Most streams that stutter, start slowly or stop for no reason are the connection between the device and the provider, not the app. This guide is the reference for the part of that connection you can change at home: what the app reaches, cable against Wi-Fi, the speeds, and what a VPN changes. For the checks in order when something buffers, see the buffering checklist on the main site; for a screen saying This television is offline or It could not reach its licence server, the troubleshooting matrix.
What Lumen·TV reaches
- Your provider, for the playlist, the guide and every stream. That is nearly all the traffic.
- Our licence server (
api.lumentv.app), when the app starts and now and then afterwards. It sends no video. A licence it has already checked keeps working for up to 48 hours without it, so a short outage of ours or of your connection does not stop the picture. - lumentv.app, when you add a playlist from your phone, take or restore a backup, or the app looks for a newer version of itself.
- Wherever your provider’s catalogue points for channel logos, posters and, for a film that names one, its trailer.
No advertising is fetched, and there is no channel of ours.
Cable before Wi-Fi
A network cable is the single change that most often stops a live channel stuttering.
- An Android TV or Google TV set, or a box, usually has an Ethernet port. Use it if a cable can reach.
- A stick (a Fire TV stick, a Google TV dongle) usually has none, and sits behind the television where the Wi-Fi is weakest. An Ethernet adapter made for the stick is the wired option; otherwise the short HDMI extender some sticks come with moves it a few centimetres out from behind the panel, which often helps.
- On Wi-Fi, use the 5 GHz network if your router has one, and keep the router out of a cupboard. A mesh point or a powerline adapter near the television is the next step.
How fast is fast enough
A stream needs a steady speed, not a high peak: a connection that tests fast once and drops every few minutes stutters more than a slower one that holds. As a guide from what we have measured, a 4K film we tested ran at about 24 Mbit/s; HD channels need much less. Every tile of multi-view is a stream of its own, so four tiles need about four times one channel.
If a channel stutters, try Stable in Settings → Playback first (Buffering). If that does not stop it, try the television on a phone’s hotspot for a few minutes: if the stutter goes away, the problem is between your home and the provider, not in the house.
Using a VPN
Android TV, Google TV and Fire TV can run a VPN app from their own app store, and a router can run one for every device in the house. Lumen·TV has no VPN setting of its own and does nothing special with one: when a VPN is on, the system sends Lumen·TV’s traffic through it like any other app’s — the streams and the licence checks alike.
What to expect, said plainly:
- We have not measured playback through a VPN. Everything in the buffering guide was chosen without one.
- A VPN can only be as fast as its server. Every stream now crosses it twice — from the provider to the VPN server, and from there to you — so a VPN server far away, or a busy one, is a slower connection than the one you pay for. If stuttering starts when the VPN goes on, try a server closer to you, or turn it off to compare.
- Some providers refuse connections from VPN servers’ addresses, or count them against a different limit. If every channel stops when the VPN is on, ask your provider.
- A VPN on the router covers every device, including a stick that has no room for another app, and costs the television nothing. It needs a router that supports it, and the router’s own speed becomes the limit.
- A free VPN is usually paid for some other way — advertising, selling traffic, a speed cap. If you use one at all, read what it does with your traffic first.
If Lumen·TV will not start while the VPN is on — Lumen·TV could not start with It could not reach its licence
server — open https://api.lumentv.app/health on a phone connected through the
same VPN: if it does not answer {"ok":true,…} there either, the VPN is not letting the licence check through.
When it is not the network
- Channels from one provider fail while others play: the provider or the subscription — see the troubleshooting matrix.
- One channel fails on every connection: see When a stream will not play.