IPTV Catch-up TV: How the 7-Day Replay Works

Cable boxes trained people to think of missed television as a recording they forgot to set. Catch-up removes that step for anything still inside a rolling archive. The provider keeps the recent past of a channel. Your player shows it as earlier slots in the same guide you use for tonight. That is the whole product. Everything else on this page is how to tell a real archive from a logo that only plays live, and what to do when the slot you wanted refuses to start.

The feature summary sits on the features page. Quotable answers sit in the catch-up TV FAQ group. This guide is the decision and the fault-finding: what catch-up is, what it is not, and the four failures that look identical until you separate them.

What catch-up actually is

Catch-up is a server-side recording of a linear channel, kept for a fixed number of days and addressed through the programme guide. You do not schedule it. You do not plug in a hard drive. You open the guide, move left or down into yesterday, and play the programme title that is already written there.

The storage lives with the service, not in the stick under the television. That is why a new Firestick, a phone and a Smart TV can all open the same episode from Tuesday without copying a file between them. It is also why the episode disappears when it ages out of the window, even if you never finished it. There is no personal archive unless your player records a copy locally — and that is a different feature, covered later.

On DrexTV the published window is 7 days, on supported channels, and it is included on every plan including the free 24-hour trial. Nothing about catch-up is held back for the annual term. If a trial cannot replay a programme from three days ago on a channel that claims catch-up, the archive is not there. A screenshot of a guide with future listings does not prove the past.

Catch-up, +1 channels, on-demand and recording

People use “replay” for four different mechanisms. Mixing them up is how a household decides IPTV “has no catch-up” when they were looking in the film library, or decides the film library is broken because yesterday’s news is not in it.

• Catch-up is the recent broadcast of a live channel, opened from a past guide slot. News, soaps, sport highlights packages and the episode you missed at 9pm belong here.
• +1 and timeshift channels are separate live feeds that run the same schedule an hour later, or on a short delay. You tune them like any other channel. They are not a week of archive. British line-ups often include them beside the main feed; they do not replace a seven-day guide.
• On-demand is a catalogue of films and series with posters, seasons and episode lists. It is not “whatever was on BBC One on Thursday.” A title can be in the movies and series library and also have aired on a linear channel. Those are two copies with two interfaces. Searching the film row for last night’s local news will fail, correctly.
• Player recording writes a file to storage you control. TiviMate Premium, OTT Navigator and Kodi can do this. The service does not need to. Catch-up covers the forgotten recording. A local file covers the programme you need after day seven.

If you are leaving a cable PVR, read how to switch from cable to IPTV before you assume every recorded series moves with you. Files on a cable hard drive do not transfer. Catch-up covers the recent week. Older episodes, if they exist at all, are in on-demand or nowhere.

How you play a past programme

The path is the same idea on every serious player, even when the button names differ.

1. Connect with Xtream Codes — server, username and password — not a bare M3U URL.
2. Open the electronic programme guide for the channel, not the on-demand menu.
3. Move into the past until you see the programme title and start time you wanted.
4. Select it and play. You should land at the start of that programme, or be able to seek inside it, rather than joining the live edge.
5. If the guide only shows “No information” for yesterday, stop. You are not in catch-up yet.

Device menus live on the setup hub. Player differences live in the player comparison. TiviMate on Android and Fire TV is the clearest guide for this job. A store app that only offers a channel zapper will hide the archive even when the account has it. That is a player limit, not proof the channel has no catch-up.

M3U cannot do step two. The playlist has no past. The full contrast is in M3U vs Xtream Codes. If catch-up vanished after you “simplified” the login to a playlist link, switch back to Xtream Codes before you message support.

The seven-day window

A catch-up window is a rolling delete, not a library you grow. On DrexTV, supported channels keep 7 days. Monday’s episode is available through the following Monday. After that the slot leaves the guide. Refreshing the player does not bring it back. Paying for a longer subscription term does not extend it either — one month and twelve months carry the same archive length.

The forward guide is a separate 7-day grid of what will air. A provider can have a beautiful week ahead and an empty yesterday. When you compare services, test both directions. Future listings are metadata. Catch-up is storage, ingest and a second set of URLs. Metadata is cheap. Storage of a week of television across a large line-up is not, which is why many lists advertise “EPG” and go quiet when you ask to play Thursday.

Plan around the cutoff if a serial matters. If you are three episodes behind and the oldest one airs out of the window tomorrow, watch that one first or record it locally tonight. Catch-up will not wait because you were travelling.

Supported channels, not every logo

“Supported channels” is a real limit, not a footnote. A linear feed can be carried live without an archive behind it. Rights, source type and how the channel is ingested all affect whether yesterday exists. Pay-per-view event channels and some niche feeds are live only. A national entertainment channel is far more likely to have the week.

Do not treat a channel count as a catch-up count. During a trial, pick five programmes you would actually have recorded on cable — a soap, a news bulletin, a highlights show, a film that aired on a linear movie channel, and one sports recap — and try each from two or three days ago. If four of five play, the archive matches how your household watches. If none play, you are on the wrong connection method or the wrong provider. If only sport fails, read that as a rights or ingest gap on those feeds, not as “catch-up is broken” across the account.

The channel list explains where catch-up sits beside the on-demand library. Use the trial to confirm the specific names you care about. A blog cannot honestly promise every logo in a 24,000-channel line-up has seven days behind it.

Why the guide timezone matters

Catch-up plays the programme the guide thinks you selected. If the guide is an hour out, you get the wrong show, a show that starts mid-way, or a slot that looks empty because the title you remember is filed under a different hour. This is the failure mode that makes people say catch-up is “unreliable” when the archive itself is fine.

The guide has to follow your local clock, including awkward offsets. Indian Standard Time is UTC+5:30. Newfoundland is a half-hour zone. A grid locked to UK time will mis-file a 9pm serial for a viewer in Dubai or Toronto. Diaspora households feel this first, because the programme they want aired on a home-country clock and they are browsing on a local one. The Indians abroad and Canada coverage notes both call this out for live listings. The same offset error ruins catch-up, because catch-up is just the guide pointing backwards.

Check two things on day one. The player timezone matches the household, not the country the channel comes from. A programme you watched live yesterday appears under the time you remember. If live playback is correct and the past slot is one hour early, fix the guide clock before you blame the archive.

When catch-up does not play

Separate these before you reinstall anything. They look the same on screen and they are not.

• No past titles at all. You are probably on M3U, or the player has EPG disabled. Switch to Xtream Codes and reload the guide.
• Titles exist, playback joins the live channel. The player is ignoring the archive URL and opening the live edge. Update the player, or try TiviMate or IPTV Smarters and open the same slot. If a second player plays the past and the first joins live, the account is fine.
• One channel has no past, neighbours do. That feed is live-only. Catch-up is per channel. Message support with the channel name if you believe it should be archived. Do not factory-reset the stick.
• The slot stutters the same way live TV stutters. That is bandwidth or Wi-Fi, not a missing recording. A catch-up hour at 1080p needs the same sustained speed as live. Use the buffering guide and the 4K speed numbers if you are trying to replay in 4K on a weak evening line.
• The programme is older than seven days. It is gone from catch-up. Look in on-demand if it was a film or a series episode. Otherwise it is not on the account.

Support can help faster if you send the channel name, the programme title, the date you think it aired, the player app, and whether live TV on that same channel works right now. “Catch-up doesn’t work” describes all five faults above.

What to prove on the trial

The free trial includes catch-up on the same terms as a paid plan. Use part of the 24 hours on the archive, not only on live sport.

1. Play one programme from yesterday and one from three days ago on a channel you know.
2. Confirm you started at the beginning, not at the live edge.
3. Seek forward a few minutes. A guide that cannot seek is a thin player, not a thin archive.
4. Open the same past programme on a second device with the same login. Catch-up is account-side. It should not depend on which stick recorded it, because no stick recorded it.
5. Try one channel you suspect might be live-only, so you learn the limit before you cancel a PVR.

Catch-up does not change the price. It is on the one-month, six-month and twelve-month plans alike. Compare plans on pricing for term length, not for a “catch-up tier” — there is not one.

When a local recording still helps

Catch-up replaces the forgotten recording inside seven days. It does not replace a keeper copy. Record locally if you need any of these:

• A programme you will still want after the window closes.
• A feed you have already confirmed is live-only.
• Offline playback on a journey with no decent connection. Catch-up streams. It does not download the week onto the device.
• A start-time you do not trust because the guide offset is still wrong and you want the file from the live edge while you fix it.

Recording needs a player that supports it and storage that stays attached. That is why most households should not buy a hard drive on day one. Prove the seven-day guide first. Add local recording only for the programmes the window will not hold.

Short answers on window length, M3U, timezone and “catch-up not working” are in the catch-up FAQ. Use that when you want a direct quote. Use this page when you need the order of checks. When you are ready to see yesterday in the real guide, start the trial and scroll backwards before you scroll forwards.