ProgTV 2.93.8 / 3.52.8 beta for Android

ProgTV is the Android side of ProgDVB, and it turns your own channel sources into a proper flip-through TV experience on a phone, a tablet or a TV box.

One app covers the couch and the commute, which is unusual in this category - most rivals pick a screen size and stay there.

Nearly all of it is free, with a single in-app purchase covering recording.

What ProgTV Actually Does - in Plain Terms

IPTV means live television delivered over the internet instead of through an antenna or a cable box. ProgTV is the screen for it: you feed it a channel list and it gives you a program guide, favorites, subtitles, teletext and per-channel picture settings.

It reads the common playlist formats - M3U, M3U8 and XSPF - plus Xtream Codes logins from IPTV providers. Guide data comes in through XMLTV and JTV, zipped or not.

The app itself includes no TV channels, which is normal for this category and worth saying plainly. You bring the content, ProgTV plays it.

The developer does maintain a starter list of internet TV and radio channels collected by ProgDVB users, handy for a first test. It comes with no promise that any given channel still works.

The ProgDVB Connection - Watch Your PC's Tuner on Your Phone

Here is the feature that separates ProgTV from every lookalike: it can act as a client of ProgDVB for Windows, the same developer's desktop TV application.

If your PC has a DVB satellite, cable or terrestrial tuner card, ProgDVB can broadcast those channels across your home network and ProgTV picks them up on your phone or TV box. That is real broadcast television, streamed room to room, with no subscription in the middle.

ProgTV also speaks DVB-over-IP and SAT>IP directly, so it works with network tuner boxes without a PC involved at all. If you already run the desktop app, this is the natural second install.

Which Build to Grab

There are three, and the difference is not only how new they are. The 2.x line is the plain stable app; the 3.x line is a separate build the developer calls ProgTV+, with wider OTT provider support and an easier setup.

Both lines sit on the ProgTV download page, and dropping back from a beta to stable takes about two minutes if a build misbehaves on your device.

What Is Free and What Is Not

Nearly everything costs nothing: playback, playlists, the program guide, favorites, subtitles, timeshift-style controls and the whole interface. The developer keeps a short list of extras behind an in-app purchase, most notably recording and its scheduler.

If you never record, you will never meet a payment screen. That is a friendlier deal than most IPTV apps, which put multiple playlists or the guide itself behind a subscription.

Getting a Playlist Into ProgTV

The app is only as good as the list you feed it, and a fresh list beats a big one every time.

1. Find a source. Our guide to free popular IPTV playlists covers the legal, regularly refreshed M3U collections worth starting from.
2. Or pick channels by hand. The IPTV Channel Finder browses public channels by country and category and exports only the ones you choose.
3. Assemble or tidy the file. The Playlist Builder puts a list together with full metadata, and the M3U Finder opens a remote M3U so you can see what is inside before committing.
4. Strip the dead streams. Run it through the M3U Checker, which marks every entry online, reachable, timed out or offline.
5. Spot-test a channel. Paste a single stream into the Web Player and watch it in the browser before you blame the app.
6. Load it. In ProgTV, open the TV Sources dialog, choose Import or paste the playlist URL, and the channel list fills in.

Two more tools cover the awkward cases. If your provider gave you an Xtream Codes login rather than a file, the URL to M3U Converter turns those credentials into a normal playlist.

And if you have found a stream playing on a web page and want its direct address, the Stream Extractor will dig it out.

ProgTV vs TiviMate and Friends

Choosing between the big Android IPTV apps comes down to what you value. TiviMate has the slicker big-screen interface, but it is TV-only and puts recording and multiple playlists behind a paid Premium tier.

ProgTV looks plainer, runs on phones as well, keeps multiple playlists free, and is the only one of them that talks to a ProgDVB tuner setup. IPTV Smarters Pro sits in between, built around a provider login rather than a file.

For casual playback rather than a full TV experience, VLC for Android opens M3U playlists with no setup at all.

MX Player handles streams well too, once paired with the MX Player Custom Codec for AC3 and EAC3 audio.

On the desktop, Kodi folds IPTV into a whole media centre. Our guide to the best free IPTV players for m3u playlists compares the Android options properly.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

The tell is simple: if you have exactly one provider playlist, you only ever watch on a TV box, and you never open a channel list on your phone, ProgTV's flexibility is not buying you anything.

In that setup TiviMate's interface will feel better every day, and the rest of the IPTV players category is worth a look too. More Android apps live in our Android APK section.

Quick questions

Download ProgTV 2.93.8 for Android and see how it handles your playlist, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before.