The short version
IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television. It means television delivered over the same internet connection that carries your email and your web browsing, rather than over an aerial, a satellite dish or a dedicated cable.
That single change explains almost everything else about it. Because the content travels over a general-purpose network, it can arrive on anything connected to that network: a television, a phone, a tablet, a laptop. And because there is no dedicated line, there is no engineer visit, no dish on the wall and no proprietary box that only does one thing.
How it differs from broadcast television
Traditional broadcasting is one-to-many. A transmitter sends every channel out continuously, and your equipment tunes in to one of them. You are receiving a signal that was going to be sent whether you watched or not, which is why a broadcast channel never buffers — and why you can only watch what is being transmitted at that moment.
IPTV is one-to-one. Your player requests a specific stream and the server sends it to you individually. That is what makes on-demand libraries possible: a request for a film from 2016 is no different in kind from a request for the channel showing now. It is also why network conditions matter in a way they never did with an aerial. Each viewer needs their own share of bandwidth.
What you need
Three things. A reasonable internet connection, a device that can run a player app, and a subscription that provides the credentials. Nothing else — and specifically, no special router, no hardware from us, and no change to your home network.
What IPTV does not change
It does not make a standard-definition source sharp. It does not make a slow connection fast. And it does not sidestep the fact that content rights are regional and time-limited: what is available to you depends on where you are and on agreements that change over time.
Anyone promising otherwise is selling you something they cannot deliver. If you want to know whether a particular thing is available, the honest route is to ask before you subscribe.
Next steps
If this is new to you, the beginners’ guide walks through the first setup in more detail. If you already know what you want, the plans page shows what each subscription length costs at each connection count.