In this article, I will break down the different types of IPTV services including free and paid services.

What is IPTV?

IPTV services provide you access to multiple TV channels using your internet connection. Some of the services are free while others will charge a monthly subscription fee.

IPTV services are typically cheaper than high priced cable subscriptions. These services also allow you to watch videos on your own schedule as opposed to the prearranged times from the cable provider.

A lot of the paid IPTV services will offer live TV channels which include live sporting events. IPTV services will also offer a collection of movies.

Types of IPTV services

Here are some popular types of IPTV services.

Video on Demand (VOD)

The Video on Demand service allows you to watch your favorite TV shows and movies whenever you want to.

Here are some popular paid VOD services

• Disney+
• Hulu
• Netflix
• Amazon Prime

Here are some popular free VOD services

• Peacock
• Pluto TV
• Tubi
• Crackle

Live Television

There are IPTV services where you can watch live events including award shows and sporting events. This content is broadcasted over the internet instead of traditional cable.

Here are some popular paid options for Live TV

• Sling TV
• Hulu Live
• Fox Sports Live

TV on Demand

This IPTV option is where you have to pay for each TV show and movie. Most of these options allow you to pay for each episode you are interested in or pay for the whole season.

The Google Play Store and Apple iTunes are examples of TV on Demand IPTV services.

If you plan on watching multiple TV shows and movies, then it would be cheaper to go for the Video on Demand IPTV services.

If you are only interested in watching a couple of movies or a TV show, then the TV on Demand option would work.

Are IPTV services available in all countries?

IPTV services are available in most countries, but you still need to check if it is available in your country. It is always best to go with a trusted provider with an established reputation.

Should you use a VPN with IPTV services?

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network and it allows you to use the internet in a secure and anonymous fashion. VPN's also work well with IPTV services.

Some IPTV services have been blocked by their Internet Service Provider, but using a VPN ensures that your streaming content will not get blocked.

VPN's also sometimes have better performance for streaming content.

Before you consider using a VPN, you need to check on two things:

1. Does your country allow the use of VPNs?
2. Does your IPTV service support VPNs?

Devices that work with IPTV services

IPTV services can work with a variety of devices including computers, smart TVs, mobile phones, tablets, and more. You can also use internet TV sticks and boxes for IPTV services.

These internet TV sticks and boxes are small digital media players that are easy to setup and use with your favorite IPTV services.

Here is a list of popular internet TV sticks and boxes

• Amazon Fire TV stick
• Now TV Smart Stick
• Roku Streaming Stick
• Apple TV
• Chromecast with Google TV

What should you consider when choosing an IPTV service

There are many options out there for IPTV services and you want to make sure you are choosing the right service for you.

Here are some important points to consider.

Price

While there are a lot of free IPTV services, most of them will have commercials built into the content. If you want to watch your content commercial free, then you will have to pay for it.

Make sure to do comparison shopping for pricing and the types of content they offer. Some subscriptions can be as little as $5 a month and upwards of $20 or more a month.

Good Customer Support

It can be frustrating when your service is not working and there is no good way to get in contact with the service provider. You want to make sure that your IPTV service has good customer support to help troubleshoot the issues you are having.

Make sure to read through customer service reviews before deciding on an IPTV service.

Does it work with a VPN?

Not all IPTV services support the use of VPNs. You want to double check with the IPTV service provider before signing up with them.

I hope you found this article helpful.

Blink and you’ll miss it: How a two-day design project went by in an instant

I recently completed a short project for the Sky Atlantic series The Tunnel, “a British-French crime drama”. With the third series Vengeance soon to be released, Toby Welch (friend and producer of the show) reached out to me. He needed help filling some gaps in post-production

Usually (in Britain anyway), if a brand is used on a TV show, then the makers have obtained express permission to use it. I once met a graphic designer who worked on a well-known ITV soap. Their job it was to create fake drinks labels of all the spirits behind the bar because using the real ones would have been a legal ball-ache.

So when we film an exterior shot of our protagonists driving up to a hotel and pulling over outside, we can’t show the real name of the hotel. We have to come up with a fake one. And when shooting a show, it’s not always practical, timely or cost-effective to make real signage for a wall or the side of a building. It’s often cheaper to digitally add it later in post.

The brief

Toby needed two logos for the VFX team to superimpose on to two different scenes. The first was for an exterior shot of our protagonists driving up to a hotel and pulling over outside. He needed a fairly budget looking logo, and he would provide a pre-approved hotel name (signed off by legal).

Fill in the blanks. The spaces on the walls for post-production signage.

The second was for a fake institution called the “Kent & District IMMIGRATION REMOVAL CENTRE”. This needed to be in a plain, black and white style that feels like ‘government’ and accompanied by a private security company badge. This would be added to an interior wall that an actress would walk past. I was provided with the unedited movie clips and asked to come up with some options.

This was a pretty cool brief, which turned out to be more work than I’d originally thought.

Research

The first part of any branding project is research. For the hotel brand, I tried to find a color palette that was an amalgamation of the many roadside hotels that are so recognizable as cheap in the UK. Brands that want to scream ‘budget’ are often orange. However, hotels usually try and fake their luxuriousness with something like a blue gradient.

Without wanting to sound like a pretentious, creative industry w*nker, it’s incredibly tricky to not make the design look too good. You want to submit something to the client that says…

“Honestly, I’m a good designer!”

…but you can’t because anything too stylish or premium will be less believable in the scene!

The government sign was a little easier. The toughest part was picking a font that says ‘government’ without actually using the font on Gov.uk’s website, which you’re not allowed to do (I checked). Toby had an idea of using a nautical emblem like an anchor, and I looked up Kent’s sigil, which is a rearing horse.

First draft

With a first draft done, I submitted some options…

V1.

…which were met with a pretty positive response from the execs. The next round of amends tweaked the (far too intricate) tree to something a little bolder. The gap between the logo and the camera would be a factor, so the logomark for the hotel would need to stand out from a distance. Good advice for any branding project.

The immigration sign was met with approval, but the blue security logo was far more important to the scene than I’d realized. This needed some more work, and after another round of research of security firm logos, we eventually settled on these:

The final versions submitted to the VFX team.

The final scenes

As it turns out, the scene with the white wall was so hard for the VFX guys to track, that they ended up going with a much simpler adaptation in the final scene. There is such a wash of white on screen, with no frame of reference to track the movement of the camera, the team mocked a shorter version up onto a metal plaque. Thankfully, my corporate security logo survived.

Stanforth Lodge Hotel: Courtesy of Sky Atlantic

Immigration Removal Centre. Blink and you’ll miss it: Courtesy of Sky Atlantic

I found the whole experience fascinating. It took two days of back and forth, plus lord-knows how much VFX work, to produce signs that appear on screen for a total of fewer than 11 seconds. All to tell the story just that little bit better.

I think that is superb, and I can not imagine what an involved process creating an entire TV series like this must be. Hats off to Toby and the team. Fingers crossed I get more work like this. Graphic design for TV and Film. It’s a dream job.