IPTV tool
Fix a TV guide that’s shifted by hours.
When the EPG shows programmes at the wrong time, it is usually a time-zone gap. Pick your zone and the guide’s zone to get the exact offset to enter in your player.
Reading the symptoms
A quick way to tell which direction to shift, based on how a programme you know is listed.
| What you see | What it means | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| 8pm show appears at 6pm | Guide is 2 hours behind | Set offset to +2 hours |
| 8pm show appears at 11pm | Guide is 3 hours ahead | Set offset to -3 hours |
| Guide matches, wrong channel data | Not a time-zone issue | Change or refresh the EPG source |
| Everything off by 30 minutes | Half-hour zone mismatch | Set offset to +/- 30 minutes |
A fixed offset only corrects a whole time-zone shift. If listings are wrong in other ways, the EPG source itself is the likely cause.
Frequently asked
- What is an EPG time offset?
- It is a setting in most IPTV players that shifts every programme in the TV guide forward or backward by a fixed number of hours. It exists because guide data is sometimes published in a different time zone from yours, so the listings line up with the wrong clock time until you correct them.
- How do I know which way to shift the guide?
- Find a programme whose real start time you know — a news bulletin or a live match. If it is listed earlier than it actually airs, the guide is behind and you shift it forward (a plus offset). If it is listed later, the guide is ahead and you shift it back (a minus offset). The calculator above works this out from your two time zones.
- Where is the time-offset setting in my app?
- In TiviMate it is under Settings, then EPG, then a time-shift option. IPTV Smarters and similar players usually have an EPG or time-offset field in their settings. The wording varies, but look for anything mentioning EPG time, time shift or offset.
- The guide is still wrong after setting the offset. What now?
- If a fixed hour shift does not fix it, the problem is usually the EPG source rather than your time zone — the data may be incomplete, stale or mapped to the wrong channels. Refresh the guide, try a different EPG URL, or check that channel IDs match. Our EPG troubleshooting doc covers this.
- Does daylight saving time affect the offset?
- It can. When your region or the guide's region changes clocks, the gap between them can shift by an hour, so a guide that lined up perfectly may suddenly be an hour out. If your guide drifts around a clock change, recalculate the offset with the new UTC values.
Still no guide at all? See how to fix an EPG that is not showing, or set the offset in TiviMate’s settings.
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