A channel or film will not play
Almost every playback failure is the stream, not the app. This page is about telling which is which.
First: does anything else play?
Section titled “First: does anything else play?”- Nothing plays at all → the account or the connection.
- One channel does not, the rest do → that channel, or its format.
- It plays and then stops → the connection, or your provider’s edge server.
HTTP 403 and 509
Section titled “HTTP 403 and 509”These come from your provider and mean too many connections on your account. Most accounts allow one or two.
The usual causes:
- Something else is already playing, another device, another app, or a multiview cell.
- A download or a recording is running.
- A previous session has not been released yet by the provider’s panel. Waiting a minute is sometimes all it takes.
Nothing in the app can work around this. It is what you are paying your provider for, and the number of simultaneous streams is part of it.
HTTP 401, 404, 410
Section titled “HTTP 401, 404, 410”Wrong credentials, or the stream no longer exists. If the whole playlist gives 401, your subscription has lapsed or the password changed, fix it in the playlist’s edit screen, and see changing the login.
HTTP 502 and other 5xx
Section titled “HTTP 502 and other 5xx”Your provider’s edge server. These are often regional: the same file plays from one country and fails from another, because the panel hands out a different edge each time.
The app retries a failed piece a few times on a fresh connection before giving up, so a single 502 mid-film usually recovers on its own.
“Unable to parse TLS packet header”
Section titled ““Unable to parse TLS packet header””You typed https:// on a port that speaks plain HTTP. Use http://. The app never adds https://
on its own, precisely because most panels answer plain HTTP on their stream ports.
It plays, but there is no sound
Section titled “It plays, but there is no sound”Usually AC-3 or E-AC-3 audio, which some players decode and some do not.
- On Android and Apple the app switches decoding path on its own.
- On Windows and macOS the system decodes neither, so the app converts the sound as it plays. You get picture, sound and a working seek bar.
If a channel is silent on one engine, switch the engine in Settings → Player → Player engine and see whether the other one has it.
The picture is torn, green or blocky
Section titled “The picture is torn, green or blocky”A broken hardware decoder on that device for that codec. Settings → Player → Hardware decoding, turn it off. That row applies to the VLC engine. Turn it back on when you move to another device.
It buffers constantly
Section titled “It buffers constantly”That is throughput, and it has its own page: Slow starts and buffering.
What the app already tried before it told you
Section titled “What the app already tried before it told you”Before any dialog appears, the app has: retried the same host, tried the other stream format for that channel, retried the transport a few times with a growing delay, and, for a decoder or parser failure, not a network one, swapped to the other engine. A dialog means all of that failed.
That is also why a dialog that offers Try again now is worth pressing once: a provider that refused a moment ago often accepts a fresh connection.
Reporting one
Section titled “Reporting one”Settings → About & legal → Report a bug opens an email with diagnostics already attached. Add the exact message on the screen, the channel or film, and roughly when. See Reporting a problem.