EPG mapper: match M3U channels to XMLTV tvg-id

Why channels have no TV guide

A player links a live channel to its programmes through one value: the playlist's tvg-id must equal the id of a <channel> in the XMLTV guide. If the tvg-id is empty, misspelt, or written for a different guide, the channel shows no programmes, even when the guide covers it under another id. The M3U checker tells you how many channels match; this tool fixes the ones that do not.

How the matching works

Both sides are cleaned the same way before they are compared: lower case, accents removed, punctuation turned into spaces, and quality tags (HD, FHD, UHD, 4K, HEVC, 1080p…) dropped. Number words become digits, so "Example One" and "Example 1" compare equal, and "+1" is kept so a timeshift channel is not mixed up with the main one. A short country prefix such as UK:, |DE| or [FR] is read as a hint and compared with the guide id's country ending, like .uk.

Each playlist name is then scored against the guide's display names and its ids (camel-case ids such as ExampleOne.uk are read as names too). The score mixes how many letter pairs the two names share with how many whole words they share. Names that are the same apart from spacing score 100. Different numbers ("Sport 1" against "Sport 2") cut the score, a matching country adds 3 and a different country takes away 15. The best guide channel wins if it scores 50 or more.

Naming differences it handles

What it cannot know is meaning. A channel renamed by its owner, a regional edition with the same name, or a provider's own label such as "Movies 4" can score well and still be wrong, or score badly and be right. That is why nothing below the automatic level is written until you accept it, and why the score is shown for every row: start with the highest scores, accept them in bulk, then work down the list. Large playlists often repeat the same channel in several groups; the mapper scores each distinct name once and reuses the result, so 60,000 live channels take well under a second against a guide of ten thousand channels. The guide is read in pieces with a progress bar, and only its channel list is kept in memory, so guides of 100 MB and more are fine.

Reviewing the suggestions

• Needs review lists suggestions that are not accepted yet. Tick the ones that are right, or filter and use "Accept shown".
• Accepted are the ones that will be written. Suggestions at or above the automatic level start here; untick any that are wrong.
• tvg-id not in the guide are channels that already have an id the guide does not know. They are only changed when "Allow replacing" is ticked.
• Already matched channels are never changed.

The download is your playlist with only the accepted tvg-ids written in: the header (with url-tvg), every other attribute, the option lines and the order are kept. Films and series episodes are copied as they are. Check the result with the EPG viewer by opening the new playlist next to the guide, or read how to fix an empty TV guide for the other causes.