Which IPTV Players Actually Support Catch-Up TV?

Here's the thing almost nobody explains: catch-up TV is not a feature your player switches on. It's a URL your player has to construct.

Your provider stores the last few days of a channel on their server. To play yesterday's 8pm programme, the player must build a request that says "this channel, starting at this timestamp, for this duration." There is no single standard for how that request is phrased — there are at least three, and they look nothing alike.

That is why so many players list "Catch-Up" on the feature page and then grey out every past programme in the guide. They implemented one scheme. Your provider uses another.

This post explains the three schemes, shows you how to find out which one your provider uses, and covers what to look for in a player. If you want the underlying concepts first, start with catch-up and timeshift explained.

Catch-up vs timeshift vs recording

Three things people use interchangeably. They aren't the same:

• Catch-up plays a past programme from your provider's archive. Depends entirely on the provider storing it.
• Timeshift pauses and rewinds the stream you're currently watching. Same underlying archive, shorter window.
• Recording (DVR) saves a stream to a file on your own device. Independent of the provider.

Everything below is about the first two, which share the same URL machinery. Recording is a genuinely separate mechanism — and one worth checking carefully in whatever player you're evaluating, because a "Record" button in a UI is not the same as a player that actually writes video to disk.

The three schemes providers use

1. Xtream timeshift

If your login is a server address plus a username and password, your provider runs Xtream Codes. Catch-up is exposed through a dedicated path shaped roughly like:

http://server:port/timeshift/USERNAME/PASSWORD/DURATION/START/STREAM_ID.ts

The player has to know the stream's numeric id, compute the duration in minutes and format the start timestamp exactly the way the panel expects. The Xtream API also reports how many days of archive exist per channel, via a tv_archive / catchup-days value. A player that ignores that field can't tell which programmes are even eligible.

2. M3U catchup-source templates

In an M3U playlist, a channel can carry attributes describing its own catch-up URL as a template:

#EXTINF:-1 catchup="default" catchup-days="7"
  catchup-source="http://host/live/user/pass/123.ts?start=${start}&end=${end}",Channel

The player substitutes real values into the placeholders — ${start}, ${end}, {utc}, {duration}, {timestamp} and friends. Different providers use different placeholder dialects, which is exactly where lightweight players fall over.

3. M3U shift / append

The simplest variants. catchup="shift" (sometimes timeshift) means "take the live URL and append UTC parameters":

...live-url.ts?utc=1720560000&lutc=1720563600

catchup="append" means "glue this suffix onto the live URL." Both are trivial compared to the other two — and plenty of players still only implement these, which is why catch-up works on some playlists and not others in the same app.

How to find out what your provider exposes

Before you evaluate a single player, find out whether you have anything to play. Two minutes:

If you have an M3U URL: open it in a browser or text editor and search for catchup. If you find catchup="…" or catchup-source="…" on your channels, your provider exposes catch-up and you can see exactly which dialect. If the word never appears, you have no catch-up, and no player will invent it.

If you have an Xtream login: visit

http://your-server:port/player_api.php?username=USER&password=PASS&action=get_live_streams

and look for tv_archive on the channels. "tv_archive":1 means an archive exists; tv_archive_duration tells you how many days.

If you get nothing: ask your provider directly — "do you support catch-up / archive playback, and for how many days?" Most advertise it, because it's a selling point.

This step matters more than the player comparison, because roughly half of "catch-up doesn't work" reports are people whose provider never offered it.

What to look for in a player

Given the above, here's what actually separates players — and how to test each claim rather than trust a feature list:

Does it parse the full EPG? Catch-up needs a real programme guide: start times, durations, timezone offsets. A player that only renders "Now / Next" from the channel strip has nothing to hang a catch-up URL on. Test: does the guide show a full grid with past hours, or only the current programme?

Does it handle your scheme? A player supporting only shift will fail on catchup-source templates. Test: find a past programme and try to play it.

Does it get the timezone right? Catch-up URLs are timestamps. An hour of drift means you start watching the wrong programme. If catch-up plays something but consistently the wrong thing, this is why. (Guide times wrong? Separate fix.)

Does it work on your device? Several strong catch-up implementations are Android-only.

Where the well-known players stand

• VLC — no. VLC has no EPG layer, and without a programme guide there's nothing for catch-up to attach to. It is an excellent stream player and not a catch-up client. (VLC vs Tuneline.)
• Kodi — yes, via the PVR IPTV Simple Client add-on, which you configure yourself. Capable, and the least beginner-friendly option here.
• TiviMate — yes, and well regarded for it. Android and Android TV only, so no help on a Mac, PC, iPhone or Apple TV. (Cross-platform alternatives.)
• Tuneline — yes, on every platform we ship. Specifics below.

Feature lists change, so treat the above as a starting point and run the two-minute test on your own playlist.

What Tuneline implements, precisely

Because vagueness is how these posts mislead people, here is exactly what's in the app:

• Xtream timeshift — builds the /timeshift/… URL, reading timeshift and catchup-days to know the archive window.
• M3U catchup-source templates — substitutes ${start}, ${end}, {utc}, {duration}, {timestamp} placeholders.
• M3U shift and append — the UTC-parameter and suffix variants.

In the EPG grid, past programmes that fall inside the archive window are marked as playable; select one and choose Watch from Start, and the player switches into catch-up mode with a visible CATCHUP indicator and a Back to Live control.

Two honest limits. The tvg-rec attribute — an older, rarer way of declaring archive days — is not read; if your provider only uses tvg-rec, catch-up won't light up. And catch-up depends on a working EPG: no guide, no past programmes, nothing to click. (If your guide isn't loading.)

Catch-up works across Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, Android TV, Google TV, Fire TV, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV — the same implementation everywhere, because it's one URL builder shared by every platform.

Download Tuneline, open the guide, and click something from yesterday.

FAQ

Which IPTV players support catch-up TV?

Kodi (through the PVR IPTV Simple Client), TiviMate (Android only), and Tuneline (all platforms) all implement catch-up. VLC does not, because it has no EPG. Beyond that, check whether a player handles your provider's scheme — supporting "catch-up" in general is meaningless if it only implements one of the three URL formats.

Why are past programmes greyed out in my guide?

Either your provider exposes no archive for that channel, or your player can't build the catch-up URL for the scheme your provider uses. Check your M3U for the word catchup, or your Xtream API for tv_archive — that tells you which of the two it is.

Is catch-up the same as recording?

No. Catch-up streams a past programme from your provider's server, within their archive window (typically 1–7 days), and it vanishes when the window rolls past. Recording writes a copy to your own storage. If you need to keep something permanently, catch-up is not the mechanism.

How many days of catch-up do I get?

Your provider decides, per channel. It's declared as catchup-days in M3U or tv_archive_duration in Xtream, commonly 1 to 7 days.

Does catch-up use more bandwidth than live?

No. It's the same stream at the same bitrate, just from a different starting timestamp. (How much data streams use.)

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Find out in two minutes whether you've been paying for catch-up you never used. Install Tuneline, open the guide, and click a programme from yesterday.

— Rawnok Jahan