French IPTV UK: Channels and Value Compared

Verdict: VIPSATV is the first French IPTV service we would put on a UK household’s shortlist, on price at the short terms and on the size of its published catalogue. RoomateTV is the better buy if you are ready to commit for six months or more.

That verdict rests on published plan data, not on anything we can tell you about the French section itself. None of the four services we compare publishes a per-language channel list, so we cannot tell you how many French channels each one carries, which ones, or how they look on your screen. What we can do is set out the figures that are published, show you how to check the French side yourself inside the 24-hour trial, and do the arithmetic on which term is worth paying for.

French IPTV in the UK: what the plan pages publish

Four services, four sets of numbers. The channel and on-demand figures are the totals each service states for its whole catalogue, all languages together. They tell you the size of the library, not the size of the French part of it.

A few things follow from the table. Each service lists one price per term, with no separate introductory rate on the plan page, so the figure you see is also the renewal figure. All four sell multi-connection plans. All four list the same device range: Firestick and Fire TV, Android, Apple TV, iOS, Smart TVs, MAG boxes, PC and Mac. And all four recommend 25 Mbps for 4K, which is a fair guide to whether your broadband is up to it, though it says nothing about how any particular French feed is delivered.

A bigger catalogue is not the same thing as more French. A service with 57,000 entries could carry a deep French section or a thin one, and the headline number cannot tell you which. That is the trial’s job.

Why the French section is yours to judge

It would be easy to write that every service carries a full French line-up with news, films, children’s programmes and sport. We have no list from any of the four that would let us say so, and a comparison page that claims it anyway is guessing. So we will not.

Treat the trial as the channel list instead. Each of the four offers 24 hours without a card, which is long enough to work through a French evening properly if you plan it. VIPSATV asks for an email address to start; RoomateTV starts from the checkout with no account step. Our guide to the free trials explains how each one begins and what a day can and cannot show you.

A French evening inside the 24-hour trial

Start the trial in the late afternoon, so the 24 hours covers an evening, a morning and the next afternoon. Then work through this in order.

1. Find the French group. Open the channel groups in your player and look for the French section. Note roughly how many entries it has and whether they are grouped sensibly or scattered.
2. Open the programmes you would actually watch. Not a random channel: the three or four you would put on every week. If they are missing, the headline count does not matter.
3. Read the guide. Does the electronic programme guide (EPG) show programme names in French, or blank slots and ‘no information’? A guide that fills in makes a language section far easier to live with.
4. Check the times against a clock. France is one hour ahead of the UK all year, because both change their clocks on the same dates. A guide showing French local time on a UK screen puts every listing an hour out. Many player apps have an EPG time offset setting to correct it.
5. Look for catch-up. Where a channel has an archive, player apps usually mark it with an icon or a ‘catch up’ option. Check whether it exists on the French channels you care about and how far back it goes.
6. Watch at your usual hour. Stability and picture are things only your own broadband at your own viewing time can show. Put something on at the hour you normally watch and leave it running.

If a service fails step one or two, the rest is academic. Move on to the next trial.

Cutting the list down to French and English

Tens of thousands of channels is not what a French-speaking household wants to scroll through every evening. All four services provide an account page where the channel list can be trimmed, so your player only shows the groups you keep. For a home that watches in French and English, that could mean keeping the French group, the UK group and very little else.

Trim the list before you load the login into your player, or refresh the playlist afterwards so the player picks up the change. A shorter list means a shorter guide to load and far less scrolling with the remote.

VIPSATV’s account page also lets you name each connection, which helps when one screen is set up for the French side of the family and another for the English side. You can see at a glance which login lives on which device.

Paying for French IPTV: which term makes sense

Once the trial has shown you the French section is worth having, the question is how long to pay for. The per-month figures below are each plan page’s price divided by the number of months.

• 1 month: VIPSATV £11.99, RoomateTV £13.99, Clixwatch £14.99, Streamtion £14.99
• 3 months: VIPSATV £9.66, RoomateTV £10.66, Clixwatch £11.66, Streamtion £12.33
• 6 months: RoomateTV £7.50, VIPSATV £8.00, Clixwatch £9.67, Streamtion £10.17
• 12 months: RoomateTV £5.25, VIPSATV £5.58, Clixwatch £6.75, Streamtion £6.92
• 24 months: RoomateTV £3.75, VIPSATV £3.92, Clixwatch £4.71, Streamtion £4.87

VIPSATV is cheapest at one and three months; RoomateTV is cheapest from six months on; Streamtion is the dearest over the longer terms. The gap between paying monthly and paying yearly is large. Twelve months of VIPSATV bought one at a time comes to £143.88, against £66.99 for the annual plan, a difference of £76.89.

Our advice is dull but sound. Pay for one month after the trial, live with the French section for a while, then move to a longer term if it still earns its place. A 24-month plan is the cheapest per month, but it is two years paid up front on a service you have known for a few weeks. Our monthly against annual comparison runs the same sums across every term.

Our order for a French-speaking home

Ranked on published data, with the same caveat as everything above: the French section is yours to judge in the trial.

1. VIPSATV: the largest published catalogue of the four, 57,000+ channels and 250,000+ on demand, and the lowest price at one and three months. The account page lets you name each connection. Worth a look first if you want to start monthly.
2. RoomateTV: 45,000+ channels, and the cheapest per month from six months on. The trial starts from the checkout with no account step. Worth a look if the French section passes and you plan to commit.
3. Clixwatch: 39,000+ channels and 200,000+ on demand, and cheaper than Streamtion at every term from three months. Worth a trial if the first two miss something you watch.
4. Streamtion: 24,500+ channels, the smallest published catalogue here and the dearest over the long terms. Worth a trial if the others have not suited.

For how the four compare beyond the language question, see our best IPTV services UK ranking. If you are setting up on a Firestick, the Firestick setup guide walks through the install, and the budget options guide looks at price alone.

One last point. Whichever service you pick, the login works in standard player apps as an M3U URL or an Xtream Codes login, so the app you already use for UK channels can usually take it. If the French section passes the trial and the price suits, that is the whole decision.