An IPTV Glossary Organised by When You Will Need Each Term

By Tivo8k Team · Published September 19, 2026 · Updated September 22, 2026

An alphabetical glossary is useful only when you already know which word you are looking for. Most people meeting this vocabulary do not. So the terms below are grouped by the moment you encounter them: while deciding what to buy, while setting it up, while watching, and while working out why something is wrong.

Terms you meet while deciding

IPTV. Television delivered over an internet connection instead of through a dish, a cable or an aerial. A delivery method rather than a type of content.

Line-up. The full set of channels an account can open. Advertised counts are close to meaningless for comparison, because padding a list with dead entries and duplicate regional feeds costs a provider nothing.

VOD. Video on demand: films and series you start yourself, as opposed to live channels running to a schedule. Usually counted separately from channels.

Connection, feed or stream. Different words for the same thing: one video playing at one moment. A term allowing three of them means three screens can watch together, regardless of how many devices have the player installed.

Trial. A short full-access account, normally a day. Worth taking on an evening you would actually be watching, because a quiet afternoon proves nothing about how a service behaves under load.

Reseller. Somebody buying credits wholesale and opening accounts under their own name. Not the same as the operator running the servers, which is worth knowing when you are deciding who you are actually dealing with.

Terms you meet while setting up

Player. The application that turns your login into channels on a screen. The choice matters more than most people expect, because the player decides how much of a feed you can reach.

Xtream login. The common format: a server address, a username and a password. It hands the player structured information, so groups, guide data, on-demand categories and the list of audio tracks all arrive with it.

M3U playlist. The older format: one long web address returning a flat list of streams. It works everywhere and carries much less. It also contains your username and password inside the address, which makes it as sensitive as a password.

EPG. The electronic programme guide: the grid showing what is on and what follows. Supplied as data alongside the line-up, and its completeness varies by channel.

Sideloading. Installing an application from outside a device store. Ordinary practice on Fire TV and Android, not available on Apple, Samsung, LG or Roku.

MAC address. A code identifying a specific piece of hardware. Some receivers and television apps tie an account to it instead of to a username, which is why replacing the device means registering again.

Portal. The address a MAG or Formuler receiver is pointed at. It takes the place of typing a username and password into a player.

Terms you meet while watching

Audio track. A separate sound stream inside the same feed. A broadcast may carry original commentary and a dub, two languages, or a main and a descriptive mix. Whether you can reach them depends on the feed, the login format and the player, in that order.

Subtitle stream. Text carried alongside the video rather than burned into it, which is why it can be switched off and restyled. Far more consistent on on-demand titles than on live channels.

Pass-through. A device handing audio to an amplifier untouched instead of decoding it first. The single most common reason a soundbar never reports surround is this setting left wrong.

Downmix. Folding surround into stereo. Sometimes done by the player, sometimes by the television, usually without telling you.

Catch-up. Opening something that has already aired. It depends on the broadcaster keeping an archive and the player supporting it, and a programme visible in yesterday’s guide is not proof that a recording exists.

Favourites and groups. Your own arrangement of the line-up, held by the player rather than by the account. They do not follow you to a second device, and rebuilding them takes minutes.

Terms you meet when something is wrong

Buffering. The player waiting for data. Occasional buffering is a network hiccup; buffering confined to busy evenings points at capacity, either the provider’s or your own.

Bitrate. How much data a second of video is given. It decides how a picture holds together when things move quickly, and it is a far better predictor of quality than resolution.

Resolution. The pixel count: HD, Full HD, 4K. A label describing what was sent rather than a promise about what arrives.

Codec. The compression method, commonly H.264 or the more efficient HEVC. Older televisions decode HEVC slowly or not at all, which is why a 4K set can stutter on a feed a cheap stick handles.

Hardware and software decoding. Whether the chip or the player does the work. Switching between them in player settings resolves a surprising share of problems that look like a bad feed.

Throttling. An internet provider deliberately slowing certain traffic at busy times. Distinguishable from congestion by testing at different hours.

Blackout. A broadcaster withholding an event in a region, applied at source. Usually worked around by finding another broadcaster carrying the same fixture.

Words used loosely, and what they usually mean

Anti-freeze. Marketing. What sits behind it, when anything does, is a channel carried at more than one bitrate so a weak moment can drop to a lighter copy instead of stopping.

Premium. Almost always meaningless. Ask which channels and at what bitrate.

Unlimited. Worth reading twice. Unlimited devices is not unlimited simultaneous streams, and the second is the number that governs your evening.

8K. Not a thing in live television today. Almost no broadcaster produces in it and no domestic connection would carry it live. Treat anyone selling it as a description of their honesty rather than of their service.

Words about money

Term. The length you have paid for. Here, one, three, six or twelve months. Nothing renews on its own, so a term simply ends.

Credit. The unit a reseller panel spends to open or renew an account. Longer accounts cost more credits. Relevant only if you are selling rather than watching.

Monthly equivalent. A longer term divided by its months. Useful for comparing, and worth remembering that the whole sum is paid at the start rather than monthly.

Cover, or guarantee. The window in which you can ask for your money back. What matters is not the number of days but what the written policy says is included, which is where these differ.

Terms you will see on other people’s sales pages

Stable. Means nothing on its own. Ask what happens at nine on a Saturday and whether there is a written refund position if it does not hold.

Official. Frequently attached to resellers who are not the operator. Worth establishing who actually runs the servers before you place any weight on it.

Lifetime. Treat with real suspicion. It means the lifetime of the seller rather than of the buyer, and in this market those have historically been short.

Two terms people use wrongly

Server. Often used as though it meant the whole service. It is one machine among many, and a provider worth buying from runs several so that one having a bad evening is not your problem.

Buffer. Used as a verb to mean failure, though the buffer itself is the thing preventing failure: a second or two of video held in reserve so a brief interruption never reaches your eyes. What people call buffering is that reserve running dry.

The six worth remembering

If you keep only a handful: feed, because it sets what your household can do at once; bitrate, because it explains picture quality better than resolution does; audio track, because it is the thing most people never discover they have; pass-through, because it explains most disappointing sound; catch-up, because it is routinely assumed and frequently absent; and Xtream login, because choosing it over a playlist is what makes everything else visible.

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