What is an EPG?

How EPG data works

Guide data usually travels as XMLTV, an XML format that lists channels and their programmes with precise start and stop times. An IPTV provider either publishes an XMLTV URL alongside your M3U playlist or serves guide data through the Xtream API — same schedule, different pipe.

XMLTV predates IPTV: the same files feed home-recording setups and media centres, which is why nearly every guide tool can read them.

The matching is the fiddly part. Each channel in a playlist carries a guide identifier — the tvg-id tag — and the guide file uses the same ids to say which programmes belong to which channel. When a guide looks empty for a channel that’s clearly broadcasting, a missing or mismatched tvg-id is the usual culprit. Times are timezone-sensitive too, which is why a guide can look shifted by exactly an hour.

Guide files go stale by design — they describe a schedule — so players re-fetch them on a cycle to keep "now and next" actually now and next.

Guides differ mostly in depth and hygiene: some providers ship seven days of programme data with full descriptions, others barely manage tonight. That’s a property of the subscription, not the player — a guide can only show the schedule it was given.

In Twiga

Twiga loads your provider’s EPG and builds the Guide from it, lined up against your channels via their tvg-ids.

In the player, the Guide lives in Browse next to the channel List — the List is what you can watch, the Guide is what’s on it. Set your region and your local channels sort to the front, so the part of the grid you actually read is at the top.

One deliberate detail: the guide fetch goes over Tor. A request for a provider’s guide file reveals which provider you use, so Twiga treats it as sensitive metadata and routes it through an anonymity network where it can’t be tied back to you. Streams and playlist refreshes take the VPN exits instead — Tor is too slow for video, and fine for a schedule.