MAG & Formuler boxes
Dedicated set-top boxes use a portal instead of an app. Slightly more work up front, and then nothing ever changes.
Five steps
Find the MAC address
System Settings → System Information. It starts 00:1A:79 on MAG boxes.
Send it to us
Reply to your welcome email. We register the box against your subscription and build the portal.
Enter the portal URL
Settings → System Settings → Servers → Portals. Put our address in Portal 1 URL and leave Portal 2 blank.
Restart the box
A full power cycle, not a menu exit. The portal only loads on boot.
Pick your video mode
Set output to match your TV — 1080p60 for most sets, 2160p for 4K. Auto guesses wrong on older panels.
The full MAG & Formuler boxes walk-through
Set-top boxes of this kind work differently from everything else on this list, and that single difference accounts for nearly every failed setup. They do not want a username and password. They want a portal address, and they want it in a menu that sits several levels down.
A portal, not a login
Most devices take three pieces of information: a server, a username and a password. These boxes take one: a single portal URL. If you have been given credentials and are looking for somewhere to type them, you are looking for a field that does not exist on this hardware.
| Streaming sticks and TVs | MAG-style boxes | |
|---|---|---|
| What you enter | Server, username, password | One portal address |
| Where | Inside the player app | System settings, under Portals |
| Tied to | Your account | The box's MAC address |
| After entering | List loads | Requires a reboot |
Because the portal is bound to the box's MAC address, we need that address before we can enable the line. It is printed on a sticker underneath the box and shown in the on-screen system information. Read it from the sticker if you can — it is easier to transcribe correctly than off a television across the room.
Finding the Portals screen
- From the main menu, open Settings, then System Settings.
- Open Servers, then Portals. It is normally the second or third item.
- Give Portal 1 any name you like. This is a local label and nothing depends on it.
- Paste the portal address into the URL field and leave every other field empty.
- Save, exit all the way out, then restart the box.
What you should see afterwards
On restart the box should load a channel list from the portal rather than its own home screen. If it returns to the standard menu, the address did not take. If it hangs on a loading screen, the address was accepted but is not answering — a different problem with a different cause.
| Symptom | Usual cause |
|---|---|
| Straight back to the local menu | Portal address saved with a typo, or not saved at all |
| Loading screen forever | MAC address not yet enabled on our side |
| Portal loads, channels dead | Box clock wrong, which invalidates the session |
| Worked yesterday, not today | Subscription lapsed, or the box was factory reset |
The clock is worth checking specifically. These boxes lose the time after a power cut, and an incorrect clock breaks the session in a way that looks exactly like an expired subscription. Set the time zone to automatic and reboot before reporting anything.
Worth knowing before you commit
This hardware is stable and long-lived, which is why it remains popular in living rooms that are set up once and left alone. The trade-offs are that the interface is dated, there is no app ecosystem to speak of, and moving to a new box means having the MAC address changed rather than simply signing in somewhere else.
If you want something you can move between rooms and reconfigure yourself, a streaming stick is the easier life. If the box is already there and working, there is no reason to replace it.
If it still will not play
Work through the buffering guide before contacting us. If every channel fails on every device, that is worth reporting rather than troubleshooting further.