Set up an XMLTV guide for your IPTV playlist.

When you add a playlist, the address screen has an optional XMLTV URL field. To add or change it later, open Settings, Sources, Providers, choose the playlist, then Edit. The field is EPG URL, under Electronic Program Guide.

The URL has to start with http:// or https://. Plain .xml and compressed .xml.gz files both work, since Spectati reads the file’s contents rather than its extension, and a gzip file made of several combined parts imports completely.

While you type an Xtream server, username and password, Spectati fills the guide field with the provider’s own xmltv.php address, and uses that address even if the field is left empty. Replace it only if your provider gives you a different guide.

Each playlist channel is matched to the guide by, in order, its channel-id, its tvg-id, its tvg-name and finally its name. Case and punctuation are ignored, and so are quality markers such as HD, SD and 4K, so every feed of one channel shares the same programmes.

A channel without a tvg-id is also looked up by the display-name entries in the XMLTV file. A channel listed in several categories shows the same programmes in each.

When a provider’s playlist and guide use different IDs for the same channel, the match fails and the row stays empty. Mapping it by hand takes one line.

1. 01

   Open the source

   In Settings, open Sources, then Providers, and choose the playlist.
2. 02

   Check what matched

   Analyze Guide and the Guide status row show how much of the lineup found programmes.
3. 03

   Map the stragglers by hand

   Choose Edit and add lines under Channel mappings, one per channel, in the form guide-id = channel-id or guide-id = channel name. For example, bbc-one = BBC One HD. The guide ID is the id on the channel’s <channel> element in the XMLTV file.

Spectati applies the offset written on each programme, such as +0100, +01:00 or Z for UTC. A time with no offset is read in the device’s own time zone, and there is no manual shift setting, so a guide that runs consistently early or late is usually a file that leaves its offsets out.

The guide refreshes on its own every hour, and again whenever the source refreshes on the schedule set in Library Updates.

Play From Start appears on a programme in the guide when the channel has an archive: Xtream marks it with tv_archive, and M3U playlists with catchup, catchup-source, catchup-days or timeshift attributes. The programme has to have started already and still be inside the provider’s archive window. Play From Start comes with a subscription.