IPTV M3U players

If You have a IPTV playlist in M3U format and want a convenient way to watch it, there are quite a few different solutions for it and not all of them might be suitable for every circumstance, and as I have quite an experience with this situation, I'll try to list all the useful stuff I had a chance to try out.

Before I begin, Your playlist might be compiled from multicast streams and Your router might forbid multicast packets to pass through it, so You either need to enable multicast in Your router or use udpxy, but this post is not about that, so lets assume that router is set up and streams reach the device You want to watch on, here is a list of players tested by me:

Simple stand alone players:

• VLC media player - most popular player in the world, should work on any platform, but not very convenient on a big screen and lacks EPG
• BorPas-Soft IP-TV Player - VLC based Windows IPTV player with EPG support
• IPTV Player SimpleTV - another VLC based Windows player with EPG support, did not test it, but it can scan for available IPTV channels!
• Tano Player - Multi platform IPTV player with EPG support, did not test it
• GOM media player - VLC alternative, did not test it
• IPTV by Alexander Sofronov - best app for Android in my humble opinion
• IPTV Player (TV online) by VideoExpertsGroup - alternative app for Android, did not test it
• LAZY IPTV by LazyCat Software - yet another Android app, did not like it
• New! OTT player - supports iOS, MacOS, Android, Samsung SmartTV, LG SmartTV, Windows and Windows Phone
• New! CherryPlayer

Media Centers - most feature packed solutions:

• Kodi + IPTV Simple Client - my personal favorite, works great on Windows, should be same on Mac and Linux, however did not test it on Android
• MediaPortal - another very powerful media center package with great EPG support, but quite hard to set up compared to Kodi or Plex
• Plex + IPTV.bundle - plugin made by me, EPG is much humbler and playback capabilities are quite limited compared to Kodi or MediaPortal, but devices supports is wider, check github repository for more information retired by Plex
• New! Emby - did not test much but it has IPTV support out of the box
• New! Jellyfin - needs testing

DLNA servers - when You are limited to DLNA:

• xupnpd - ultra compact DLNA server, no EPG but completely free, can be installed on a router!
• Serviio - very powerful DLNA server, lacks EPG and free version is limited

Smart TV apps and widgets - when you can't run a dedicated server, these are hosted solutions:

• Vintera.tv - free
• SS-IPTV - free
• SIPTV - one time fee
• nStreamVOD - one time fee

Links for further research:

• yestv.moy.su - in russian language

And finally my choice of EPG "grabing" is WebGrab+Plus.

Thats it for now, If You have a solution not listed in here, please share it in the comments bellow.