Setup guides
Getting the TV guide working
A programme guide needs two things to line up: a source that has data, and channel identifiers that match your playlist. Nearly every empty guide is the second problem, not the first.
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The TV guide is the grid of what is on now and next. InoxTV does not produce that data. It fetches it from a source you configure, or from the API your provider exposes, then matches each programme to a channel in your playlist. Both halves have to work. A source with perfect data still shows an empty guide if the identifiers do not line up.
Check whether you need a source at all
Before configuring anything, open the guide. If you connected with Xtream Codes, the panel usually serves guide data through the same API and the grid is already populated. Adding a second source on top of that gives you nothing and doubles what has to be downloaded.
If you connected with an M3U playlist, you almost certainly need a source: the file format carries channels, not schedules. Stalker portals sit between the two, some serve a full week, some serve nothing.
Add the source
Open Settings › TV guide. The screen you want is TV guide sources, which lists the sources the app knows about and is where you add another.
What you add is an XMLTV address, a URL serving an XML file of programme data, often compressed. Where it comes from matters more than most people expect, so in order of preference:
- Your provider's own EPG URL. Best by a wide margin. It was generated alongside your playlist, so the channel identifiers match by construction. Ask for it if you were not sent one.
- A public XMLTV source for your country or region. Workable, and often good for national channels. Expect gaps: its identifiers were not built for your playlist.
- Anything else. A source covering a different region will download and parse perfectly and then match almost nothing.
You can add more than one source. That is worth doing when one covers your national channels well and another covers a category it lacks.
Attach it to your playlist
This is the step that gets missed. A source that exists is not a source that is being used.
Open Settings › Playlists, select your playlist, and look at EPG source. Until you set it, it reads No source and the guide for that playlist's channels stays empty no matter what you added. Set it to the source you just configured.
With several playlists, each one carries its own EPG source. Two playlists from two providers generally need two sources; pointing both at one source is how you end up with a guide that works for half your channels.
Set the update schedule
Back in Settings › TV guide, four settings control when and how much:
| Setting | Default | What to do with it |
|---|---|---|
| Update interval, hours | 24 | Leave at 24 for most sources. Drop to 12 if your source only publishes two or three days ahead. Lower than that mostly re‑downloads the same file. |
| Past days to keep EPG | 7 | How many days of aired listings survive instead of being deleted. It is the main consumer of storage, and the grid only scrolls back seven days, so 7 is the highest value that buys you anything. Lower it first on a device short of space. |
| Update on app start | — | Convenient, but it puts a download and a parse in front of your first channel. Leave it off on a slow TV box and let the interval handle it. |
| Update on playlists change | — | Worth having on. When you add or refresh a playlist, new channels get listings immediately instead of at the next scheduled update. |
Fetch it now and read the result
Choose Update TV guide to run an update immediately. Progress appears as Updating TV guide 1/2: playlist name, one pass per playlist that has a source attached.
The message at the end is diagnostic, so it is worth waiting for. On success the screen shows TV guide updated on with a timestamp. The failures each mean something specific:
| Message | What it means |
|---|---|
| Unable to reach the TV guide server. | The address did not answer. A typo, a source that has moved, or no working connection. |
| No TV guide data available for… | The source answered and had nothing for that playlist. Wrong source for these channels, or a source that has genuinely gone empty. |
| Not enough memory to load the TV guide. | The file is bigger than this device can parse. Reduce Past days to keep EPG, or use a source scoped to your region rather than a global one. |
| TV guide for… is too large for this device. | The same problem, named for the playlist it happened on. Common on 1 GB TV boxes with a worldwide EPG file. |
| TV guide update timed out for… | The source is answering too slowly. Often temporary; if it persists, the source is overloaded. |
| TV guide update failed. | The generic case — usually a file the parser could not read. Confirm the address serves XMLTV and not an HTML page. |
When the update succeeds and the guide is still empty
This is the common case, and it is a matching problem. Programmes are attached to channels by identifier, the tvg-id in your playlist against the channel ID in the EPG file. Two channels can carry the same name to the letter and still not match, because their identifiers differ.
The practical consequences:
- A guide that is empty for everything usually means EPG source is still No source, or the source covers a different region entirely.
- A guide that works for some channels means the source is fine and its coverage of your particular channel set is partial. Only a better‑matched source improves that; app settings cannot.
- A guide that is right but offset by an hour or two means the source publishes in a different timezone than it declares. Nothing in the app can correct that, and another source is the only fix.
Your provider's own EPG URL avoids all three, which is why it is worth asking for even if you already have something that half works.
Clearing and starting again
Clear TV guide discards all stored programme data. It does not remove your sources or unset EPG source; it empties the cache, then the next update refills it. Use it after switching sources, when you would otherwise have two sets of listings overlapping, or when the guide shows data you know is stale. Clearing and updating is also worth trying once when the guide looks corrupted rather than empty; a partial file from an interrupted download can survive otherwise.
If the guide is still not working after all this, no TV guide data goes through the remaining causes, including the device‑specific ones.