I've been meaning to do this update for a while now, but to be honest had been putting off until I felt comfortable that I wouldn't essentially come across as isolating in on any certain bad stretch period. Or more specifically in this case...end up basically kicking Vader when it was down (**spoiler** there will be some kicking done below, so resellers can probably just safely stop reading here and get their down vote in already). Fast forward to yesterday morning, when I finally felt the service was both safely enough distanced enough from the last meltdown and I had the free time to start writing this review. Then yesterday's meltdown drama happened. At which point I was tempted to put it on hold for a few more days at least, but with the NFL season fast approaching, an extremely notable recent change in regards to picture quality offered in their sports feeds, and with so many IPTV noobies seemingly popping in lately shop for that...it's going up anyway. If for no other reason then to at least give them a current outlook perspective to find, and one that isn't just lining up to take their money in the process.

Anyway, for reference this is a follow up review to the one i did here: https://www.reddit.com/r/IPTVReviews/comments/85qebd/the_rise_and_somewhat_fall_of_vader_streams_1/ ,and latter deleted the summary of in light of a lot of post-review changes. All testing practices and surrounding viewing variables have remained the same. Sole focus on US channels remains as well. Although to note, my player preferences (I'm a strictly an android and mostly Nvidia Shield user btw) over hundreds of additional hours have changed since then and expanded to include additional player options that have since upgraded their software.

SETUP/CUSTOMER SERVICE

Nothing of note has changed with the setup, which is all still fairly standard stuff depending on your device choice. Again with their Kodi install being a pro point exception in giving users an easy option to sort in/out channels groups and VOD while doing the initial install (basically if you don't want a bunch of extra crap seriously slowing down the simple client load time every time you open kodi or SPMC, which pretty much no IPTV providers nowadays make the extra effort at offering, Vader isn't telling you to go learn how to do it yourself with notepad++).

Customer service on the other hand has changed quite bit since. The addition of a Telegram chat has probably vaulted them up to the top of the food chain in this area imo, with great around-the-clock technical help and update details. All in all I honestly can't say enough good things about it here in terms of being helpful and getting updated information out....which is actually pretty important in the overall scheme of things since as a customer you should be expecting to have to spend a very regular amount of time popping in there to find out what specifically is going on (more on that below).

As far as fixing down channels goes I'd rate them as average overall. Not the fastest and/or most efficient I've seen, but not nearly the worst either.

EPG

Outside the short term hiccups that happen every time the service goes down I'll still rate Vader to have one of the best and most accurate EPGs out there. Which also translates over well to whatever app/player you choose to use, and now even including the APK. In fact, and outside maybe GearsTV I guess, I don't think I've tested one with a better overall population factor.

On top of that, this time I'm going to make the extra effort to give Vader a huge thumbs up on how it handles it's sport listing with the Matchcenter feature. Which makes finding specific sports related things a breeze, and pretty much the polar opposite experience of almost every other provider out there using the same generic layout that usually leaves you guessing though a bunch of empty channel listings to find the specific game/content you want to watch. It's one of Vader's defining features, and certainly wayyyy more worthy of note then I gave it last time.

CHANNELS/QUALITY

Other them offering a couple more total movie channels, Vader's US channel selection is pretty par from the course and what you'd expect out of any IPTV service nowadays.

Picture quality of non-sports channels is one of the better ones out there. Lots of 60 fps streams scattered about, especially on the more popular channels. Most offerings are in HD, although you will find your random SD feed here and there. Sports channels are also mostly offered in solid HD, but notably just took a huge hit the other day with the loss of the Smoothstreams sourced channels. Which had been Vader's primary source on most their 60fps feeds. As a result, matchcenter has now only been offering a single feed for every sporting event I've tested since (none of which were 60fps), and the bigger mainstream channels like ESPN and FS1 have also now been downgraded to 30fps. It's a **HUGE** and noteworthy change in the service for the min/max crowd, and one i expect to see a lot more widespread complaining about in the upcoming days as the transition becomes more commonly apparent.

*Edited in note* - It appears they've re-added a 60fps feed on ESPN.

RELIABILITY/STABILITY

For starters, the common and rightfully aimed standard claim that "every services has issues" and IPTV should never be expected to be perfect doesn't really apply here. The consistent amount of issues one can expect to see with Vader goes way freaking beyond that. A lot more so then any other of the more popular providers out there Vader Streams is a pure Beta atm, and continues to be so to this day since completely ripping up the old back end way of doing things post- overselling their servers. B-E-T-A. Period. This can't be hammered home enough to potential buyers. From server crashes, to too many people creating heavy server traffic, to certain player application support going down, to bugs with the APK, ect ect - these things happen a lot more with Vader then your regular quality provider. In fact and with no exaggeration here, in all my extensive testing of at least decent provider qualifiers, I've probably run into less total problems in the entire whole of all of them then I have in one less then ideal week of Vader. The people telling you differently and that "oh Vader has been issue free for so and so long before today" are either extreme fanboys, those with a financially invested interest, or somebody who just doesn't spend much time watching live TV. Basically, and with all due respect to those out there hustling a buck or trying to be "loyal"... they are all FOS. It's been a constant stream of back end struggles in one variety or another, granted not always as annoying as others, since the resellers oversold the servers last year. If you purchase a Vader account...you need to go in expecting this non-sugar coated reality.

The above all said, from a strictly buffering aspect when things are up and working I honestly have found Vader to be pretty solid as a whole over the last couple weeks. Not quite where it was in it's heyday for heavy primetime coverage and before there were 10 million resellers out there hawking it, but it still remains a consistent choice in my daily rotation of providers.

On that note, figuring out which player is going to perform best on any given day can also be somewhat of a chore. As a general rule of thumb though I've found the very latest versions of Perfect Player Pro to be the most consistently reliable, followed by SPMC (set to HLS instead of TS), and with the APK being the least stable. In fact, a lot of the time you can get rid of the buffering/drops you'll see using the APK by simply switching over to one of the other two, and which tend to play through those "rough spots" better then the APK's base player can. ProgTv can also be an extremely solid choice as well btw...but didn't make the above cut due to my personally hating the UI.

FEATURES/VALUE

*VOD* - Been up and down for some time now, but one of the more extensive offerings when it is working. Personally would prefer they just get rid of it altogether, especially after multiple direct dev references now that it has had a negative impact on live TV streaming stability, but whatever. As always I'll just point out there are other easy ways to get a better VOD selection then any IPTV provider can offer for free, and without paying them out a dime for it's inclusion as a noteworthy feature.

*CATCHUP* - So I tore them up for it's constantly broken state in my last review, and to their infinite credit it made a complete turn around to regain it's spot as **THE** noteworthy feature aspect Vader has to offer. While most providers nowadays shy away from offering a catchup feature to begin with (the legality is a lot more muddy then re-streaming live TV), Vader offers the most extensive one you'll find out there. Which as a whole has been fairly reliable since a couple weeks after my last review, and unlike anything else I've found even includes UFC PPV's. Basically it's a huge freaking selling point other providers can't offer, and enough so that for some (including myself) it's inclusion alone is worth enough to ultimately overlook the service's other flawed areas.

That said, there is currently a random bug where the playback will reset back to the beginning, and the "what player is best" issue again pops up here as well. For catchup I strongly advise using the APK or Kodi, as Perfect Player tends to see this bug a lot more then the others in my experiences.

*APK* - A constant work in progress, which in turn means it's constantly buggy. Definitely doesn't get my recommendation as a primary plug and play player option. That said, a lot of effort has obviously gone in to it and it certainly shows in some aspects. One of of only 2 total APK's out there I'll even bothering using the EPG to surf around on, and offers the additional pro of having a well implanted matchcenter separated for your sport listings.

Really wish they hadn't recently doubled down on the Eco player it's built on top of though. Which in my own comparative testing of players was a poor design pick. The lack of the option to change that in the settings, such as offered in the more stable but far less visually appealing Smarter APK, also notably stands out and continues to hamper the overall long term potential it could/would otherwise have.

*ADDITIONAL CONNECTIONS/VALUE* - Once the undisputed king of this, and what basically put it on the popularity map, Vader has lost a lot of comparative base ground here lately. Depending on how big a factor having the catchup feature is, of course. Lot of competing providers out there nowadays that offer multiple streams, and some (with more virgin servers that haven't loaded their servers to their limits yet) even costing less. Including a link to such btw since I already know I'll get a buch of PM's asking if I don't: https://www.reddit.com/r/IPTV/comments/8zym1a/multiple_connection_provider_list/

Still a solid all around value, but at $15 while factoring in the surrounding stability issues and recent loss of the 60fps sports feeds...it ain't what it used to be.

CONCLUSSION

I'll start off here by stating that I'm basically a tech guy who ultimately appreciates Vader Streams even being the beta that it is. I like being given new shiny feature to play with, testing different things without an expectation that it's even going to be as good as what I was already using, and generally just messing with things to mess with things. Heck, even trying to break something that should otherwise work is fun to me. I also like different sometimes just because it's different. On the other hand sometimes I like things being easy, and appreciate the simple things like logging into an app to watch my daily Red Sox game without it being a clicking around chore to find the channel it's playing on. I also run no less then 3 completely different provider subscriptions at any given time lately, so when Vader craps the bed I simply click over to the next app when needed and it doesn't ruin my day. So for somebody like me...the extra features and things I find in Vader that I don't find elsewhere tips the scale to an overall **BUY** when viewing it as an individual piece in a multiple part puzzle. To me people with a similar interest is the true target audience Vader should most appeal and be marketed to.

Of course I also get that I'm in the minority there, and that a lot of other people go into this simply checking off a surface feature list and make their purchase decision strictly from there. They don't expect to essentially sign up to a beta test, acknowledge but don't really hear the advice people give them to always have a backup provider, never give a thought to potential server load issues or the bandwith that is going to be needed to reliably run the best HD picture they can find, and generally just operate under some misplaced "all things being equal" assumption that pretty much goes to crap when one actually factors in what it is they are buying here. None of which is being backed by big corporation money btw, a fancy office building somewhere, or exists as a mom/pop shop they intend to hand off to his kids one day. By and large it's a shady and rather cash grabby business, and one that essentially caters to tech challenged people's tendency to make bad decisions.

So yeah, if you are one of those latter people that think you going to save yourself some money buying a single IPTV sub with Vader, slapping it on every TV in the house for the family, and walking into Sunday football server traffic this fall without any real surrounding concern that Vader's loaded up servers aren't going to crap the bed...**you** are that next bad decision waiting to happen atm. For as much credit as i like to give Vader in it's effort to push the development needle, there is also something to be said for sticking with something that has a much stronger track record of consistently working. Which a lot of other provider options out there can offer where Vader isn't. For single provider needs, or even in a combo consideration where the total cost is a consideration and the catchup feature isn't a must, there are better overall deals out there to be had and Vader should be viewed a fairly hard **PASS**.

- Channel list (googled what I could find. I'll update if it's changed since then) - http://www.vaderstream.net/channellist.html

- Official Website - https://minihosts.org

- Reseller website I can personally vouch for - http://rajtv.stream/

- Telegram invites - Request from your seller