Have these to hand before you start
- An LG television running webOS 3.0 or newer, which means the 2016 range onward
- The LG account the set is signed in to, for the Content Store
- Your VOCOIPTV server address, username and password, or your M3U link
- The Magic Remote if the set came with one, which makes the typing far quicker
Nothing to sign in with yet? Take the free 24-hour trial, or pick how long you want.
Do these in order
Choose how the account will reach this television
webOS gives you two routes and they suit different people. The first is to type the login into a player on the set itself, which keeps everything in one place and lets you change it later from the sofa. The second is to push a playlist to the television from your phone, which means no typing on the set at all, but ties the list to that one television and holds only one list at a time. If you own a Magic Remote and can point at an on-screen keyboard, take the first. If you have the plain remote with only a four-way pad, or if the thought of entering a long address with it puts you off, take the second. Both end with the same channels on the same screen, and the account itself is unchanged either way.
Check what version of webOS the set is running
Press the gear button on the remote, open All Settings, go to General, then About This TV, and read the webOS version line. Anything numbered 3.0 or above dates from 2016 or later and will run a current player. Versions 1 and 2, from 2014 and 2015, are still switched on in plenty of houses but their store has largely emptied out, and no current player is published for them. While that screen is open, note the model number as well. Support can tell you from it whether your panel accepts a 4K stream or tops out at 1080p, which is worth knowing before you form an opinion about the picture.
Open the LG Content Store and search for a player
Press Home. The Content Store sits in the ribbon of apps along the bottom of the screen, and its icon is a shopping bag. Open it, move to the Apps tab at the top, then to the search field. Search IPTV Smarters. Then search Smart IPTV, and SS IPTV. Install whichever of them your store actually offers, and do not install a paid app whose description promises channels of its own, because a player never carries any. What you are buying, if you buy anything at all on this page, is a window for the account you already have.
Route one: type the login into Smarters
Open IPTV Smarters Player and accept the terms. Choose Login with Xtream Codes API. Shake the Magic Remote to bring the pointer up, then point at the first box. The profile name is yours to choose. The server address goes in whole, http:// at the front, a colon and the port number at the end. The on-screen keyboard has a separate layer for the colon and the slash, reached with the key marked with symbols, which is where most people stall. Then the username and password, watching for capitals. Press Add User and let the set pull the list down. It will sit still for a minute or two on an older model.
Route two: push the playlist from your phone
Open Smart IPTV on the television. It shows a MAC address, which is the permanent hardware number of that set. Write it down exactly as shown, colons and all. On your phone go to siptv.app/mylist, put that MAC in the first field, paste your M3U link into the URL field, tick Keep online and press Send. Close the app on the television properly, with the Home button and then the cross on its card, and open it again. If you are using SS IPTV instead, it works the same way with a different address: the app shows a short connect code, and you enter that code at the SS IPTV site along with your link.
Confirm it, then confirm it again from cold
Play a news channel for a minute, then a sports channel, which uses several times the data and will show up a weak connection first. Press the information button and look at what resolution the stream reports. Open the guide and check it shows program names for tomorrow rather than empty cells. Then switch the television off at the wall, leave it half a minute, switch it back on and open the player again. On webOS this is the test that matters, because a set short of free memory can behave perfectly until it is restarted and then come back to an empty app. If it returns with your channels in place, the television is finished.
If the screen does not look right
Sound comes through but the screen stays black
The set is receiving the stream and failing to draw a picture from it, which means the decoder the player chose cannot open that particular format. The channel itself is alive and other devices will play it. Open the player settings, find the playback or decoder option, and move it from hardware to software, or from software to hardware, whichever it is not currently on. Try the channel again. If it plays with the change in place, leave it there. If only one or two channels do this while the rest behave, use the FHD copy of that channel, which most sports feeds carry alongside the 4K one.
The pointer vanishes and no button does anything in the app
Some players are written for a four-way pad and take the pointer off the screen when they open. Shake the Magic Remote from side to side to bring the cursor back. If it will not return, use the arrow ring around the wheel to move between items and press the wheel itself to select, which every webOS app accepts. Pressing Back twice leaves any player cleanly, and the Home button always works even when the app appears to have stopped listening.
The app opens on a blank gray screen and stays there
An LG set holds apps in memory until it runs out, and the symptom of running out is a player that opens to nothing. Close everything from the Home ribbon by pressing up on each card and selecting the cross. If that does not clear it, switch the set off at the wall for a full minute, which is the only real restart webOS has, and open the player first thing afterwards. A set that does this every single time is short of memory permanently, and the lighter of the two players on this page is the one to keep.
Yesterday the channels were there, today the list is empty
Smart IPTV holds exactly one playlist against one MAC address. If somebody uploaded a different link to the same television, or if the Keep online box was left unticked when you sent yours, the list is replaced or expires. Send yours again at siptv.app/mylist with the same MAC, and tick Keep online this time. If the MAC shown on screen has changed since you wrote it down, the set has been moved between Wi-Fi and the Ethernet socket, and those are two different addresses.
The app we would put on this one
SIPTV app
Smart IPTV has no login screen at all. You send a playlist to the MAC address of one television, which looks broken until you know how it works.
Smarters Pro
IPTV Smarters Pro runs on nearly every screen and carries no channels of its own. Which install route your device needs, and the settings that matter.
Every guide in one list
One page for each television, box and app we cover.
Working through this with no login yet?
The steps above are the same whether you are on the free day or a paid term, so there is nothing to undo later. Tell us it is a LG Smart TV and we will send the three lines that make it work.
LG Smart TV IPTV FAQ
Which player is best on an LG television?
IPTV Smarters if your store carries it, because it is free and takes the account directly with no second device involved. Smart IPTV if you would rather not type on the television, or if the set is old enough that Smarters feels heavy, at the cost of a small one-time fee to the app developer. SS IPTV is worth knowing about as a third option where neither of the others appears. All three sit on webOS 3.0 and later.
Will an LG set show the 4K streams?
If the panel is 4K and the set is 2016 or newer, it has the decoder for it, and the stream arrives at whatever resolution the channel is broadcast in. Two things get in the way more often than the television does. One is the connection, which needs somewhere around 25 Mbps at the set itself for a 4K feed. The other is the copy of the channel you opened, since many exist as a 4K version and an FHD version side by side with almost the same name.
Is TiViMate available for LG?
No, and it will not be. TiViMate is an Android application and webOS is not Android, so there is no version to install and no store listing to find. Anything in the LG Content Store with a name a letter or two away from TiViMate is an unrelated product. If the grid guide is what you want, put an Android stick on a spare HDMI socket and use the television as a screen.
I have a 2015 LG. What are my options?
The store on webOS 2 has thinned out to the point where a current player is unlikely to be there, and nothing can be installed from outside it. Screen mirroring from a phone works and is worth trying, with the usual cost that the phone is then occupied and the picture is softer. The straightforward answer on a set that age is a small box on an HDMI socket, which also outlives the television.