A VPN-only IPTV stack sounds expensive. Mine runs about twenty dollars a month for the VPN plus the IPTV plan, and I do not share the account. Here is the layout I settled on after a year of tinkering, with the costs called out so you can match it to your own numbers.
The router runs the VPN at all times. The TV sticks, the laptops, and the consoles all join the network behind it, so every device inherits the exit IP without per-app fiddling. That matters for an IPTV provider that ties streams to a registered country, because without the VPN the streams cut out on travel days and with it the streams stay open regardless of which hotel Wi-Fi I am on. The router I use is a small GL.iNet box I bought used for forty dollars. It sips power and survives a brownout.
For the IPTV plan I needed three things: a screen count that matched the household, 4K included on every tier, and a refund window long enough to test on my own gear. I read through the [iptv premium pricing and plans](https://iptvpremium.tv/tarifs) page before paying, which let me skip the tier-ups that show up at checkout on cheaper services. The one-screen plan looked tempting and would have failed on day one. Two adults and a teenager each watch something different at the same time, so I picked a three-screen tier. The VOD library matters more than I expected, and so does 4K on the main TV.
The other piece is the player app. The default player worked, but a third-party app with hardware decoding dropped the CPU on my older Firestick from ninety percent to under forty on the same channel. Same feed, less heat, no fan noise. For ten dollars of annual subscription it is a no-brainer.
A week in I had one bug worth fixing: when the VPN reconnects, the IPTV app keeps its old session cookie and stops loading the playlist. Killing the app once after a VPN swap is the clean fix. After that it works for weeks at a time. The setup has held up for a year now and the only thing I have changed is the player app.