Review of Stealth Streams IPTV Service

StealthStreams came recommended to me from somewhere (Wish I could remember where), and they have a free trial (24 hours).  Messages were responded to very quickly and politely via Facebook, which makes it easy to get up and running quickly.

The Kodi addon is easy to download; Stealth Streams operate their own repository, which means the addon should stay updated.

Flicking through channels quickly gives a great impression, not only are the channel changes extremely fast, but the picture is of a high standard, in some cases 1080p resolution.

A really nice (and uncommon) feature offered by Stealth Streams is the iVue TV Guide integration.  Full EPG TV guides offer a far more pleasant way to browse through channels.  This was very simply achieved with two stages:

1. Download and install the iVue addon (a login is required for this from their Facebook page)
2. Run the iVue wizard from within the StealthStreams addon

Overall StealthSteams offers a very good package for the money with a solid support offered via Facebook chat.  The iVue functionality is the icing on the cake and is a premium IPTV service well worth checking out.

IPTV providers

Here is a list of IPTV providers, I am mainly focusing on providers who provide Kodi integration.  You will find links to them and some headline facts which you may find useful when trying to integrate IPTV with PVR functionality in Kodi for example:

Provider Name	1 Month Cost	1 Year Cost	Number of Channels	Kodi app	Free trial available?	Trial limitations	Notes
Iptvsubs.is	$13	$132	500+	Iptvsubs own		1 day
Iptv66	$12	$105	833	PVR Stalker NFPS		N/A
IPTV Choice	€15	€100	1200	PVR IPTV Simple		3 hours
Rapid IPTV		€90	2000+	PVR IPTV Simple		VLC only, 24 hours
NTV.mx	€24.95			NTV plugin		N/A	Not available in UK
Stream TV Box	£10.99	£84	266	StreamTVBox from Xunity		N/A	£4 for 2 days
Satellite BG		$299	230+			N/A	Needs MAG box
MBOX	£17	£160	1200+	MBOX HDTV plugin		N/A
Tecfront	$20CAD	$204CAD	458+			N/A	Canadian provider
Alpha CS	€15	€120	240+	PVR IPTV Simple		36 hours
Premium-IPTV	€1 9	€95	600+			N/A	Offer of lifetime access €99
Sports Donkey	£20	£50	175+	Sports Donkey own		N/A	1 day pass £5, 1 week £10
Ruya	£17	£175 (13m)	780	Ruya own		N/A	1 day pass £2 (Mon-Thu)
Dexter	£9	£104	~400	Dexter own		N/A
Stealth Streams	£10	120	228	Stealth  Streams own		24 hours	Sports only £7/month

Feel free to share your experiences of any of the providers and their services on this blog!

Advantages of IPTV over traditional TV

I wanted to list some benefits of streaming IPTV as opposed to using traditional methods such as satellite (DVB-S and DVB-S2) and terrestrial Freeview aerial (DVB-T and DVB-T2).

• No satellite dish
• Saves installation cost
• Often against mortgage rules and covenants, especially on new estates
• No unnecessary holes drilled in your house
• Gets around the fact that some areas are not covered by Satellite reception, e.g. cannot see the satellite due to trees and the location of your property
• Cleaner having no wires visible on the outside of your house
• Portable technology, meaning you can view the channels anywhere you have an internet connection
• More options for devices
• Not stuck to a proprietary set top box
• Many media centre / hardware possibilities for viewing.  
• Android, Amazon Fire TV boxes and sticks etc
• Can put the STB (Set top box) device anywhere in your house through wireless (of course ethernet cabling is best if you have it)
• Variable prices for different viewing devices, i.e. you could buy an expensive, fully featured box to use on your main TV, and a cheap viewer in a room you only watch TV in occasionally.

Review of AlphaCS IPTV service

The full IPTV service from AlphaCS was tested using the trial subscription using Kodi.  The hardware used to test was the Amazon Fire TV box (not the Fire stick)

AlphaCS uses the Kodi inbuilt PVR IPTV Simple Client, which is available by choosing System -> Settings -> Addons -> My Addons -> PVR IPTV Simple Client and then entering the URL which AlphaCS provide you from their website.

There is no EPG data out of the box, and this wasn't attempted to be fixed.

The quality of most of the channels was good, at least SD, and some were in HD, however some which are labelled HD didn't seem to actually be in High Definition 1080p.

There is an enormous amount of channels and VOD (Video on Demand) links available from the Kodi IPTV client using Alpha and it represents a good value way of subscribing to IPTV services, however it would benefit from a full EPG and a more obvious labelling of true HD channels