Catch-up and archive

Catch-up plays a programme that has already finished, out of an archive your provider keeps. The app does not record it for you. That is recording, and it is a different thing.

It is not Timeshift either. Timeshift (Settings → Player → Timeshift) pauses and rewinds the channel you are watching by keeping it on this device, so it works without your provider’s archive, but only back to the moment you started watching. Catch-up reaches programmes that aired before you tuned in, on channels whose provider keeps an archive. See Timeshift.

Using it

• The Catch-up list gathers every channel your provider keeps past programmes for, with how many days back each one goes. On a phone it is Catch-up among the folders of Live TV, or the chip above the channel list; on a television, Windows and the Mac it is Catch-up in the category column of TV Channels and TV Guide. Pick a channel to browse its past days and play a programme from the start. In the other lists these channels carry a small mark next to their name.
• In the guide, move back in time and press OK on a finished programme. On a phone, tap it and tap Play catch-up; on a television, holding OK offers Start from the beginning.
• On a channel that is on air, the player offers Play from start, in Options on a television and in Player settings on a phone: the same archive, used to skip the part you missed, and the usual way people skip the advertisements at the top of the hour. On a television the Catch-up pill in the row of controls opens the days the channel keeps.
• A day rail lets you jump between the days the channel keeps.
• Catch-up only, in the category column of TV Channels and the TV Guide on a television, Windows, the Mac and LG and Samsung TVs, narrows Favorites, your groups and every category to their channels with catch-up. See Reading the guide.
• Sports: a finished match whose channel still has it in catch-up says Watch from start and plays it from the kick-off.

Finding a channel in Catch-up on a phone

On a phone and tablet the Catch-up list can be narrowed like Live TV:

• Filter channels… at the top searches its channels by name.
• The bar under it shows All, only your Favorites, or one of your groups or a category through Categories. Only groups and categories that have catch-up channels are listed.
• The star on a channel adds it to your favorites, and + adds it to one of your groups, right in the list.

While another channel of your provider plays

Catch-up and Watch from start also work while a channel of the same provider account plays in the background, for example in the TV Guide preview or behind the match centre. This applies to catch-up from the TV Guide, Search, a channel’s page and Continue watching, and to Watch from start in Sports. The app frees the channel’s stream for the recording, and when the provider has no recording, the channel comes back and the app says The provider didn’t record this programme.

When every stream of your provider account is in use, for example by another device, the app says so instead: Your provider allows one stream at a time and they are all in use, either by another device or by the channel you just left. Wait a few seconds and try again.

Play from start in the player settings and From start on a channel’s page show for every programme on air within the channel’s catch-up days. The app checks the recording only when you press it. In the channel panel on a television, a programme is marked Not recorded only after pressing it found no recording there.

Which channels have it

Whatever your provider archives, and only that. What a provider advertises about its archive is often wrong in both directions, so the app does not take its word for it and checks the recording itself before telling you it is there.

That is also why the app is deliberately optimistic: when a provider never said how far back it keeps recordings, OK on a past programme still asks, because that is where recordings often are anyway.

On a television the line under Start from the beginning then says Check this recording with the provider. A programme older than the window your provider reports is not offered; on a phone its card says Catch-up on this channel only reaches back N days.

Seeking and pausing

An archive stream is put together by the provider as it is served, rather than stored as one finished file. That matters:

• The seek bar shows the whole programme from the start.
• On a phone, a tablet, Android TV and Fire TV a jump lands on the second you chose, with either player engine. On Windows, the Mac and the other devices it lands near where you dropped the marker, at most a minute before it, and plays on from there.
• A jump is not instant the way it is in a downloaded film, and it never will be.
• A pause, short or long, goes on from where you paused. Some providers restart a recording part of the way into a programme; playback carries on past that point instead of stopping there or starting the programme again.

When the programme ends

With Autoplay next on, in Settings → Player (on by default, follows your account, also in the account panel), the next programme of the same channel starts by itself from its beginning, with a short Up next note. The same setting starts the next episode of a series. Whatever the programme ran over its slot in the guide is at the start of the next one, so nothing at the very end is cut off. There is no countdown to wait through.

Playback stops at the end as before when the setting is off, when the guide has no programme right after, or when your provider has no recording of it yet.

When catch-up plays the wrong part

With some providers catch-up plays a different part of the recording than the programme you picked in the guide, for example one that starts hours early or late. Catch-up time offset moves the time the app asks the archive for, for one playlist, from 12 hours back to 12 hours ahead in steps of 30 minutes. It is None by default. The guide keeps its times.

Device	Where
Phone and tablet	Settings → Playlists, the pencil next to the playlist, then Catch-up time offset
Television, Windows, the Mac, LG and Samsung TVs	Settings → Playlists, OK on the playlist, then Catch-up time offset under Manage
Account panel	The playlist under Playlists, Catch-up time offset

It is offered for Xtream, M3U and MAC portal playlists, and reaches your other devices. To move the programme times of one channel in the guide instead, use Guide time offset in that channel’s options.

How long the archive stays

That is your provider’s decision, not a setting in the app. What the app controls is how much guide it keeps for those days, with Keep the guide for: at the default of 7 days it keeps as much catch-up history as your provider offers, up to a week back. A shorter choice drops older programmes from the guide to save space, but the channel’s catch-up list still offers the days your provider keeps.

See Keep the guide for on Where the guide comes from.

Recording out of the archive

A past programme can be recorded rather than watched, which downloads it from the archive into your own storage, useful when the provider’s window is about to roll past it. Samsung TVs do this too, the next time IPTV Deck is open. LG TVs do not record. See Recording.