Have these to hand before you start
- An Android TV, Google TV device, Android box or Fire TV Stick
- Your VOCOIPTV server address, username and password
- A phone signed in to the same Google account, if you intend to buy Premium
- Fifteen minutes, because the part that pays off here is arranging the channels
Nothing to sign in with yet? Take the free 24-hour trial, or pick how long you want.
Do these in order
Decide about Premium before you install anything
The free version is a complete player and many people stay on it forever. It holds one playlist, shows the guide, and plays everything. What it does not do is record, show two channels at once, or hold a second playlist, and those are the three reasons to pay. Premium is priced at roughly $9.99 for a year, with a lifetime license in the mid-thirties depending on your region, and a seven-day trial sits in front of both so you can decide with the thing in front of you rather than from a description. The awkward part, and the reason this is the first step rather than the last, is that Premium is bought in a separate phone app called TiViMate Companion, using the same Google account as the television. If the television is signed in to an account you cannot reach from your phone, sort that out now.
Install TiViMate on the device
On Android TV and Google TV, open the Play Store and search TiViMate IPTV Player. Check the developer line reads AR Mobile Dev before installing, because several imitations use a similar icon and a name a letter or two away. On a Fire TV Stick, Amazon does not stock it, so it is sideloaded with Downloader exactly as our Fire TV Stick page describes. On a box running the phone build of Android, the Play Store will hide the listing and Downloader is again the route. There is no version for any non-Android device, so if you are holding a Samsung or LG remote, this is the wrong page and Smarters is the right one.
Add your account as a playlist
Open it. The first screen offers Add playlist, and after that Xtream Codes or M3U playlist. Choose Xtream Codes, which brings the guide and the on-demand sections with it, where the M3U route brings the channels alone. Three boxes follow: the server address, starting http:// and ending with a colon and the port; the username; and the password. Both of the last two are case sensitive. Press Next and give the playlist a name you will recognize if you ever add a second. It then downloads the channel list, which takes a minute or two the first time and shows a counter while it works.
Choose which groups to keep, and mean it
TiViMate now shows every category in the list with a checkbox beside each. This is the most valuable minute on this page. Twenty-five thousand channels in alphabetical order is not something anybody navigates with a remote, and leaving everything switched on is why people give up on a service that is working correctly. Turn off every group you know you will never open. Leave four or five. Finish, then open Settings, Channels, and drag the ones you watch nightly to the top. None of this touches the account, all of it is reversible from Settings, Playlists, and you can bring a group back in ten seconds when you want it.
Set the guide up the way you will actually read it
Open Settings, then TV guide. Set the update interval to every twelve hours, which keeps tomorrow filled in without the app spending its evening downloading. Switch on the option to show the program description, and set how many days ahead the grid runs. Where does the guide come from? The Xtream login carries it, which is why nothing on this page has asked you for a second address. If somebody tells you to paste an EPG URL into TiViMate, they are describing a playlist setup rather than this one. While you are in Settings, turn on channel numbers if you prefer typing a number to scrolling.
Buy Premium in the Companion app, if you decided to
On your phone, install TiViMate Companion from the Play Store, signed in to the same Google account as the television. Open it, choose the subscription or the lifetime license, and pay through Google as you would for anything else. Then go back to the television, close TiViMate completely from the recent apps, and open it again. Premium appears on its own because it is attached to the Google account rather than to the box. If the television still says Free, the two are on different accounts, which is the single most common cause and is fixed from Settings, Accounts on the television.
Test the guide, then test a restart
Open the guide and move right along a row until you are looking at tomorrow evening. Program names should be filled in the whole way. Come back to now, play a sports channel, and press back once: the channel should keep playing in the corner while the list stays on screen, which is the behavior you came here for. Then pull the power out of the device, wait ten seconds, plug it back in and open TiViMate. Your playlist, your groups and your order should all be exactly where you left them. If the app asks you to add a playlist again, it did not save, and adding it a second time while watching for an error message is the way to find out why.
If the screen does not look right
The Play Store says the app is not compatible with this device
The device is running the phone build of Android rather than the television build, and TiViMate is published for televisions. You can confirm it under Settings, System, About, where a television build names itself Android TV OS. The app itself will run perfectly well once it is on, so the answer is to install it with Downloader using the address support sends you, the same way a Fire TV Stick does it. Nothing about the account changes.
The guide has tonight in it and nothing after
Open Settings, TV guide, and trigger an update by hand, then leave the app open and do something else for ten minutes. A first guide download across a list this size is a large amount of data and the app fills it in from the present forward. If it is still empty tomorrow, the playlist was almost certainly added with the M3U option rather than Xtream Codes. Remove it from Settings, Playlists and add it again, choosing Xtream Codes this time.
Companion says the license is bought but the television says Free
Two Google accounts. Open Settings, Accounts on the television and read which address is signed in, then check the same on the phone where you bought it. They must match. If they do, close TiViMate from the recent apps rather than pressing Home, and open it again, because the app reads the license at startup. Buying a second license is never the fix, and the developer trial can be restarted on the correct account if you are still inside seven days.
Recording starts and stops after a few minutes
The recording is landing on the internal storage of the device and filling it. A match in HD runs to several gigabytes, and a Fire TV Stick has around 5 GB free in total. Open Settings, Recordings in TiViMate and point it at a USB drive instead, formatted so the device can write to it. If the box has no USB socket, recording is not practical on that hardware, and this is one of the places where a proper box earns its money over a stick.
Other apps that open the same subscription
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.
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.
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 TiViMate and we will send the three lines that make it work.
TiViMate IPTV FAQ
How much is TiViMate Premium and what does it add?
Roughly $9.99 for twelve months. A lifetime license is the alternative, in the mid-thirties, and both move a little with the region you are billed in. What that buys is recording, two channels on screen together, room for a second playlist, and a handful of interface options. A seven-day trial comes with it. The purchase happens on a phone, inside the separate Companion app, and the money goes to the person who writes TiViMate rather than to us.
Does a VOCOIPTV account work in TiViMate?
It does, with nothing to set up beyond the three values themselves. An account here is an ordinary Xtream Codes login, which is the format TiViMate asks for when you choose Add playlist and then Xtream Codes. The guide, the films and the series all populate from the same login, and the catch-up sections appear on the channels that carry them. No separate guide address is needed and none is issued.
Can one Premium license cover two boxes?
The license is attached to the Google account that bought it, so a second device signed in to that same account picks it up without paying again. Two devices on two different accounts need two licenses. If you are setting up boxes for a household, signing them all in to one account before you buy is the arrangement that saves the most, and the seven-day trial lets you check it behaves as expected first.
Why is there no TiViMate on Samsung, LG or Apple?
Because it is an Android application and none of those are Android devices. Samsung runs Tizen, LG runs webOS, and Apple runs its own systems with no sideloading at all, so there is nothing to install and no store listing to look for. Apps sold in those stores with names close to TiViMate are unrelated products. The realistic route to a TiViMate guide on one of those televisions is a small Android stick on a spare HDMI socket.