EPGrab

Grab DVB EPG data from Linux DVB-T devices.

EPGrab tunes to each frequency in your channel list, reads EIT (Event Information Table) sections from the transport stream, and displays programme schedule information for all discovered services.

Requirements

• Linux with DVB subsystem support
• A Linux-supported DVB-T receiver device (see LinuxTV Hardware Database)
• Rust toolchain (edition 2024)

Build

cargo build --release

This produces a single binary target/release/epgrab with subcommands.

Usage

Check system readiness

epgrab doctor

This checks whether a DVB-T device is detected and etc/channels.conf exists with valid content.

Scan channels

Scan for available channels using a DVB scan file. On Debian-based systems, scan files are provided by the dtv-scan-tables package.

epgrab scan-channels -C /usr/share/dvb/dvb-t/tw-All

This will:

• Tune to each frequency listed in the scan file
• Read PAT/SDT/PMT tables to discover services, channel names, and PIDs
• Back up any existing etc/channels.conf to etc/channels.conf.old
• Write the results to etc/channels.conf in zap format

Grab EPG data

Once you have a etc/channels.conf, run the EPG grabber:

epgrab run

This will:

• Group channels by frequency (to avoid redundant tuning)
• Tune to each frequency and read EIT present/following data
• Display programme information (title, start time, duration, description) for each channel

Save EPG data as XMLTV

epgrab save-xmltv

This will:

• Tune to each frequency and read EIT data (same as run)
• Save each channel's programme data as an XMLTV XML file to epg/[CHANNEL_NAME].eit.xml
• If epg/epg.xsl is present, each XML file will reference it as a stylesheet for browser viewing

Serve XMLTV files over HTTP

epgrab serve

This starts a built-in HTTP server that serves the epg/ directory, with a directory listing at the root. By default it listens on 127.0.0.1:3000.

Options:

• -b <address> / --bind <address> -- bind address (default: 127.0.0.1)
• -p <port> / --port <port> -- port number (default: 3000)

Example: serve on all interfaces at port 8080:

epgrab serve -b 0.0.0.0 -p 8080

Viewing in a browser

A default XSLT stylesheet (epg/epg.xsl) is included to render the XMLTV files as formatted HTML tables. After running epgrab serve, open the URL shown in a browser and click on any .eit.xml file.

Note: Opening the XML files directly via file:// will not work in most browsers (e.g. Firefox) due to same-origin policy restrictions on local files.

Project Structure

src/
  lib.rs           -- library crate, exposes shared modules
  main.rs          -- epgrab binary: subcommand dispatch (run, save-xmltv, serve, scan-channels, doctor)
  channel.rs       -- channels.conf parser (zap format)
  dvb_device.rs    -- DVB USB device detection via sysfs
  tuner.rs         -- DVB frontend tuning (DVB v5 API)
  eit.rs           -- EIT section reading & parsing
  scan.rs          -- channel scanning (PAT/SDT/PMT parsing)
etc/
  channels.conf    -- discovered channels (generated by scan-channels)
epg/
  epg.xsl          -- XSLT stylesheet for browser viewing (optional)
  *.eit.xml        -- XMLTV programme data per channel (generated by save-xmltv)
doc/
  concept.md       -- DVB EPG concepts and table structures
  references.md    -- specifications, tools, and related projects

Acknowledgments

This project was heavily inspired by and draws conceptual guidance from tv_grab_dvb.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.