IPTV catch-up lets you watch a programme that already aired on a live channel; timeshift is the technical name of the mechanism behind it. The service records the channel on its own servers for a few days, and a player asks for a slice of that archive — a start time and a duration — to play a past programme as if it were a film. With IPTV catch-up and timeshift explained in plain terms, it becomes clear why replay works on one channel and not another, and why the number of days changes from one service to the next. This article covers the concepts; the step-by-step use in the app is in Replay in Klyvo Play.
Klyvo Play is a player. It does not provide any channel, film or series: you connect the service you already have and are authorized to use, with its Xtream login or its M3U link.
Catch-up, timeshift, replay: what do the words mean?
- Catch-up (or catch-up TV): watching a past programme of a live channel, chosen from the guide.
- Timeshift: the mechanism that makes it possible — shifting playback back in time on an archived channel. The address used to request it contains the word timeshift.
- Replay: the everyday name for catch-up, and the name of the feature in Klyvo Play.
- Archive: the recording the service keeps of a channel, over a window of a certain number of days.
They are not the same as a recording on your device or a personal cloud recorder. With catch-up, you do not choose in advance what to keep: the service keeps the channel, and you pick a programme afterwards.
How IPTV catch-up works on the server
Catch-up is entirely a server-side feature. For each channel it wants to archive, the service records the live stream continuously and keeps it for a set number of days, then deletes the oldest part. Through the Xtream API, it tells players two things about each channel:
- tv_archive: whether an archive exists for that channel (1) or not (0).
- tv_archive_duration: how many days the archive covers.
The service also sends the past programmes of the channel with its guide, sometimes with a flag on each programme saying it can be replayed. Without a guide, the archive would still exist, but you would have no titles or times to choose from — see what an EPG and XMLTV are.
How a player requests a past programme
To play a programme from the archive, the player builds a timeshift address on the service's server. In the Xtream format it looks like /timeshift/username/password/duration/start/channel-id, where:
- duration is the length of the programme, in minutes;
- start is the programme's start time, written as year-month-day:hour-minute;
- channel-id is the channel's identifier on the server.
The server answers with a stream of that slice of the recording. One detail matters a lot: the start time must be expressed in the server's own time zone. A player that converts it wrongly asks for the wrong slice, and you land in the middle of the previous programme. Klyvo Play uses the start time exactly as the service writes it in its guide, so it never has to guess the server's time zone.
Why some channels have catch-up and others do not
Archiving costs the service storage and bandwidth, so it chooses which channels to record and for how long. That leads to situations that surprise people at first:
- Catch-up on some channels only: often the most-watched ones.
- Different windows: a day or two on one channel, a week on another.
- Gaps: if the recording was interrupted, a programme may be missing or start late.
- Rights: some programmes cannot be replayed because of how their rights are granted; this is the service's decision.
None of this is set by the player. Klyvo Play does not shorten or extend the window: it lists what the service makes available.
When the service's flags are incomplete
In practice, services are not always consistent. Some support timeshift but never set the archive flag on their programmes, or even on the channel. A player that trusted the flags blindly would show an empty Replay on a line where catch-up actually works.
Klyvo Play handles this case: it shows first the programmes the service explicitly flags as replayable. When none are flagged, it lists the programmes of the last three days — a typical timeshift window — so that you can still try them. If the service has no archive for a programme, it simply will not start: try a more recent one.
How Klyvo Play plays catch-up
- On phones and tablets, in the Live tab, the Replay button on a channel's row opens its past programmes.
- On Apple TV, Fire TV and Windows, the Live screen shows a Replay button when the channels of your list declare an archive.
- Grouped by day — Today, Yesterday and the days before — with the most recent programmes first.
- Same player as live TV: a past programme opens in the same engine, with an MPEG-TS stream first and HLS as an automatic fallback.
- Nothing is recorded on your device: the archive stays on the service's servers.
Not connected yet? Explore the demo on the first screen includes demo channels with their own Replay, played with royalty-free films, so you can see how it feels before adding your service.
Getting reliable catch-up: a short checklist
- Ask your service which channels have catch-up and for how many days: it is the only reliable source.
- Make sure the guide is complete. Catch-up is browsed through the guide; a richer guide, such as an XMLTV link added to your playlist, means more programmes to choose from.
- Prefer recent programmes. The oldest part of an archive is the first to be deleted, so a programme listed at the edge of the window may already be gone.
- Check the clock of your device. Times are shown in your local time; a device set to the wrong time zone makes the guide look shifted.
- Stop other streams on the same line if your subscription allows only one connection: catch-up counts like live TV.
Catch-up vs pausing live TV and recording
Catch-up is often confused with two other features. Pausing live TV means keeping a buffer of the channel you are watching on your device, so you can pause and resume a few minutes later. Recording means saving a programme to storage you control. Both are different from timeshift, which depends only on the archive kept by your service and works for programmes you were not watching at all. If you want to watch a past programme, catch-up is the feature to look for in your service's description.
FAQ
Is IPTV catch-up the same as timeshift? Practically, yes: catch-up is what you do, timeshift is the server mechanism that makes it possible.
How many days of catch-up will I get? It depends on your service and on each channel. The number of days is set by the service, not by the app.
Why does Replay start in the middle of another programme? The guide's times and the archive's times do not match — usually a time zone or guide offset issue on the service's side, see IPTV guide showing the wrong time.
Does catch-up use one of my connections? Yes. A catch-up stream counts like a live channel while it plays, within your subscription's limit — see max connections reached.
Can Klyvo Play add catch-up to a channel? No. Only the service can archive a channel; the player reads that archive.
Try catch-up with your service
IPTV catch-up and timeshift are a service feature that a good player makes easy to use: the guide gives the titles, the archive gives the picture, and the player asks for the right slice at the right time. If your service supports catch-up, download Klyvo Play, open Replay on an archived channel and try the full app free for 10 days.