Features
Electronic Program Guide (EPG): What It Is and How It Works
An EPG is metadata, not video. Guide gaps are almost always a channel-ID matching problem rather than an app fault.
Where guide data comes from
Video and schedule data travel separately. The player receives a stream; the guide receives an XML document listing programmes with start and end timestamps against a channel identifier. The app joins the two on that identifier.
The three things that break a guide
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Guide empty for some channels only | Channel ID in the playlist does not match any ID in the EPG feed | Correct the tvg-id values in the playlist, or use a matching EPG source |
| Everything shifted by a fixed number of hours | Time-zone offset mismatch between feed and device | Set the app's EPG time-zone or offset setting to match the feed |
| Guide loads then disappears | Cached guide expired and the refresh failed | Force a guide refresh; check the feed URL is still reachable |
Worth knowing: A guide that shows the right times but the wrong programmes is a time-zone offset issue; a guide that is blank for some channels is a channel-ID mismatch.