What is Ovelo TV?

The one-sentence answer

“Ovelo TV” is a name associated with internet-delivered television — live channels, films and series that arrive over your broadband instead of through an antenna, a dish or a cable. People search the phrase when they want to buy such a service, when they are trying to set one up, or when they are looking for an application to play it with.

Three things that are not the same

Nearly every confused message we get comes from these being treated as one thing. They are not.

1. The subscription. The access itself: a set of credentials, a portal address or a playlist link that points at a service. This is what you buy.
2. The player. An application on your device that takes those details and turns them into a picture. It is a separate piece of software, usually from your device's own store, and it works with any subscription rather than one particular brand.
3. The code or MAC address. The thing that links a specific device to a specific subscription. Some services issue an activation code; some register the MAC address printed on a set-top box.

A subscription without a player shows you nothing. A player without a subscription is an empty app. Knowing which of the three is missing turns most “it does not work” problems into a two-minute fix.

What the name tells you, and what it does not

A brand name in this market describes who is selling, not what is licensed, how much capacity sits behind it, or whether anyone will answer you next month. The same name can be used by more than one operation, and there is no register to check. So the name is not evidence of anything — the behaviour is: whether prices are published, whether limits are stated, and whether a person replies before you have paid. The longer answer is here.

What it is not

• Not a channel. There is no such broadcaster.
• Not a piece of hardware. Nothing needs to be posted to you.
• Not a single official product with one owner. The name is used loosely by more than one operation, which is exactly why we say plainly that we are not any of them.

How to tell what you actually need

If you are…	What you need
Starting from nothing	A subscription and a player. Both, in that order.
Holding credentials that will not load	A better player, or a corrected typo. Not a new subscription.
Holding a device with a MAC address	A service that registers MAC addresses. Explained here.
Renewing something bought elsewhere	The original seller. We cannot reach anyone else's system.

Is it worth it?

Compared with a traditional television package, the appeal is price and flexibility: one payment for a stated period, no eighteen-month contract, and it works on devices you already own. The trade-off is that it depends entirely on your broadband, and that quality between providers varies enormously with no reliable way to judge from the outside. Which is why our advice is always to test properly in the first week rather than to trust anybody's homepage — including this one.