M3U vs M3U8: What's the Difference?

Short answer: .m3u and .m3u8 are the same playlist format. The "8" simply signals that the file uses UTF-8 text encoding, which supports non-English characters (accented letters, non-Latin scripts) correctly. Functionally, a player treats them identically.

Where each one tends to appear

• .m3u files usually contain full IPTV channel lists — hundreds or thousands of channels in one file.
• .m3u8 URLs more often point at a single HLS live stream's manifest — the technical file a video player reads to fetch quality levels and segments.

That's a convention, not a rule — you'll see plenty of exceptions. A good player, like this one, detects which situation it's looking at automatically rather than relying on the file extension alone.