VLC or a dedicated player for an IPTV subscription

What VLC does well

VLC plays nearly anything, IPTV streams included, and it is free and open source. To open a channel now and then, or to check that a link works, nothing is more direct.

Its decoders are excellent, and it plays formats many players give up on. On playback itself, there is nothing to hold against it.

Where it stops

VLC has no catalogue, it has a playlist — designed for music tracks. Ten thousand channels form a single column there, with no categories and no separation between live, films and series.

It shows no programme guide: there is no way to know what is on now or what follows. It does not fetch posters or plots, and it does not remember the position in a film between sessions.

It knows nothing of favourites or resume either. Every launch starts from nothing, which barely registers on a single file and registers a great deal on a subscription used every day.

When it starts to matter

Below a hundred channels and for occasional use, VLC is plenty, and there is no reason to change.

Beyond that, time spent searching overtakes time spent watching. That is when a player that sorts, that searches inside descriptions, and that remembers where you were stops being a comfort.

Nothing forces a choice, incidentally: both install side by side, and VLC stays useful for opening a single link.