Overview
Zype supports ingestion and display of Electronic Program Guide (EPG) data through our Electronic Program Guide product. Electronic Program Guides typically accompany linear programming, allowing viewers to see what content is currently playing on a linear live channel, along with future and past scheduled content for that channel.
Supported EPG Ingestion Formats
Zype supports ingestion of Program Guide Entries in the xmltv format only. You can learn more about the xmltv format here including viewing examples of xmltv files.
Customers who want to ingest Program Guide Entries into Zype must have their own xmltv feed hosted on a publicly available URL. Each Program Guide should be set up with its own feed URL.
Program Guides
Program Guides are the objects that contain all of the programming schedule data for a specific linear channel and are typically linked on a 1:1 basis to a linear channel in your Zype Library. Program Guides require the following data in order to be created in Zype:
- Program Guide Name = The name of the program guide as it’s being stored in Zype. Typically you will use the same name as the linear channel the Program Guide is associated with.
- Program Guide URL = The URL of the xmltv feed that the Program Guide Entries are available on. This URL must be publicly available and not tokenized or otherwise protected.
- Program Guide Language = The Language that the Program Guide is mapped to.
- Program Guide Time Zone = The time zone that the Program Guide Entries’ date/time stamps are mapped to
- Sync Past Entries = ON/OFF value for whether or not you want Zype to synchronize past program guide entry data. Turn this ON if you’d like Zype to synchronize past entry data from your Program Guide xmltv feed in the event air date start/end time data is updated based on actual program as-run data.
Program Guide Entries
Each Program Guide contains many Program Guide Entries, which are the individual videos/programs scheduled within that Program Guide.
Each Program Guide entry requires at minimum the following metadata:
- Title = The name of the program airing at that specific time slot
- Start Time = The specific date/time slot that the program begins airing at
- End Time = The specific date/time slot that the program completes airing at
Program Guide Entries can also optionally include additional metadata such as:
- Language = the language that the program is aired in
- Description = the short description of the program
- Category = the category this program belongs to (note these categories are different than Zype’s Category product)
- Thumbnail image = the URL of a thumbnail image that accompanies this program guide entry