Before you begin
- A device of almost any kind, which is the point of choosing this one
- Your VISNOVAA username, password and server address
- Five minutes for the first screen; roughly two for each one after that
Nothing to sign in with yet? Take a 24-hour trial and keep every subscription you have while you check what this covers, or see what it costs first.
Getting it running
Get it onto the device, by whichever door that platform uses
Google Play for Android phones and televisions. The Samsung and LG stores list it under IPTV Smarters. The Apple stores call it IPTV Smarters Player. A Firestick needs it sideloaded through Downloader, which the Firestick page walks through. Windows and Mac installers come from the developer's own website. One application, six different routes to it.
Take the Xtream route, not the playlist route
The opening screen offers more than one way in. Choose the Xtream Codes option every time unless support has specifically told you otherwise: it collects the programme guide and the on-demand library automatically, where a playlist frequently arrives with neither. A surprising number of disappointing first evenings trace back to this single choice.
Type the three values in
The profile name is yours to invent and matters to nothing. The other three — server address with http:// and the port, username, password — must match the message exactly. Keep them somewhere you can find in six months, because every screen you add later wants them and hunting through an old chat thread is how a two-minute job becomes a support conversation.
Turn on the settings that make it feel finished
Two worth changing immediately: Enable EPG on live TV, so the guide appears over a playing channel, and the default startup section, so it opens where you actually watch rather than on a menu. Neither is obvious and both take thirty seconds. Most of what people describe as the app feeling unfinished is simply the defaults.
Turn on the two settings that finish the job
Under the EPG settings, enable the guide over live television so it appears while a channel plays. Then set the section the app opens into, so it starts where you watch rather than on a menu. Neither is on by default and neither is discoverable. Most complaints that this app feels unfinished are really complaints about its defaults.
Fix the decoder before blaming a stream
In Player settings, choose the built-in player with hardware decoding. Where everything behaves except one channel, change that channel alone to software decoding from its own menu rather than altering the setting globally. Two minutes spent here prevents a large share of what later gets reported as a fault with the service.
Put it on every screen you own, then wait two weeks
The tier you bought limits how many screens play at once, not how many are signed in, so there is no reason to leave the bedroom television or a phone unconfigured. Then simply live with it for a fortnight, paying for everything you currently pay for, and notice which apps stop getting opened.
When something misbehaves
A message says the account has expired
The plan has reached its end date; nothing is broken. A renewal on WhatsApp brings the same credentials back to life within minutes, with favourites, settings and profiles all intact. There is nothing to reinstall and nothing to reconfigure.
The login is accepted but no channels appear
An empty list behind a successful login usually means the address pointed somewhere real that is not us, and the port is the usual culprit. Refresh, then sign out and in again. If it is still bare, check the server field character by character before suspecting anything else.
It closes itself on a Firestick
Clear the app's cache from Settings, Applications, Manage installed applications, then open it again. If it persists, uninstall and fetch a current build — an old sideloaded copy running on updated Fire OS is a common and easily fixed cause.
The guide is blank on some channels
Programme data is supplied per channel and some minor feeds carry none at all, which is normal rather than a fault. Where the guide is empty across the board, force a refresh from the EPG settings and give it several minutes; a first load across a very large line-up is slower than people expect.
Other players the same login opens
TiViMate
Set up TiViMate on Android TV, Firestick or an Android box with your Xtream login, load the guide, and see what Premium adds. 25,000+ channels.
Smart IPTV (SIPTV)
Set up Smart IPTV on a Samsung or LG television: find the MAC, upload your M3U at siptv.app, activate. Deliberately minimal, 25,000+ channels.
All of them
Every device and player covered, on a single page.
See what it covers on your IPTV Smarters Pro
A trial costs nothing and runs alongside everything you already subscribe to, so you can work out what would genuinely go and what you would keep. Plans open at $15 a month for the full 25,000+ line-up.
What people ask about the IPTV Smarters Pro
Does the app cost anything?
No, on any platform, and it never has. What confuses people is that it opens completely empty — the app carries no television of its own and does nothing at all until an account is entered. Nothing inside it is ever charged for, and anything asking you to pay within the app is not this app.
What is the Smarters subscription people search for?
There is no such thing, and searching for it is really searching for a service that works inside the player. That is what an account here is: an Xtream login carrying the channels and the catalogue, typed in once and then working on every device in the house.
How does it compare with TiViMate?
TiViMate is better on Android and costs about ten dollars a year for a far superior guide, recording and multi-view. Smarters is free and runs on hardware TiViMate will never touch. In a house with an Apple TV, a Samsung and an Android box, standardising on Smarters is a reasonable trade of quality for consistency.
Does installing it change anything else on the device?
Nothing. It is an ordinary app with no access to your other applications, and your existing subscriptions carry on exactly as before. Whether any of them get cancelled is a decision you make weeks later, on evidence, rather than something installation does to you.
Is it safe to install from outside an app store?
On a Firestick it has to be, because Amazon does not stock it, and sideloading is a supported Fire OS feature rather than a workaround. Take the APK from the developer's own site or the link support sends, and not from a search result, which is where the genuine risk in this lives.
Will my settings survive a reinstall?
Favourites and preferences live on the device, so a clean reinstall loses them and there is no cloud backup. The credentials themselves are unaffected, so rebuilding takes a few minutes rather than a support message. Keeping those three values somewhere retrievable is the single most useful thing you can do here.
Does the same app work if I switch provider later?
Yes, and it is worth knowing. Smarters holds no content of its own, so any Xtream login goes into it, including somebody else's. Nothing you configure here is locked to us. That cuts both ways honestly: it means we have to keep being worth paying for rather than relying on it being awkward to leave, which is a better arrangement for you than the alternative.
Can I use the same account on a phone away from home?
Yes, over mobile data or any wifi, and it counts as one of your simultaneous screens while it plays. Bear in mind that an HD channel is roughly 2 GB an hour, which a capped mobile plan notices quickly. Most players offer a lower-bitrate option, and on a train it is genuinely hard to see the difference.