Silver
Live TV and the on-demand library in Full HD on one screen.
AED149per year
Was AED 229
- 40,000 live channels with EPG
- 90,000 films & series on demand
- Full HD streams
- 1 device
The serial problem
Why the mega serial needs catch-up in the Gulf
A Tamil mega serial runs five or six evenings a week, often for years, and ends nearly every episode on a cliffhanger. Back home the prime-time block runs from around 6pm to 10:30pm. India sits an hour and a half ahead of the UAE, so that block begins at 4:30pm here and the 7pm episode starts at 5:30pm, when much of Dubai is queuing on Sheikh Zayed Road.
Watching Tamil TV channels live for every episode is unrealistic for most working people in the Emirates. That is why catch-up matters more to Tamil households than picture quality. Our yearly and lifetime plans all carry the Tamil TV channels; Gold 4K adds three days of catch-up and Platinum a full week.
Tamil TV channels live or on catch-up: what households choose
This is how we see families split their evening. Times are UAE time; the broadcast slot in India is an hour and a half later on the local clock.
| Programme | When it airs here | Live or catch-up? |
|---|---|---|
| Early evening serials | From about 4:30pm | Catch-up: most people are still at work |
| Tamil Nadu evening news | Around 5:30pm to 7:30pm | Live on the commute, on the phone |
| Prime-time serials | Roughly 6pm to 9pm | Mixed: live for the favourite, catch-up for the rest |
| Weekend film premieres | Afternoon and evening | Live with the family |
| Sri Lankan Tamil news | Same clock as India | Live if available, ask us first |
Serials
Following three serials without losing the thread
Most Tamil viewers follow more than one serial, and the serials do not wait. The trick is to treat the TV guide like a recording schedule. Open a channel, step back through its past listings, and every episode from the last three days on Gold 4K, or seven on Platinum, plays from the beginning. Weekend binges of the week’s episodes are common, and the cliffhangers lose none of their bite.
A few habits make it easier. Pin the Tamil TV channels that carry your serials as favourites so they sit at the top. Refresh the guide once a day, because catch-up uses the guide data to find each episode. And if a channel has no listings, it usually means the source publishes none, not that the stream is broken; that channel can still be watched live.
Categories
What the Tamil TV channels cover
News and debate
Tamil Nadu politics, Chennai stories and evening debates, plus Sri Lankan Tamil news on some sources.
Mega serials
Long-running family sagas, five or six nights a week.
Cinema
Kollywood film channels running hits and comedies around the clock.
Music
Film songs, devotional music and countdown shows.
Devotional
Temple programmes, talks and festival-morning coverage.
Sri Lankan Tamil viewers
Sri Lankan Tamil families in the Emirates
Not every Tamil household in the UAE looks to Chennai. Families from Jaffna, Batticaloa, Trincomalee and Colombo follow Sri Lankan Tamil news and talk programmes as closely as Indian viewers follow Tamil Nadu politics, while still sharing the same serials, films and film music.
Sri Lanka keeps the same clock as India, GMT+5:30, so its evening bulletins also arrive an hour and a half early on your clock, and the same catch-up advice applies. Some sources in our South Asian section carry Sri Lankan Tamil programming, but availability varies and changes more often than for Indian Tamil TV channels. Tell us which programmes you watch and we check before you pay, rather than letting you find out after.
For many Sri Lankan Tamil families, cricket is the other half of the evening. The sport categories carry it as the calendar brings it, and our guide to watching cricket from the Gulf covers the timings.
Festivals
Pongal, Deepavali and Tamil New Year
Festival days are when the whole family wants the screen at once. Pongal brings film premieres and long variety programmes, Deepavali weekend is packed with special shows, and Tamil New Year in April has its own line-up. Many families watch Tamil TV channels live in the morning before visiting friends, then catch the evening special on replay once the guests have left.
A second screen ends the argument between the film premiere and the variety show. A two-screen extra covers two rooms for a year; Platinum’s four screens suit a house with visiting relatives.
Devotional
Temple festivals and devotional mornings
Tamil devotional television follows the temple calendar closely. Thaipusam processions, the lighting of the Karthigai Deepam on the hill at Tiruvannamalai, Vaikunta Ekadasi and the big car festivals are broadcast live, often from very early in the morning Indian time. Thanks to the ninety-minute gap, a 6am ceremony in Tamil Nadu is on your screen at 4:30am, which suits the devout early riser and nobody else.
That is where catch-up proves its worth again. On Gold 4K and Platinum, the morning’s coverage stays available for days, so a family can watch the procession together after work. On ordinary days the devotional Tamil TV channels carry suprabhatam, bhajans, temple talks and Carnatic music, and many parents in the Emirates like to watch Tamil TV channels live in the background while getting the children ready for school.
Cinema
Kollywood on demand
When nothing on the film channels appeals, the Tamil shelf in the on-demand section takes over, stretching from MGR and Sivaji Ganesan classics to newer titles that have finished their cinema run. Silver’s library is the smallest; Gold 4K counts some 200,000 films and episodes across all languages.
Many Tamil films carry English subtitles, which helps when friends from other communities join a film night. We cannot promise any specific title, but the shelf is large enough that a weekend rarely runs short.
The music and comedy Tamil TV channels are the quiet favourites. Film-song countdowns, old hits from the Ilaiyaraaja years and back-to-back comedy tracks from famous films fill the kitchen and the car on a Friday morning, and they suit a phone just as well as the lounge TV. Because nobody needs to follow a plot, these are the channels most people leave on while cooking or ironing for the week.
Getting started
Your next step
Setup is the same as for any other channel group, so this page skips it: once you have paid, the email with your login is what you need, and any common player app will open the Tamil TV channels. If you are new to players, our guide to IPTV Smarters Pro shows where each detail goes.
Once you are in, search the word Tamil in the live section to bring up the Tamil TV channels live in one list, then star the serial and news channels you use most. If there are two or three channels you cannot do without, message us on WhatsApp first and we will tell you plainly whether they are in today’s line-up, with or without guide data and catch-up. The rest of India’s languages, and the Pakistani channels, are covered in our guide to desi TV on any box.
IPTV UAE support desk · Written and kept current by the team that answers our WhatsApp line every day.