How many streams you can watch at once

Every portal decides how many streams it will serve you at the same time. One is common, two and three are usual, more is a paid option some sources sell. The number is set by the source, it arrives with the sign-in handshake, and nothing in My TV Player can change it.

This is the limit behind most “it worked a minute ago” reports, because it is invisible until the moment you cross it.

Where you can see the number

A source that publishes its limit shows it on its row in Sources, as a small badge reading something like 3 connections. On a console the same figure appears on the source screen, and the connection test in first-time setup reports it as Streams at once. A source that does not publish a limit shows no badge, which means the app has not been told, not that the limit is absent.

What uses one up

A connection is in use whenever your device is asking that source for a stream:

• Each channel playing, including every tile of a multiview layout.
• A recording in progress, which keeps its own connection for as long as it runs.
• Any other device on your account playing from the same source.
• Anyone else using the same source credentials, including people outside your household if the credentials have been shared.
• Briefly, an automatic source change, which needs one spare connection to open the replacement before it drops the old one.

That last one surprises people: a source with a limit of one can play perfectly and still fail to recover from a drop, because recovering needs two connections for a moment.

What the app does about it

It counts before it commits. When you build a multiview layout the app tracks what each source is already serving and stops offering channels from a source that has run out, rather than letting you pick a tile that would load half way and die. When there is genuinely no room anywhere in a layout, it says so with MTP-2600 instead of failing silently.

Playback failures for the same reason carry MTP-1230, and an automatic source change refused for want of a spare connection carries MTP-2415. All three name the source as the cause, because that is where the limit lives.

What to do about it

Stop something else first: close a tile, end a recording, or check whether another device in the house is playing. If you have more than one source, spreading a layout across them gets you more tiles at once, since each source counts separately.

If the limit itself is the problem, the only place it can be raised is the source, and asking them is the whole of the fix. We cannot lift it, negotiate it, or work around it, and an app that quietly opened more connections than a source allows would get your access to that source suspended.

Why this is not a plan limit

Your plan decides how many devices you can sign in and how many multiview tiles the app will draw. Your source decides how many streams will actually arrive. Those two numbers are unrelated, and upgrading your plan does not move the second one. What your plan includes covers the part we do control.