Another FabIPTV review

by unitedfuck

As a disclaimer, I've been using Fab for about two months now. I started off on the Flawless service and then moved up to the in-house service after I heard about FHD sports channels, more on that later.

First, the pros

  • Customer service is second to none. I don't think I've ever experienced such good customer service anywhere. The Facebook group and ticket system is great, the admins get back to me within minutes with support. If you have a problem, they'll help you out, no doubt.

  • VOD. The admins have been adding movies and TV shows by the buckets these past few weeks, taking requests too! Admittedly I don't use it much apart from shows I binge over and over, but its always worked well and thanks to the great customer service, you could ask them to add something you like!

  • Overall quality The quality for the most part is great. I'm very fussy, incredibly fussy but overall I'm satisfied. Most channels, UK at least, are stable at 720p streams with a decent bitrate to boot. Don't expect cable quality from IPTV, but its good enough for regular TV watching.

  • EPG Updated fast and vast. A great addition to IPTV, something I can't live without now that I have it.

The cons

  • Reliability I've been a bit disappointed. For example, whenever the football (soccer) is on, Sky Sports will buffer a lot. I'm on 100mbps down so I don't think that's the problem. I'd say it buffers once every two minutes for a few seconds, practically unwatchable, to me, unfortunately. If Fab could improve their servers and handle the loads better, this service would be almost perfect. I'll continue to test things during big events and report back.

  • General things As typical with services such as IPTV, promises are often unkept and things just drag on. For example, Fab advertise that they have FHD channels for BT Sport, however right now 1 is 1080p, while the rest are 720p. It's not a dealbreaker by any means, I'd just prefer if they were straight up with customers.

As a general comment, bitrate matters . I've streamed things myself and don't count myself as an expert but, you need find a balance between resolution and bitrate within the limits of your network and hardware. Streams might be 1080p but it means nothing if there's tons of artifacting all over the place when the picture gets complicated, so to speak. We, as customers, should focus on bitrate more than resolution most of the time. I put this here because its a general IPTV issue, not related to the service in question.

manosteel9423

Love Fab! Its become one of my favourite services.

cmon_now

Don't use Fab, but your comments pretty much apply to all services. I use a combination of Peace Country and IPTVSubs for a back up. They seem to use different sources as when one goes down I can switch to the other and the channel is up most of the time. I use TVFullScreen for an epg with a custom xmltv from Webgrab+. Works great.

I used Ruya for a year and it was the most reliable and best quality of all the services I tried. It was also the most expensive. I ended up dumping it because there is a known issue with their streams on Krypton for Kodi and they only recommend Kodi v16 which is a no go for me as the ESPN3, NBCSports and FOXGO add-ons all need v17 for the authentication to work properly. Also, they use tokens for their streams which means you can't use a third party epg other than OnTappTV.

Couldn't agree with you more about the bitrate v resolution comment. People get too hung up on resolution and it really doesn't mean much. I'd much rather prefer to watch a 576p stream with a high bitrate than a 720p HD stream with a low bitrate. Even 480 streams with higher bitrates are acceptable some times.

Bottom line is that what the IPTV resellers promote is not really what you get. You'll just have to try them out until you find one that works best for you.

Just wanted to add that you may want to consider a valid sub to a legit service. Get the cheapest deal you can or better yet find someone that is willing to share their sub login ID. Today is good example why. I was watching F1 qualifying on SKY F1 when the stream crapped out on Peace Country right after Q1. I switched over to IPTVSubs stream labled SKY F1 HD and it was crap quality and was buffering, so I just hopped over to the NBCSports addon and picked up where I left off in awesome quality. I generally prefer the SKY feed, but the NBCSports addon isn't too bad as they don't show commercials and continue with the official F1 feed without commentary while the commercials are on.

Maniac1000

If you had posted in our support thread it would have been fixed.

It was fixed anyway very shortly after.

UJJBOOM

I also noticed that the BT SPORTS ESPN HD isn't HD at all, it's only 576p

tarzanboyo

Common issues really amongst all IPTV. I been using Fab for 2 days and haven't had any issues, it did buffer momentarily during the boxing last night but I switched to SD and no real problems then.