IPTV stream will not play on Android TV: codecs, user agent

This guide is for one symptom: the channel list loads, and one channel — or every channel from one provider — will not play. When the app has decided whose fault it is, its failure screen says so and links here. There are two usual causes, and they look alike from the sofa.

“This one will not play here”

This one will not play here — The stream is in a form this television cannot decode. — Trying again would reach this screen again. That screen, with Back (and Next channel on a live channel) but no Try again, is the device refusing the stream. It is the screen whose code opens this page.

Lumen·TV does not decode video itself. It hands the stream to the device’s own decoders, which are the TV’s or the box’s, not the app’s: the same channel can play on one Android TV and refuse on another. The same screen appears for a stream encrypted in a way the device cannot play, and for a stream whose protection licence was refused.

Nothing in the playlist or in the app changes what a device decodes. What can help:

Ask your provider for another version of the channel. Many publish the same channel in more than one quality or format; a lower one is more often a format every device decodes.
An encrypted channel will not play in Lumen·TV, and no setting changes that.

Which formats each Android TV, Google TV or Fire TV device decodes has not been measured for this app, so there is no compatibility table here to look it up in. Write to us with the device’s model (Settings → About in Lumen·TV shows it) and what the screen says; that is how such a list gets made.

The provider refuses the player

Every request for a stream says which program is asking, in a header called User-Agent. Some providers refuse agents they do not recognise, and a few serve a different version of the stream depending on who asks.

What Lumen·TV sends

By default, Lumen·TV introduces itself the way a web browser on that device would — with the Android version and the device’s model — and with no product name of its own. That is deliberate: a name a provider’s panel has not heard of is what gets refused, and we measured one that refused a programming library’s default name with the same credentials it accepted from a browser.
A channel’s own agent wins. An M3U playlist can name an agent for the channel that follows, with an option line:
```
#EXTINF:-1 tvg-id="ch1" tvg-name="Channel 1",Channel 1
#EXTVLCOPT:http-user-agent=ExamplePlayer/2.0
http://provider.example/stream/ch1
```
Lumen·TV reads the http-user-agent value and sends it when it plays that channel, and when it records it.
Other #EXTVLCOPT options are ignored: extra headers, a referrer, an Authorization token.
There is no setting for an agent — not for every playlist, not for one playlist, not for one channel. A playlist line is the only way to change it.

How to tell which it is

Try the same channel on another device or in a media player on a computer, on the same connection. If it fails there too, the stream or the subscription is the problem, not the television — see the troubleshooting matrix.
If it plays there and not in Lumen·TV, read what the failure screen says. This one will not play here is the device. The stream stopped with The provider is not answering for this one., on channels another player opens on the same connection, is more likely the provider refusing the agent.
Ask your provider which apps or devices they support, and whether they refuse unknown ones. Many will add a device or tell you what they expect.

What you can do

Ask your provider to accept the player, or to send you a playlist whose channels name the agent they expect. It is their filter; they are the ones who can relax it.
Write to us at support@lumentv.app with your provider’s host name (not your address or password), the device model and what the screen says. Knowing which providers refuse the app, and which formats which devices refuse, is what decides what gets built next.