Basis is a player, not a provider. It hosts and sells no channels, movies or series, and it does nothing at all until you give it an Xtream Codes login or an M3U playlist from a service you already pay for. That is the same shape as TiviMate, so nothing below is about content. It is about the software you drive it with.
Where TiviMate is still ahead
Putting this first is deliberate. If one of these four is the reason you opened your player last week, Basis is the wrong switch today and it is cheaper for both of us if you find that out here rather than after an evening of setup.
- Replaying something that already aired. TiviMate can pull a programme back out of your provider's archive. Basis reads the archive fields from both Xtream Codes and M3U, and nothing plays from them yet, so it is not a feature, it is a parsed field. Ticking that box would fail the first time you tried to rewind last night's match.
- Recording. There is no recording in Basis at all.
- Parental controls. Not built.
- Amazon's streaming sticks. TiviMate is a normal part of that world. Basis is not a tested target on Fire OS, and the downloads page lists it as planned rather than shipping. Please do not read this page as a promise that it works there.
There is a fifth thing worth naming: TiviMate has been doing this for years and it shows. It is a mature, deeply configurable player. If you have already built a layout you like, that layout is real value and Basis will not reproduce it.
Where Basis is ahead
- One sign-in covers every device you own. Not set up screen by screen, per box.
- Your position travels. Stop an episode on the TV, open the phone, and it is where you left it.
- Playback repairs itself. When a stream drops, Basis reconnects, remuxes and falls back to a backup source rather than showing you an error and waiting. It cannot fix a provider that is down, and nothing can, but it stops a five second wobble from ending the evening.
- Your provider login is typed once and stored encrypted on the device rather than left in plain settings.
- Search takes a sentence, not a category tree. This is Basis AI, and it is the one below.
- It fits in the memory an old box actually has. This is the section below that, and it is the reason this page exists.
Cloud sync, offline downloads and Basis AI are on the Pro tier. Everything else in that list, including the memory behaviour and the self-repairing playback, is on the free tier.
Basis AI, and searching a catalog you did not organise
A category tree is your provider's filing system, not yours. It works while the catalog is small. At tens of thousands of titles it stops being a way to find something and becomes a way to browse until you give up, which is why so many evenings end on whatever was on the first row.
Basis AI is the other way in. You type the sentence you would say out loud, a film you half remember, a director, the sort of thing you are in the mood for, and it works out what you meant and finds the matches in the catalog on your device. It searches the movies and series you already have rather than the internet, so nothing it shows you is something you then have to go and find elsewhere. It is search rather than a recommendation engine: it does not learn your habits and it puts nothing in front of you that you did not ask for.
The sentence is the only thing that leaves the device. Your catalog is not uploaded to be searched, it is matched where it already is.
Two limits, because a page that sells this without them is selling a different product. Basis AI is a Pro feature, and it runs in the phone and tablet interface: the Android TV interface has the ordinary keyword search box and no Basis AI in it today. It also searches movies and series, not live channels and not the guide, so finding a channel by name is still the plain search box's job.
The full comparison
| Feature | Basis | TiviMate | IPTV Smarters Pro |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where Basis is ahead | |||
| Runs inside the normal Android heapNo large heap request, measured on 1 GB boxes | Yes | Not advertised | Not advertised |
| One sign-in, every deviceNot set up screen by screen | Yes | add-on | Not advertised |
| Progress follows youStop on the TV, finish on the phone | Yes | Not advertised | Not advertised |
| Favourites travelSign in and your setup is there | Yes | add-on | Not advertised |
| Self-repairing playbackSpots the drop and reconnects | Yes | Not advertised | Not advertised |
| Login encrypted on the deviceTyped once | Yes | Not advertised | Not advertised |
| Basis AI, search in plain languageDescribe it instead of scrolling. Phone and tablet, on Pro | Yes | Not advertised | Not advertised |
| All three do this | |||
| Android phone and tabletSame app, same login | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Android TV and Google TVRemote-driven interface | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Xtream Codes and M3UBring your own provider | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| More than one providerSwitch without signing out | Yes | premium | Yes |
| TV guideWhat is on now and next | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Offline downloadsMovies and episodes on the device | Yes | Not advertised | Yes |
| Where they are ahead of us | |||
| Replay what already airedOut of the provider's archive | No | Yes | Yes |
| RecordingKeep a match to watch later | No | Yes | Not advertised |
| Parental controlsLock what the kids can open | No | Yes | Yes |
| Amazon streaming sticksFire OS devices | No | Yes | Yes |
| What the player costs | |||
| PriceYour provider is separate | $29.99/yr, free tier available | paid | free |
Compared August 2026 against what each app publishes about itself. A blank means the app does not advertise it, not that it cannot do it. TiviMate and IPTV Smarters Pro are other people's products and they ship on their own schedule, so if something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
The memory difference, measured
IPTV players get slow on cheap hardware for a specific reason, and it is almost never the video. It is the catalog. A mid-sized provider hands over tens of thousands of rows and a guide with hundreds of thousands of programmes, and a player that parses all of that into memory before showing you anything will run a 1 GB box out of heap. Android does not give an app the whole gigabyte. On the boxes this matters for, an app's heap is capped near 96 MB.
So Basis is built to never hold the whole catalog at once. These are figures from tests committed in the app's own repository, each of which records the device it ran on:
Two design choices sit behind those numbers. Basis does not ask Android for a large heap, which was removed in 1.5.7 once the app fit inside the normal one, and the poster cache is pinned to a quarter of the device's normal memory class so it cannot quietly expand on a device that would allow it to.
What this is not: a claim that Basis launches faster than TiviMate. Nobody has run that comparison, so there is no number to give you and this page will not invent one. The claim is narrower and checkable: the catalog is not what runs your box out of memory.
What switching actually involves
- Basis is a direct download rather than a Play Store listing, so the TV needs installs from unknown sources turned on once. The Android TV setup guide walks through it.
- There are two sign-ins, not one: a free Basis account, then your provider. The account is what carries your position and favourites between devices, so it is doing real work rather than collecting an email.
- Your provider details are the same ones you already have. An Xtream Codes login goes in as server, username and password. An M3U playlist goes in as a URL.
- Nothing is imported from TiviMate. Playlists, favourites and layout do not transfer between players, from anyone to anyone.
- You do not have to uninstall anything. Both players can point at the same provider at the same time.
Questions people ask
Is Basis free?
There is a free tier that is not a trial: the player, Xtream Codes and M3U, live TV and video on demand, the guide, self-repairing playback, and one device signed in at once. Pro is $29.99 a year, about 8 cents a day, and adds cloud sync, offline downloads, Basis AI plain language search and five devices.
What is Basis AI?
Plain language search over the catalog your own provider gives you. You describe what you are after and it works out which movies and series you already have that match, instead of making you guess which category your provider filed it under. It is not a recommendation engine: it does not learn your habits and it suggests nothing you did not ask for. It does not search the internet either, only your catalog, and the sentence you type is the only thing that leaves the device. It is a Pro feature and it runs in the phone and tablet interface rather than on the TV.
Does Basis provide channels?
No. Basis hosts and sells no channels, movies or series, and ships with no server addresses and no credentials. You bring an Xtream Codes login or an M3U playlist from a provider you already subscribe to. Without one there is nothing to show you.
Will it run on my old Android TV box?
If the box is on Android 8.0 or higher, yes. The catalog handling is specifically built for boxes with 1 GB of RAM, where the per app heap is capped near 96 MB. See the older boxes page for what that means in practice.
Can I keep TiviMate installed?
Yes. They are separate apps pointing at the same provider. Most providers allow a limited number of simultaneous connections, so you may not be able to play in both at the same moment, but having both installed costs you nothing.
Does Basis support recording or replaying what already aired?
Neither, today. Both are listed here rather than buried because they are the most common reason someone should not switch yet.
Is my provider login encrypted?
It is stored on the device with hardware backed encryption. Syncing an encrypted copy to your account is optional and off by default, and signing out wipes what is stored locally. To be precise about the limit of that: the key for the synced copy lives on our servers rather than only on your device, so it protects stored data and we are able to decrypt it.