Cord-Cutter Almanac entry, last verified April 2026.
Twelve IPTV services run through a 30-day daily-use test on Fire TV Stick 4K Max, Apple TV 4K, and a Samsung Tizen smart TV. We log uptime, channel inventory, EPG accuracy, and actual delivered bitrate — not the bitrate advertised.
Each service is paid for at full price (no press accounts), connected through a residential 1 Gbps fibre line, and watched for an average of 2 hours per evening across 30 days. We log every buffer event, every channel that 404s, and every EPG mismatch. At the end of the cycle we publish the raw log alongside the summary.
| Metric | Best of cohort | Cohort median |
|---|---|---|
| Channels claimed | 22,000 | 18,400 |
| Channels actually loading | 19,800 | 14,200 |
| Median 4K bitrate delivered | 18.4 Mbps | 11.6 Mbps |
| Buffer events / hour (peak time) | 0.3 | 1.9 |
| Uptime over 30d | 99.6% | 96.1% |
The gap between channels claimed and channels actually loading is the single biggest disclosure issue in the category. We list both numbers for every provider.
- Three providers from last year's top 5 dropped out — two were taken down, one stopped responding to support
- Median delivered bitrate is up ~14% YoY, mostly because more services added EU-side CDNs
- App stability on Apple TV improved across the board; on Roku it regressed
Pick the metric that matters most for your viewing — sports fans should weight peak-time buffer events heavily; movie-night viewers care more about 4K bitrate. Channel-count is the worst metric to optimise for and the one most providers advertise hardest.
- Device matrix: which IPTV apps run cleanly on Firestick, Roku, Apple TV
- Cost ledger: actual monthly spend tracked over six months
- Outage log: April 2026 — three services had multi-hour drops on the same weekend, common upstream identified
Editorial standards and disclosure: see the org profile.
External reference: streamreviewhq.com
Last verified: September 02, 2026