EPG test

Checks XML/EPG URL accessibility and parse validity, with channel and programme indicators.

What this check examines

HTTP accessibility of the XMLTV/EPG URL, with the same host restrictions as the playlist checks.
XML shape: whether the response parses as XMLTV (channel and programme records) rather than HTML or an error page.
Channel and programme indicators: counts that distinguish a populated guide from an empty-but-valid file.

Reading the verdict

Non-200: the guide URL is down or walled. Fix access before touching player settings.
Not XMLTV-shaped: wrong link — the usual webpage-instead-of-file mistake.
Healthy file, missing guide data in the player: the file is fine, so the fault is attachment or identifier matching. The full order is in M3U EPG not working?
Small channel count, huge programme count (or vice versa): lopsided guides usually mean scoped exports (a few channels, deep schedules) or thin stubs. Match the guide's shape to your playlist before attaching.

What this check cannot tell you

Whether identifiers align with your playlist — tvg-id matching is a separate question this check cannot answer.
Freshness in depth: counts show presence, not whether tonight's programmes are covered. Check a known channel's now/next after attaching.
Player-side refresh behavior — a healthy file with a stale player cache still shows nothing until re-added.

FAQ

How big can the guide be? Fetches cap at 8 MB, which covers typical XMLTV files. Oversized consolidated guides may truncate — prefer scoped guides per region or language.

Compressed guides? Support varies by player, not by this check. If the app rejects gzip, decompress or pick an uncompressed source.

Is the submitted URL stored? No. Checked per request, never published.

Attached but empty right after setup? Wait for the first full download before judging. Guide files run to several megabytes and players fetch them slowly on first attach; navigating away mid-download leaves partial data that looks like failure. Give it a few quiet minutes, then force one manual refresh.

The guide is healthy but outdated. What now? Stale guides (old programmes, no upcoming data) fail the purpose test while passing the format test. Prefer sources with visible refresh cadence — daily for volatile lineups — and re-verify after clock changes, which expose latent offset bugs.

One big guide or several scoped ones? Scoped guides win: per-region or per-language files align identifiers better, download faster, and fail independently. Consolidate only when a single source genuinely covers your whole playlist.

Where to get a guide URL

Your provider first. Provider-issued guides match their own channel identifiers, which removes the entire matching problem. Always ask there before hunting third-party files.
Self-host from community tooling. The iptv-org/epg project documents fetching per-site guides and serving them over HTTP (including a scheduled Docker setup), plus a community guides file. Verified October 2026.
Third-party per-country files. epg.pw publishes standard XMLTV guides (full, lite, and per-country, plain and compressed), verified live October 2026. Open-EPG offers per-country files with per-file freshness labels, but posts its own instability notice during a 2026 rebuild, so check their freshness labels and prefer their stable files. Prefer any source that shows update timestamps over ones that do not.

Method and limits

Methodology: server-side fetch with a 15-second timeout and 8 MB cap, http(s) only with private hosts blocked, rate-limited to 10 checks per minute per client. Counts sample programme records rather than parsing multi-gigabyte histories.

Sources

iptv-org/epg repository: community XMLTV tooling behind typical guide sources. Verified October 2026.
EPG troubleshooting guide for everything past file health.