EPG checker
Check an XMLTV guide for gaps, overlaps and the timezone bugs that shift it by hours.
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Enter a xmltv guide url above, or paste the content, to see results here.
What this checks
- Schedule gaps and overlapping programmes, per channel
- How many hours of guide remain ahead of right now
- Timestamps missing a UTC offset — why a guide appears shifted by whole hours
- Programmes pointing at channels the guide never declares
- Title, description, category and icon coverage
How to read the results
- Forward coverage is the first number to read: a guide with four hours ahead of now looks empty to viewers by the evening.
- Gaps and overlaps are reported per channel, because one broken channel in a guide of five hundred is invisible in a total.
- Timestamps without a UTC offset are why a guide appears shifted by whole hours. The file parses; every programme simply lands at the wrong time.
- Orphaned programmes point at channels the guide never declares, which is what a half-merged multi-source guide looks like.
What it does not do
- It checks the guide document, not the streams it describes.
- Metadata quality is not judged, only its presence: a wrong description counts as a description.
- Very large guides are sampled for text coverage, while structural checks always run across the whole file.
Privacy
Results are never shared. Choose “This browser” and the fetch and the analysis both happen on your machine — the URL, any headers you set and the results never reach our servers, which is also how you test a stream on a private network or behind a login. Pasted content is always analysed locally.
Common Programme guides findings, explained
Every finding links to a write-up on what it means and how to fix it.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the EPG checker validate?
- Schedule gaps and overlaps per channel, hours of forward coverage, timezone offsets on timestamps, orphaned programmes, and title, description, category and icon coverage.
- Why is my guide shifted by a few hours?
- Timestamps written without a UTC offset. Players read them in their own timezone, which moves every programme by the difference.
- How much forward coverage should a guide carry?
- Most apps expect at least 24 hours and users notice below about 12. The page reports the exact hours remaining from now.
- Can it match my guide to a playlist?
- That is the EPG matcher, which pairs playlist channels with guide channels and shows which ones will not line up.
- Does it accept compressed guides?
- Yes. A gzipped XMLTV file is fetched and decompressed before parsing.