Adding EPG Electronic programming guides

Add an EPG to a TV channel to allow your end users to browse the channel's listings and select content for viewing or recording.

The MinistraPRO backend retrieves the EPG from a linked XMLTV file delivered over the internet. Only published EPG Electronic programming guide sources are parsed.

Information

From backend version 6.32.0, MinistraPRO can extract season and episode information from an XMLTV file and display it in the EPG, for example, The Simpsons S2 E2.

Using this data, MinistraPRO can automatically schedule recordings for all episodes of a season. Note that the recording schedule must be created by the end user in the MinistraPRO application.

To enable this functionality, the XMLTV file includes the following elements:

<episode-num> system="onscreen">SxEy</episode-num>: Where x is the season number, and y is the episode number, for example, S32 E2.
Spaces are optional, and the format is not case-sensitive.
<title>: The name of the series.
<sub-title>: The name of the episode (Optional).

This format is shown in the following example:

Copy

<programme start="20250213010000 +0000" stop="20250213013000 +0000" channel="aande.ca">
    <title lang="en">The Simpsons</title>
    <sub-title lang="en">A Springfield Summer Christmas</sub-title>
    <episode-num system="onscreen">S32 E2</episode-num>
</programme>

The xmltv_ns format for season and episode numbering is not currently supported.

For more information about the XMLTV file format, refer to https://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XMLTVFormat

To add an EPG Electronic programming guide

Navigate to IPTV channels > EPG.
Select + Add EPG.
Add the relevant data for the EPG Electronic programming guide.

Get detailed information on the available settings
Select Save.

Your EPG Electronic programming guide is now displayed in the list of EPG Electronic programming guides on IPTV channels > EPG.
If you set the initial state to Published, select Update EPG.

MinistraPRO creates a task for each published EPG entry in the list to check if the EPG information in the MinistraPRO database is different from the EPG source.

EPG details

Setting	Description
URL	The URL of the EPG Electronic programming guide source file. For example, http://www.example.com/export/export.xml.
Prefix	The unique identifier for this EPG source file. If the same XMLTV ID is used in multiple EPG files, this prefix is used in the channel settings to specify which EPG source contains the correct XMLTV ID. Read about IPTV channels For example, you have three channels, Eurosport, HBO, and TLC. You do not have an EPG Electronic programming guide source that contains EPG Electronic programming guides all of the channels, but you find two sources that cover all three channels. EPG Electronic programming guide source 1 with the prefix 1_ contains: `channel_id = "HBO"` `channel_id = "Eurosport"` EPG Electronic programming guide source 2 with the prefix 2_ contains: `channel_id = "TLC"` `channel_id = "Eurosport"` The `channel_id` for Eurosport is the same in both sources. With the prefix, you can specify from which source to take the EPG for the Eurosport channel. You have decided to take the EPG from the second source for Eurosport. The XMLTV ID for these three channels would be written as follows: `HBO` `TLC` `2_Eurosport`
Initial state	Select whether the EPG Electronic programming guide is used immediately. Information Only published EPG sources are checked for updates.
Languages by priority	If you are using a multi-language EPG Electronic programming guide, select which languages to make available to the MinistraPRO end-user applications. You can select up to five languages. The MinistraPRO backend parses the EPG Electronic programming guide for the first specified language and, if that language is not present, it parses for the next language in the list. Information MinistraPRO end-user application users can view the EPG Electronic programming guide only in the languages you select here, regardless of the languages that are included in the EPG Electronic programming guide file. For example, if you provide the link to a multi-language EPG Electronic programming guide and you select only English, then users only see EPG Electronic programming guide information in English.