Every player is installed on four reference devices — a current Fire TV Stick, a mid-range Android TV box, a recent Samsung Tizen TV and an Apple TV where the platform allows — and lives there for at least two weeks of daily use with a licensed test playlist of 1,800 channels plus XMLTV guide data.
The editor score weighs five areas: guide performance (30%) — cold start, scroll smoothness, days of data; playback (25%) — zap speed, format tolerance, audio/subtitle handling; setup & management (20%) — login types, playlist updates, multi-device story; features (15%) — catch-up, recording, profiles, parental controls; and polish & support (10%) — update cadence, documentation, developer responsiveness.
We buy every premium unlock at retail price, accept no review builds with special flags, and carry no affiliate relationships with any app or service. When a ranking changes between cycles, the reason is stated in the review's changelog.