mine is working fine.i finally figured out how to record with it and it’s better than tivimate as far as recording but tivimate is better at customization. and the china cheap iptv service doesn’t buffer on sparkle at all but a lil on tivimate,def notice the difference
Could you be a bit more specific.
I just cancelled my subscription after a couple of days and I get a portion of my money back.
I have a couple cheap subs from both Ali and Amazon. They work well on Tivi but not so much on Smarters. I don’t have Sparkle but may have to give it a try.
Iptv subs are for sale on amazon? do you have a link?
edit: found it,interesting just like alibaba
Yes there are a couple sellers on Amazon. I’ve used on for about 6 months and its pretty good. DM if you want more info
If you don’t like the sub do you just return the M3u to Whole Foods? 
So, watching the games on my TM and it buffers a lot even with maintenance. However on Sparkels not at all so far. The point is, it’s the same provider loaded on both. Strange
Question - can I restore my backup from Tivimate to RESTORE for use on Sparkle?
Could be tivimate settings…hls vs mpeg-ts etc. A pretty surefire way to kill most if not all buffering is use a mini pc to host your subscriptions and then send it to your devices. An old pc can do the trick in most cases. By doing this you take the workload off the android/fire devices…put it all on the pc which has no problem grabbing the stream etc…food for thought. 
Weird you say that, the one we both subscribe to I’ve been having issues, all evening AND I NEVER DO. Things are so bad went to my other provider and no issues.
Just might be the location because you can watch al,ost anywhere. Might depend on obscure locations where not too many are watching on that channel
Send to your devices?
android or fire devices (clients). The pc does the work rather than say your android.
I do not believe i have ever had buffer issues as long as i was in the right category to watch a football game. Local channels either do not work or will buffer severely on games.
interesting info on sparkle vs tivimate
cut and paste from the dark side
Sparkle Player does what TiviMate can’t - at least with recoding. A comparison….
So,
I’ll admit, I’m a huge fanboy of TiviMate. I love everything about it. EXCEPT dependable recording to an external hard drive.
I’ll start by saying I am lower user, and love to learn the ins and outs of everything to a point of overkill. I have no issue spending hours and hours trying to resolve a simple issue that probably isn’t an issue in the first place. Thank you, ADHD.
My setup is a 2019 Nvidia Shield Pro 2019 with a 2TB Samsung SSD attached via USB.
My provider offers a great catchup plan, so I am not too worried about record tons of stuff all of the time, so when I DO need it, I want it to work reliably.
As you may already know, recording with TiviMate is very much a hit-or-miss operation.
No matter what combination of settings, or drives, or connection, or setup I use, it seems that about 85% f my TiviMate Recordings fail.
I have 5 concurrent connections allowed, so no issues there.
I’m well aware that any small bit of buffering or “glitching” will send TiviMate into fit when it’s recording and the recording is almost always cancelled or stopped right at that moment. It’s the worst feeling ever sitting down to play an hour long episode you’ve been waiting to watch, only to find that TiviMate says that the recording is 8 minutes long. Oof!
I’ll continue on…
I have tried Sparkle Player in the past, and liked it, but since I was such a heavy user of TiviMate, I didn’t see any reason to have two similar programs running - so I stopped trying that out and stuck with TiviMate. It should be noted that I never bothered testing the recording setup in Sparkle Player as I assumed ALL similar apps would lose/cancel a recording when there was a small buffer/“glitch” in the stream - since occasional buffering (even as good as one second ever few hours) is simply the nature of the beast with the current state of the providers we use.
I simply figured recording was the same across the board, and that was just gonna have to be accepted.
UNTIL RECENTLY….
The other day, I came across a random post where someone said something as simple and to the point as “…Sparkle Player does a great job of continuing recording even when a program pauses or buffered - unlike TiviMate.”
I was so fed up recently with TiviMate bot being reliable, that the above statement was enough for me to give it t another shot - this time, a deep dive, needed.
I installed Sparkle Player once again (paid for the license to enable all features, obviously), and set up a bunch of recording. Spaces out as well as some overlapping. There’s even the option to record an entire series now, thanks to latest update.
Well, slap my ass and spit in my mouth - NO ISSUES AT ALL WITH SPARKLE TV RECORDINGS. I’m pretty sure I screamed like a little school girl when I saw that all my recordings were full-length and played back perfectly.
I couldn’t believe it. I’m now just recording random stuff for fun since it’s so satisfying that it actually worked. The ONLY issue that I saw was, there was one show I recorded that was an hour long. The next day, I say that there were two partial recordings that were each about 10 minutes long. I felt devastated, lol. BBUTT, lo and behold, right next to those two entries was a third entry for that recording that was the FULL length and was perfect. If Sparkle Player uses some sort of Voodoo to accomplish this, that’s fine with me.
That’s all, I figured that since so many people are into trying to record things that this thread would be of some assistance.
For what it’s worth, I always see the creator u/sparkle-hk poking around Reddit and responding to posts and working on updates. The TiviMate creator may very be that was as well, but I don’t recall seeing it myself.
Thanks for reading,
c&p of some info i found
Same here I tried sparkle and just didn’t work for me. The recording was good but the rest of it I didn’t like. Oh by the way be careful about where you get your next colonoscopy! LOL
Voting for both. Relatively cheap lifetime subscription for both. Am using Sparkle on firecube so no Google, and works fine in all functions. Yes a learning curve as with all things.
Gotcha @Miki I will watch a ton of the Olympics too but as a rule I never watch sports unless it is live. Speaking of that it’s daunting to try and find a comprehensive Schedule of channels, events, and times. I’m racking my brain on that. Best I found is this and it’s Pacific Time so I need to customize for my time. My IPTV provider has created a special channel grouping for the Olympics but it’s still challenging