A frozen picture during a penalty shoot-out is the moment everybody remembers. When it happens, the cause lies either upstream, between our servers and your internet provider, or inside your home. SSTV IPTV takes care of the first, and the checks below cover the second.
Our side of the line
- Capacity for the peaks. Evenings and big matches draw the largest audiences, so capacity is planned around them rather than around an average day.
- Monitoring. Streams are watched for drops, and channels that fail are restarted.
- Several routes. Viewers are spread across servers, so one busy machine doesn’t slow everyone down.
No streaming service can promise perfection on every channel at every moment, but most freezing reported to us turns out to have a cause at home.
Your side: the five-minute check
| Check | Why it helps |
|---|---|
| Restart the streaming device | Sticks and boxes slow down after days without a restart |
| Use a network cable or 5 GHz Wi-Fi | The 2.4 GHz band is crowded and slower |
| Run a speed test on the device | Shows the real speed reaching the TV in the evening |
| Pause big downloads and game updates | They compete for the same bandwidth |
| Try another channel | Tells you whether one channel or everything is affected |
| Update the player app | Older versions can handle streams less efficiently |
Player settings that help
In TiviMate Premium you can increase the buffer size under the playback settings, which smooths out short drops at the cost of a slightly slower start. Some players also let you choose a different decoder; if one freezes, try the other.
Wi-Fi, cable or powerline
Wireless connections are convenient but vary with walls, neighbours’ networks and other devices. If your TV is far from the router, a network cable or powerline adapters usually fix stuttering for good. Our comparison of Wi-Fi, Ethernet and powerline explains the options.
Reporting a problem to us
If several channels freeze on a wired connection after a restart, open a ticket with the channel names, the time, your device and your internet provider. That information lets us check the route between our servers and your provider.
Questions about freezing
Why does only one channel freeze?
The source of that channel may be having trouble. Tell us its name; individual channels are usually fixed quickly.
Will a VPN stop buffering?
Sometimes a different route helps, but often a VPN adds delay. Try without it first and use a cable before anything else.
Can a slow stick cause freezing?
Yes. Older or underpowered devices struggle with Full HD and 4K streams; a restart helps, and a newer device helps more.