering ya VPS, the rest is simple as.
I've used 2 different VPN services, IPVanish and SurfShark. I use firesticks and found I do like SurfShark since they have worked out some kinks with the firesticks. My reason is they offer Ikev.2 as an option and IPVanish only offers OpenVPN. Ikev.2 is secure and faster than OpenVPN.
For work I like IPVanish better. The windows version of IPVanish does offer Ikev.2. SurfShark doesn't play as well with a support program we use for our customers.
Edit: I have heard that SurfShark may be adding Wireguard later this year. I don't know that as a fact.
if you can get piracy letters from your ISP for torrenting which they base on your IP. then it wont be long before you can get them from your ISP for IPTV, more likely some piracy lawyers though, once they commandeer a server, which is happening more and more often. just look at the recent global iptv takeover, they even put a nice little warning message similar to an ICE message you would get on a seized webpage.
do yourself the favor and pay what, 50 bucks for 3 years of nordvpn., or risk getting demand letters for like 5k or more in the future..
Most providers have there own vpn inbuilt.. So no I wouldn't and never had too.
I tried multiple VPNs with IPTV, even Nord VPN. I was talking to my buddy who is a reseller about the streaming issues I was having and his first question was if I was using a VPN. He told me that was probably causing me the issues I was having and didn't need one. He's been a reseller for a long while. I cut out the VPN on my side and nearly all my issues were resolved.
If your an IPTV service provider yes. If your just a consumer don't bother. It's a kin to using two rubbers at the same time during sexual intercourse.