Where the guide comes from
The programme guide is separate data from the channel list, and it usually comes from a different address.
What the app tries, in order
Section titled “What the app tries, in order”- The playlist’s own guide. An Xtream account publishes one at
xmltv.phpwith your credentials; the app builds that address itself. Settings → EPG & Guide → Guide from my playlist turns it on and off, and EPG source at the top of the same screen shows what it resolved to, Auto · host (Xtream). - The EPG URL you typed when adding an M3U playlist.
- Extra EPG sources you added by hand, any number of them. See Adding your own XMLTV.
With several playlists open, every playlist keeps its own sources and is refreshed on its own schedule. A channel is only matched against data its own playlist is entitled to.
How a channel is matched to a programme
Section titled “How a channel is matched to a programme”Playlist names are almost never equal to guide ids, so both sides are normalised before they are
compared: country prefixes go, quality tags like HD, FHD, 4K, RAW go, accents fold, and only
what is left is compared.
Two rules matter when you are wondering why something did or did not match:
- When one name could mean two channels, the app refuses to guess. An empty guide on one channel is better than the wrong programme on it.
- A match you made by hand is never overwritten by a later refresh.
Auto-match channels to EPG in Settings runs the matcher over everything at once and reports Matched N of M channels, All channels already have EPG, or Auto-match failed.
Keeping it current
Section titled “Keeping it current”| Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| Keep the guide up to date | Re-downloads only when the source changed or the guide is running out, not on a fixed clock |
| Update on Wi-Fi only | A full guide can be hundreds of megabytes. Update all always works, mobile data or not |
| Update all | Fetches everything due, immediately |
| Keep the guide for | 1, 2, 3 or 7 days. Default 7 |
Keep the guide for is about disk, not about how much you can see: a channel with a catch-up archive keeps as many days as the provider says it archives, regardless of this setting, because otherwise the archive would have nothing to show.
This setting stays on the device, a cheap television with 8 GB of storage and a phone have no business sharing it.
Time offset
Section titled “Time offset”EPG time offset shifts every programme by up to ±3 hours in half-hour steps. Some providers publish their guide in a timezone that is not yours and not UTC either; this is the fix, and it syncs to your other devices.
When there is nothing
Section titled “When there is nothing”See The guide stays empty. The usual answer is that the guide is still downloading, or that the playlist has no guide address at all.