If you use one or more IPTV service and you get annoyed by missing information in the guide (EPG), then this post is for you. I will attempt to explain exactly how EPG’s work and what you can do to solve the issue of missing information. Please be advised that this information is all to the best of my knowledge and I apologize in advance if any small part of it is slightly inaccurate.
Firstly, EPG stands for Electronic Program Guide (which you probably know already if you opened this post). When you sign up for an IPTV service, you are given access to a playlist of channels (usually in m3u format) and a matching EPG (usually in XMLTV format). Within both of these files for each channel is a hidden channel number (TVG-ID), which is not the same as the name of the channel that you can see. This number is not standardized, meaning each provider assigns their own corresponding numbers to the channel in the playlist and the guide. When you use an IPTV player (such as Tivimate or Sparkle), it matches the guide information to the correct channels by looking for the hidden TVG-ID numbers to see if they match. If the TVG-ID is missing or does not match, no information will populate in the guide. To fix this, you have 3 options.
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The easiest thing to do is contact the support team for your IPTV provider and tell them the guide information is missing for a certain channel. If you have a good provider, they should be able to pull the guide information from whatever source they use and assign the matching TVG-ID. Then all you have to do is refresh your playlist and EPG. Keep in mind that your IPTV provider may not always be able to source the guide information for really obscure channels. And there will definitely be no guide information provided for things such as 24/7 channels.
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You can use multiple EPG sources per playlist. In Tivimate, you can go into your settings and add as many EPG sources as you want. After you add the EPG sources, you need to go into your playlist settings and “assign” which EPGs you want to use for that playlist. The EPG from your IPTV provider must ALWAYS be your primary EPG, because again, it will automatically match the channels by their TVG-ID. The rest of the channels have to be manually assigned to a different EPG (if that EPG even contains the channel that you were missing). To do this, you go into the guide in Tivimate, long press on a channel, then go down to “assign EPG”. You can also search all your EPG’s for the channel name. Obviously, this can be a time consuming process if you have a lot of channels missing guide information. And if you are randomly finding free EPG sources on the internet, you have no idea if the channel you are looking for is included in that EPG or not. It could be entirely trial and error and you may end up with a ton of EPGs.
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You can create your own EPG for your playlists. There are m3u editors like IPTVBoss, m3u4u, IPTVEditor, epg.best, etc. They work by uploading both your playlist and EPG information so that you can create your own customized EPG. If the service has the missing channel information that you seek, you can manually assign it to the channel in your EPG and it will use the corresponding TVG-ID from your playlist so that Tivimate can link it. These EPG editors usually have a subscription cost because the EPG you are creating is stored in the cloud, allowing you to simply input the new XMLTV address in Tivimate or whatever other player you are using. If you didn’t have this link, you would have to download a file and manually transfer it to your streaming device to load it in Tivimate. And you would have to update this file every single time a new channel is added to your IPTV service that is missing guide information. With the cloud service, you just login with your account and update your EPG, then refresh in Tivimate and it should be there. One big benefit of using an EPG editor is how it handles instances of duplicate TVG-IDs when you are using more than one service. If this occurs, the service acts as an intermediary by creating a “new” playlist with altered TVG-IDs. So, the same channel in two different playlists will both have the same TVG-ID which is then matched with your new EPG. Obviously, any changes to the playlist on the provider side when they add, delete, or edit channels will result in you having to manually update your custom EPG.
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