What makes the best IPTV player, and why we built Aina to be it

1. It plays what your provider actually sends

Most IPTV providers send their channels as MPEG-TS and their films as MKV, and the players built into many devices refuse both, however good the stream. An app that only hands streams to the system’s player fails on lines that work everywhere else. Aina plays every stream with libVLC, the engine of VideoLAN’s VLC, on iPhone, iPad, Apple TV and Android alike. HLS (M3U8), MPEG-TS, MP4, MKV and AVI all play in one player, with the same controls.

2. Both kinds of subscription, and as many as you have

A provider gives you either an Xtream Codes login or an M3U playlist, and often both. The best IPTV player takes either, and does not limit you to one line per device. Aina keeps as many subscriptions as you add, with no cap, and moves between them in a tap.

3. A TV guide you will actually use

Live TV without a guide is guesswork. Aina reads XMLTV guides, compressed .xml.gz ones included, and puts them where they help: now and next under every channel with a progress bar, what is on now and what starts tonight across your whole line, a search for any programme by its title, and a week’s schedule for each channel. Where your provider keeps an archive, catch-up replays what has already aired. More about the guide.

4. Big lines open fast, and stay open

Providers really do ship playlists with hundreds of thousands of entries, and a player that loads the whole file into memory slows to a crawl or closes on the big ones. Aina reads a playlist in pieces, shows your library while the rest is still arriving, and keeps it on the device, so the next launch opens straight away. It is tested with a playlist of 300,000 entries, and it reads the guide from storage rather than memory, so a guide of hundreds of megabytes does not take it down.

5. Native on every screen, not one app stretched over all of them

The same line should work on your iPhone in bed, your iPad on the sofa and your television on a Friday night. Aina is one app for iPhone and iPad, Android phones and tablets, Apple TV and Android TV and Google TV. On a phone it uses the system’s own buttons, menus, fields and alerts, and its text grows with the size you chose in Settings. On a television, everything is within reach of the remote, in type you can read from across the room.

6. A real player, not a video box

• Drag the timeline, double-tap to skip, and swipe for volume and brightness.
• Choose the audio track and the subtitles, and set the languages you prefer once.
• Playback speed, picture size, a sleep timer and a control lock.
• Channel up and down without leaving the picture, and the next episode starting by itself.
• Picture in Picture on phones and tablets, and Google Cast to a television.
• Reconnects by itself when a stream drops.

7. Offline when you need it

On iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets, Aina downloads films and episodes to watch without a connection, a whole season in one go if you like, where your provider allows it. Downloads pause and resume, and can be saved to a folder or shared. The library itself is kept on the device too, so you can browse it on a plane.

8. Your login stays yours

An IPTV player holds your provider’s password, which is often written into your playlist link as well. Aina needs no account and shows no ads. Your password is encrypted on the device, with a key kept in its keychain, and goes to nobody but your provider. Any category can be locked behind a PIN with parental controls.

9. Honest about what it is

The best IPTV player is a player. Aina sells no subscription, comes with no channels and never pretends otherwise: it plays the service you already have. To see it before you add anything, Try it without a subscription on the first screen fills the app with free, public channels from the iptv-org catalogue. Is IPTV legal? explains why that difference matters.

The checklist, at a glance

Try it on your own line

No list can tell you how a player copes with your provider, so try it. Aina is free for seven days with every feature open, and browsing is always free. After that it is $3.99 a month, $19.99 a year, or $49.99 once for life. See the plans, or read every feature first.