Trex IPTV
Count screens, not people

Three households, counted out loud

Everything else on this site describes a method. This page runs that method three times on households that look like most of the ones who write in. Find the one nearest to yours, then change the numbers rather than the approach.

A couple with one television

Two people, one set, watched together almost every evening. The overlap count is one, because there is never a second screen running. They both follow the same football, so a single line-up covers both of them, and nothing in the house is likely to change for years. This household buys one line on the longest term they are comfortable with and puts the end date in a shared calendar, and that is the entire decision. The one thing worth checking first is whether either of them has a channel they would miss, because that is the only question that can make a second line-up necessary.

Five people, three screens at eight o'clock

Two parents, three teenagers, four televisions and a pile of handsets. The walk-round lists nine screens, but the honest overlap on a Tuesday evening is three: the living room, one bedroom, and whoever is in the kitchen with a tablet. That is three lines, at three times the cost of one, and no amount of planning reduces it. What planning does change is the line-ups: the living room takes Arabic & MENA for the parents, the bedroom takes Europe & UK for the football, and the roaming tablet takes whichever of the two its owner actually uses. One person holds all three sets of details, and the household is told where they are kept.

A shared flat that empties in June

Four tenants, two of them leaving at the end of the academic year, one television in a common room and a lot of laptops. Nobody here should be buying a two-year term for anything. Each tenant who wants their own screen buys their own short term in their own name, so that when two of them leave in June nothing has to be untangled. The common room set can sit on one line paid for between them, provided somebody is named as the person who deals with it. A shared flat is the one household shape where the shortest term is usually the right answer even though it costs more per month.

The checklist all three used

Walk the house and list every screen. Cross off the ones that never run while another is running. Count what is left: that is your number of lines. Give each remaining screen a line-up based on the person who uses it, not on where you live. Choose a term length based on how far ahead the household can honestly see, then multiply the length by the number of lines. Put the end date in a calendar the household reads. Name the person who keeps the details. Seven steps, fifteen minutes, and the order page holds no surprises after it.

Questions

My house does not look like any of these three. What now?

Only the overlap count changes between households. Work out how many screens are genuinely live at the same time on your busiest evening, and the rest of the checklist applies unchanged whether that number is one or six.

What if the count turns out to be wrong after a fortnight?

Undercounting is the easy one to fix: buy a line for the extra screen when you discover it. Overcounting is why a first purchase on a short term is sensible for a household that has not lived with this before.

Worked out what you need?

Once you know how many screens and which line-ups, setting it up takes about a minute.

Set mine up Ask first