IPTV glossary: the terms a news and documentary viewer runs into, defined

Vizwriting Team · online since September 19, 2026 · last edited October 5, 2026

Most IPTV jargon names a plain idea: the EPG is the program guide, catch-up is an archive of programs that already aired, multi-view is several channels tiled on one screen, and a connection is one stream playing at a time. This glossary is written for viewers who watch to find things out, so alongside the sign-in vocabulary it covers the words you meet while following a story across news channels, replaying a missed bulletin or hunting for a documentary. Definitions that depend on a particular service use Vizwriting as the reference point. Terms are grouped by the moment you are likely to run into them.

On the sign-in screen

These appear the first time you open a player, and one mistyped character is enough to stop a login.

Xtream Codes login

A server address plus a username and password, the three values that unlock a subscription. The name comes from an old server panel and now simply describes the format. Give it to a player that understands it and channels, library and guide arrive together, which is why it is the first choice wherever it is offered. The Vizwriting Xtream Codes setup explains each field.

Server URL

Where the provider’s server sits on the internet, labeled host in some players. It begins with http:// or https:// and may end in a colon followed by a port number, such as 8080. Drop either end and even a correct username and password get turned away.

M3U link

The whole subscription folded into one long web address, a get.php address carrying the username and password as parameters. VLC and other playlist-based players accept it. Whoever holds the link holds the account, so guard it like a password. Pasting it is shown in the walkthrough for loading an M3U playlist.

EPG URL and XMLTV

A separate address for listings, normally an xmltv.php link that returns schedule data in the XMLTV format. Xtream logins usually bring the guide along automatically; M3U setups often need this address pasted into the player’s guide settings by hand.

Portal URL

What a MAG box or similar set-top box uses instead of a login form. It goes into the box’s portal settings once, and from then on the provider recognizes the box by its MAC address.

MAC address

A hardware identifier of twelve characters, shown in two-character groups split by colons. MAG boxes carry addresses that start 00:1A:79. Some boxes and TV apps tie a subscription to this identifier rather than to a username, so a replacement device has to be linked again.

Stream format: TS or HLS

Many players let you choose how live channels are packaged: TS, an MPEG transport stream, or HLS, sometimes shown as m3u8. Both carry the same picture. When one channel stutters or will not start, switching the format in the player’s settings costs nothing to try.

Putting a player on the screen

The vocabulary of apps and hardware, before any channel plays.

Player app

The software that does the watching: TiviMate, iPlayTV, Smart IPTV or IPTV Smarters Pro, for example. Until a subscription is added, it shows nothing at all. IPTV Smarters Pro, once given an Xtream login, splits into Live TV, Movies and Series; TiviMate is built around live channels and the guide. Apple users get the free Smarters version under the name Smarters Player Lite, and iPlayTV runs on Apple hardware only.

APK

The package file an Android app installs from. On Android TV boxes and Fire OS sticks, an APK is how a player arrives when it is missing from the official store. Get it from the developer’s official site, and treat any APK sold as a provider’s own app with suspicion.

Sideloading

Installing an app from an APK instead of an app store. Fire OS models of the Fire TV Stick allow it through the free Downloader app; the Fire TV Stick 4K Select, which runs Vega OS, does not, and Roku has no sideloading at all. The Fire OS route is in the Fire TV Stick walkthrough.

Developer Options

A hidden Fire OS settings menu where installs from unknown apps are switched on. To reveal it, open My Fire TV > About and press select 7 times while the device name is highlighted.

Set-top box

A dedicated box wired to the television and designed mainly for live channels. A MAG box signs in with a portal URL and its MAC address; Android-based boxes accept ordinary player apps instead. Both kinds are covered in the MAG and Formuler box guide.

Finding news and factual channels

Words for getting from a list of 25,000+ channels and 120,000+ titles to the few you want.

Channel group

One of the folders a channel list is split into, usually by country first and then by type: news, documentary, sport, kids. Groups are what make a very long list usable with a remote; open the handful you need and leave the rest closed. Some sellers call a selected set of groups a bouquet.

Search

Typing part of a name to jump straight to a channel or a title. Four or five letters entered with the remote beat scrolling a country group, and in the on-demand library it is the fastest route to documentaries on a given subject. Some players search channels and the library separately.

Favorites

A short list of channels or titles you mark yourself, stored in that player on that device. A sensible factual list might hold two or three news desks from different countries, a nature network and the weather. In TiviMate, favorites belong to the Premium tier.

Hidden groups

Groups switched off so they vanish from the channel list, leaving only the countries and genres you actually watch. In TiviMate this is also a Premium feature; other players handle it differently or not at all.

EPG

Short for electronic program guide, the grid that shows each channel’s current program, the one after it and the days ahead. The listings are delivered alongside the streams and drawn into the grid by the player. For a news viewer it settles the practical questions, such as when the next bulletin begins, and on channels with an archive it doubles as the menu for catch-up. How the guide loads and refreshes is covered on the Vizwriting program guide page.

Now and next

The compact view of the guide that many players lay over a live channel: the program on air, with a progress bar, and the one after it. Useful for seeing whether a bulletin has just begun or is nearly finished.

Playlist refresh

Reloading the channel list and the library from the provider, usually from the player’s settings. Newly added channels and corrected names appear only after a refresh, and many players run one automatically on start-up.

VOD

Video on demand: the library of movies and series you start whenever you like, as opposed to channels that keep to a schedule. In most players it lives in its own Movies and Series areas, separate from the live list. The library behind this site holds 120,000+ titles, documentaries and other non-fiction among them, and the documentary and factual shelves explain how those are arranged.

Following a story as it happens

Live viewing has its own small vocabulary, most of it about time and about watching more than one thing.

Live channel

A channel that plays as it is broadcast, so you join wherever the program has reached. News, weather and the markets are the obvious live viewing. A live channel cannot be started from the top unless the channel also keeps a catch-up archive.

Latency

How far a live stream trails the original broadcast, usually several seconds and sometimes more. It explains why a phone alert can report an event before your screen shows it. Some delay is built into the way streams are packaged and cannot be removed entirely.

Multi-view

Watching two or more live channels together, tiled on a single television: two news desks covering the same event, for instance, or a bulletin beside a weather map. TiviMate offers it in its Premium tier. Every tile is its own stream, so three tiles take three of the plan’s connections.

Picture-in-picture

A small window showing one channel in a corner while another fills the screen. Not every player has it, and not every device allows it, so count on it only if your player offers it. Like a multi-view tile, the small window is a second stream.

Time-shift

Pausing or winding back a live channel during the broadcast, then carrying on behind real time. Whether it works depends on the player and the channel; where a channel keeps a catch-up archive, it can often reach further back. Also written timeshift.

Plus-one channel

A copy of a channel broadcast an hour later, usually labeled +1, so a missed program comes round again with no archive needed. It is time-shifting done by the broadcaster rather than by your player.

East and West feeds

Two versions of the same US network running three hours apart, one timed for the Eastern time zone and one for the Pacific. When an evening program has already passed on the East feed, the West feed may not have reached it yet.

Simulcast

The same program carried on two channels, or on television and online, at the same moment. Sister news channels sometimes simulcast during major events, which is why identical coverage can appear under two names in the list.

Getting back what already aired

For the bulletin that went out while you were busy, and the program you want to see again.

Catch-up

Replays of programs that have finished airing, held by the provider for a limited time and opened from the guide. It exists only on channels that keep an archive, never on all of them. The Vizwriting catch-up TV page shows how it appears in common players.

Archive window

How far back catch-up reaches on a particular channel, counted in days. It differs from one channel to the next, so last night’s bulletin may be waiting on one news desk and already gone from another.

Archive marker

The small icon, often a clock or a rewind arrow, that players place beside channels with catch-up. No marker usually means no archive for that channel, or a player that does not handle catch-up at all.

Start over

Restarting a program already in progress from its first minute by drawing on the catch-up archive. Some players put a button for it on the live channel; in others you select the current slot in the guide and play it from the archive. Use it if your player offers it, and only on channels with an archive.

Recording

Keeping a copy of a live broadcast on a drive for later. Whether you can depends on the player rather than the subscription: TiviMate Premium can record, and many players cannot. For news, catch-up often does the same job without any storage of your own.

EPG time offset

A setting that moves the whole guide forward or back by whole hours when the listings do not match what is actually playing, typically after a clock change or on a device set to the wrong time zone. Many players keep it in their guide settings.

Picture and sound

Why the same nature program can look superb on one set and soft on another.

Resolution tags

Labels in channel and title names giving the picture size: SD (standard definition), HD (720 lines), FHD (1080 lines), and 4K, also written UHD (2160 lines). Several tags on one channel mean several copies of the same feed; choose the largest your screen and line handle comfortably. More on Ultra HD is on the 4K page.

Bitrate

The amount of data a stream spends each second, measured in megabits per second. More bitrate means more detail, which shows in fine textures such as foliage, water and fur. As a rough planning figure, HD wants about 10 Mbps and 4K about 25 Mbps.

Codec: H.264 and HEVC

The method used to squeeze video for the journey. H.264 plays nearly everywhere; HEVC, also called H.265, reaches similar quality with less data and is common on 4K channels. Hardware that cannot decode HEVC itself may freeze, stutter or play sound over a blank screen on those feeds.

HDR

High dynamic range: a wider spread between the darkest and brightest parts of the picture, with richer color. It belongs to individual titles, and it appears only when the title, the player and the television all support it.

Frame rate

Pictures per second. Ordinary television runs at 25 or 30, many sports feeds at 50 or 60, and film at 24. Turning on frame-rate matching, if the device’s display menu has it, removes the judder on slow camera pans, a familiar sight in landscape and wildlife footage.

Audio track

An alternative soundtrack on a channel or title, often another language. Where more than one exists, the player’s audio menu lists them during playback.

Subtitles and closed captions

Text versions of the dialogue. Subtitles come as separate tracks on titles that carry them; closed captions on US broadcasts travel inside the video signal, and whether they survive the trip and appear on screen depends on the stream and the player. Neither is guaranteed on every channel or title.

Your plan and account

The words on price lists and in conversations about renewing.

Connection

Each connection is one stream playing at that moment, which some sellers call a screen. Installs are unlimited; what the plan caps is simultaneous playback, and a multi-view tile or a catch-up replay counts like any other stream. A Vizwriting plan offers one, two, three or five of them.

Line

Trade shorthand for one subscription account: one set of credentials, one connection limit, one end date. Opening a line means creating an account; extending it means adding another term.

Expiry date

When the paid term runs out, visible in the account information of most players. Past that date every device stops together, which looks exactly like an outage, so it is the first thing to check when everything goes dark at once. A plan that does not renew automatically simply ends there.

Free trial

A short test account for checking a service on your own screen and connection before paying. The Vizwriting free trial lasts 24 hours and opens the full line-up and library.

Money-back guarantee

A promise to refund the first purchase if the service does not suit you within a set period, here 7 days, requested on WhatsApp.

Reseller and credits

A reseller sells another provider’s service to customers of its own, paying for it in credits bought from the provider’s panel; each credit turns into subscription time for one account. The picture and the reliability depend entirely on the upstream source.

Panel

The back-office dashboard where a provider or reseller creates accounts, sets connection limits and moves end dates. Subscribers never see it; it is also why a new login can be working within minutes.

When playback misbehaves

The terms you will see in troubleshooting notes and support replies.

Buffering

A stall in playback, usually marked by a spinning wheel, because video has not arrived fast enough. If a single channel stalls, suspect that feed; if they all stall together, suspect the connection or the device.

Decoder

The stage of the player that rebuilds pictures from compressed video. Handing that work to the device’s graphics hardware tends to run smoother, while doing it on the main processor is slower but more forgiving of unusual formats. Flipping between the two is a standard fix for one stubborn channel.

How the signal travels

Three terms that explain what IPTV is underneath.

Internet protocol

The set of rules that splits data into packets and routes them between networks. IPTV is television carried by those rules instead of by a broadcast signal through the air or a cable.

Unicast and multicast

Two ways of sending a channel. Multicast sends one copy that the network duplicates for every home tuned in, which telecom operators use inside their own networks. Unicast sends each viewer a separate stream, which is how subscriptions over the open internet work, and why every screen draws on your own bandwidth.

OTT

Over the top: video delivered across the public internet to an app, rather than over a network the TV operator controls. Subscription IPTV over home broadband counts as OTT too, as do streaming apps. The comparison of IPTV and OTT goes further.

None of this needs learning in advance. The login arrives in a WhatsApp chat with every value already filled in, and most of the vocabulary sorts itself out within an evening of use. Keep the page for the night something on screen behaves strangely, or for decoding a seller’s claims.

Further reading