Hello reddiors. I'm here to give me 2¢ worth on this much talked about IPTV provider, that seems to get praised a lot here as being the most "stable" or "rock-solid" service available. Are these claims true, or just a lot of advertising hot air? Read on to find out.
Background When I started my subscription with IPguys, I already had 6 months of experience with various IPTV services. I use an Android box, so naturally I test all the services I use with Kodi and STB Emulator. I also have a Mag 254 which I used for this review (I copy it's MAC address over to Kodi stalker and STBEmu), and my connection speed is a stable 50Mbps from a good ISP.
Registering and setup Signing-up was a little difficult, because IPguys do not sell the service themselves, so you have to find a reseller. Finding one wasn't that easy either since resellers give the service a custom name. But I finally found one called "blue server". After signing up, I'm told to email them my MAC address, and they tell me that Kodi "is bad for IPTV" and I shouldn't use it (wtf?). Also, they inform me not to change my mind later because I can ONLY use the service with the first device I login with, which is annoying. Most other providers offer some sort of "Mac reset" facility. After that was done, logging in with my Mag was as simple as entering the correct portal, and rebooting. I also managed to get it up and working on STB Emulator, but it took a lot of fiddling with the Mac and serial number to get it to work.
Channels The usual suspects are all included here (ABC, NBC, etc). But other than the major channels, the selection is a little disappointing, to be honest. There were no UK channels to speak of (BBC, ITV, Channel 4). It seems IPguys mainly focuses on Canadian channels, and many non-Canadian channels are left out. Movie selection was great though, just about every single movie channel I could think of.
Layout Similar channels are grouped together which kept things sorted nicely, even if you don't use a favourites list. The EPG worked flawlessly, and I never had an issue with it over the course of 3 months, but none of the channels had icons (that most other providers have), which is very annoying when browsing.
International channels This is by far one of the worst things about IPguys. It seems most of their international channels are sourced from other providers. Most of them contain watermarks/logos in the corner that I've seen before from free providers (such as the yellow lion head), and most of these channels work poorly. Half of the OSN channels, for example, were either mislabled or simply didn't load. And the ones that did, buffered constantly. It was a horrible experience.
Stability and quality One of the main selling points on IPguys has been it's "rock solid" stability. I didn't get much of a chance to experience this. All of their core channels loaded every time (unlike IKS66/Rocket/NFPS, for example, which frequently get stuck on loading), but buffering was still present from time to time, although it was rare on the non-international channels. Also what's worse was a lot of their core channels were either in standard def (not even 720p), or had interlacing issues which was quite jarring to look at.
Added features Timeshift was a nice addition that not every IPTV server provides, but it was only available on a small number of channels (about a dozen or so, and most of them were Canadian news channels). But it did work well, with channels going back up to 12 hours, if I recall correctly. It's a shame though it wasn't offered on channels that mattered, instead of the news.
Support Non-existant. IPguys don't even have a website. I hope you find a good reseller who answers emails and doesn't mind helping you with any questions you might have.
Conclusion While a nice attempt at a rock-solid service, IPguys just doesn't hit the mark for me, and doesn't live up to the Reddit hype. I'm glad I tried it out, and it certainly has some nice features that are hard to come by these days, but at the price they are asking ($10 per month), I expected more. I would give this a soft-pass, unless you're starved for a more Canadian-centric experience, for some reason.
This a great review! Finally some common sense. The hype of IPGUYS on Reddit is maddening. I always wonder why there are no reviews of IPGUYS... well the service is not much to write about. It kinda sucks. Great honest review.