Your IPTV experience is only as good as the EPG behind it. A thin guide makes channel browsing feel like flipping a dictionary; a rich one turns the same playlist into a real TV experience. Here are the EPG sources we test OneTV Connect against every week, and how to pick the one that fits your setup.
Why EPG quality matters
The EPG (Electronic Program Guide) controls what you see when you open the guide, what plays in the now/next overlay above the channel list, and what powers Sport Centre's "watch this match on this channel" lookup. A 24-hour EPG with no description fields is technically functional. A 14-day EPG with descriptions, categories, ratings and episode metadata is what makes IPTV feel premium.
Xtream EPG (the easy path)
If your provider offers Xtream Codes, you almost certainly already have an EPG endpoint that bundles channel mappings, descriptions and 7+ days of programming. OneTV Connect detects this automatically when you add an Xtream playlist — no extra URL needed. Quality varies by provider, but it's usually the best starting point.
Public XMLTV providers we test against
For M3U-only setups, you'll need to point OneTV Connect at an XMLTV URL. We regularly test against a handful of well-known providers (epg.best, iptv-org, ontvtonight). Each varies in coverage by region: French and US channels are usually well served, niche international ones less so. The app accepts gzipped XMLTV out of the box, which keeps the daily refresh under 30 seconds even on a 50,000-channel guide.
Self-hosting your own EPG
If you want full control — including metadata enrichment from TMDB and your own grabber rules — you can self-host with WebGrabPlus on a small Raspberry Pi or a Docker container. The output is a standard XMLTV file you serve over HTTP. OneTV Connect refreshes on a schedule and only re-downloads when the source changed (we send `If-Modified-Since`).
Channel mapping in OneTV Connect
The trickiest part is mapping playlist channels to EPG channels. OneTV Connect tries three things in order: exact `tvg-id` match, normalized name match, and finally a fuzzy match with confidence threshold. If a channel still has no EPG, you can long-press and pick the right EPG channel from a searchable list. We persist the mapping in iCloud, so it follows you to every Apple device.
Pick the simplest path that works: Xtream first, public XMLTV second, self-hosted last. The EPG should be invisible — when it works, you stop thinking about it.