How Krooz IPTV works, from the server to your sofa

What Krooz IPTV actually is

IPTV stands for Internet Protocol Television. Strip away the acronym and it means TV channels delivered as data, the same way Netflix or YouTube reach you, except the channels are live and arranged like a cable guide. Krooz IPTV (written KroozTV or Krooz TV just as often) is our subscription: one login that opens the whole line-up on up to five screens.

We don't make an app and we don't sell boxes. That surprises people, so it's worth explaining: IPTV players are general-purpose apps, a bit like a web browser. They don't come with any channels. You give the player our server address and your username and password, and it fetches the channel list, the guide and the on-demand library from us.

What happens between pressing play and seeing a picture

1. 1

   The player signs in

   Your IPTV player sends your username and password to our server. If the line is active and you are under your screen limit, the server answers with the channel list.

2. 2

   The guide loads

   The player downloads the EPG (electronic programme guide), which is a schedule for each channel. That is why the first launch can take a minute; later launches use the cached copy.

3. 3

   You pick a channel

   The player asks for that one stream. The server sends it in small chunks, a few seconds of video at a time, and the player stitches them together.

4. 4

   The buffer keeps you ahead

   The player holds a few seconds in reserve. If your connection dips briefly, you watch from the reserve instead of seeing a spinning wheel. Long dips empty it; that is what buffering is.

What you need at home

• A device that can install an IPTV player. Samsung or LG Smart TV, Fire TV Stick, Android TV box, Google TV, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, Android phone, MAG box, Windows or Mac.
• A steady connection. 15–25 Mbps per HD stream is comfortable, 30 Mbps or more for 4K. Steady matters more than fast: a 50 Mbps line that drops out every evening is worse than a steady 20.
• A KroozTV line. Any paid plan; the starter plan is the smallest.

Wired beats Wi-Fi when you can manage it. If the TV is a long way from the router, a cheap powerline adapter often fixes more buffering than any setting in the app.

What the line-up covers

The current export holds 19,774 channel entries from 38 countries and regions. Some channels appear more than once in different qualities (an FHD and an SD copy of the same network, for example), and sport includes event channels that are only live on match day. So the number is honest, but it is a count of entries rather than unique broadcasters.

By region, the US is the biggest block at 4,729 entries, followed by Arabic-language channels (2,682), France (1,122) and the UK (1,114). Search any channel by name in the full KroozTV channel list.

Films and series on demand

Alongside live TV, your player shows two extra sections, usually labelled Movies and Series. These are on-demand libraries: press play when you like, pause, come back tomorrow. New episodes are added after they air. The size of the library shifts as titles are added and retired, so we don't print a precise number; there are tens of thousands of films and several thousand series.

What Krooz IPTV costs

Plans start at $25 for three months on one screen. Longer terms and bigger bundles are cheaper per month. Everything is included in every plan, sport too, so the only questions are how many screens and how long. The Krooz TV price page has all twenty combinations in one table.

One thing to budget for that has nothing to do with us: some Smart TV players charge their own small activation fee after a free week. We'll tell you which ones do before you pick.

Where KroozTV is run from

KroozTV's business address is 362 Ridgewood Dr, Soldotna, Alaska 99669. There is no shop to visit; everything happens online. Support answers on WhatsApp, live chat and email 24 hours a day, and a real person reads every message.