MAC portal (Stalker or Ministra)
Some providers do not hand out a link or a login at all. Instead they register a MAC address on their side and give you a portal address, and anything presenting that MAC is treated as your set top box. IPTV Deck can be that box.
Adding one
Section titled “Adding one”Settings → Playlists → Add playlist → MAC portal on a phone. On a television, Settings → Playlists → Add a playlist → No phone? Enter details manually, then MAC portal.
| Field | What goes in it |
|---|---|
| Playlist name | Whatever you want to call it. Only you see it |
| Portal address | What your provider gave you, like http://example.tv:8080/c/ |
| MAC address | The one your provider registered, like 00:1A:79:XX:XX:XX |
There is nothing else to fill in. No username, no password: the MAC is the account.
The first download takes a while
Section titled “The first download takes a while”Longer than an Xtream account, and that is the portal’s own doing rather than the app’s. A Ministra portal hands out films and series fourteen at a time, with no way to ask for a whole section at once, so a large catalogue is thousands of small requests. On a big portal the first download is measured in minutes, not seconds.
Live channels are quick, because those a portal will give in one go.
Two things make it shorter:
- Untick the categories you do not want before it starts. A category you leave out is never downloaded at all, not downloaded and then discarded.
- Leave it alone while it runs. It is one long conversation with a server that limits how fast it will talk.
Refreshing later is much quicker: the app reads only what the provider has added since last time. A portal that added nothing costs a single request. The whole catalogue is read again when something was removed, when you change which categories you keep, and once a week regardless.
The guide
Section titled “The guide”A portal carries its own programme guide and the app uses it. You do not need to add an XMLTV source for it, and it does not mix with one.
How much of it arrives is the provider’s decision. On a portal with eleven thousand channels, only a few hundred may carry any programme data at all. That is their guide, not a fault in the download, and no setting on this side will conjure the rest.
Your MAC and your account
Section titled “Your MAC and your account”The MAC is a credential, so it is treated like one.
It stays on the device unless your playlist passwords are kept in your account, see Keep my passwords in my account. With that on, the MAC travels with the rest of them and a new device gets the portal ready without you typing anything. A new account starts with it on, an older one only if somebody turned it on, and what we store is readable by us, which that page says plainly.
Changing the address or the MAC
Section titled “Changing the address or the MAC”A different MAC is a different line, the same way a different link is a different list. So changing either asks you the same question as changing any other playlist’s source: keep your favorites and channel settings, or start clean.
Keep them when the provider moved you to a new address or re-registered the same box. Start clean when it is somebody else’s line, or a different provider altogether, otherwise your favorites land on whatever channel happens to hold that number now.
One portal is one line
Section titled “One portal is one line”If your provider gave you two MACs, add them as two playlists. You can have several open at once and see them together.