About the Teletext EPG Grabber

The Teletext EPG grabber allows extracting TV programme listings in XMLTV format from teletext pages as broadcast by many European TV networks. The grabber works by reading teletext pages via a TV card from all individual networks, then extracting programme title and starting times from programme tables (e.g. in Germany usually pages 301-399) and finally adding description texts from pages which are referenced in the overview pages.

For now, only nation-wide German networks are supported well. For other networks the parser may need to be adapted to different page formats. That's because almost every network formats tables, dates, times and descriptions slightly differently. Even though the parser has no network-specific rules, it relies on heuristics for locating EPG data among all the advertisements and other content in teletext, which may not work with networks that format their pages differently.

See system requirements for details.

About the Nextview EPG service

nexTView is a trademark for an European Standard for an Electronic TV Programme Guide for analog TV sets. The nxtvepg software used to allow receiving and browsing these freely available TV programme listings for all of the major networks in Germany, Austria, France and Switzerland - provided that your PC has a TV capture card for receiving TV broadcasts and teletext.

The nexTView EPG standard was developed by the major European consumer electronics manufacturers under the hood of the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in 1995-1997 with the aim to offer an "electronic TV magazine" inside their analog TV sets. The transmission protocol is based on teletext, however using a compact binary format instead of pre-formatted text pages. The advantage compared to paper-based TV magazines is that you have an immediate overview what's running Now & Next, plus you can search through the programme database by many different filter categories.

The nxtvepg software allowed using nexTView EPG with a PC too, and added a lot of features that would not have been possible to implement inside a TV set. The only preconditions were (a) a TV capture card for TV reception inside your PC and (b) reception of one of the nexTView EPG content provider's TV channels.

At its height, nexTView EPG was transmitted by the following TV networks:

Due to transition to DVB, which has its own EPG standard, most of these providers are no longer active however. For more details see the provider table.

nexTView EPG was implemented in analog TVs of the following manufacturers: Grundig, Loewe, Metz, Philips, Sony, Thomson or Quelle Universum.

Behind the scenes: How does nexTView work?

Nextview EPG data is transmitted on a regular teletext page which is inserted into the teletext page sequence about every second. The number of this page usually is "1DF" or "2DF" for Canal+. As you can see there's non-decimal digits in the page number. This is possible because the teletext standard allows digits in the range 0 to 15 (hexadecimal). Written decimally the page number 1DF would read: 1,13,15. Such page numbers are often used for non-human-readable content (i.e. pages with internal control data)

Nextview EPG data is transmitted in cycles: The complete content repeats every 20-25 minutes (expired programmes are removed though). The cycles are split into several so-called streams which are interwoven. Stream 1 contains near data and is shorter; in the time of the complete cycle it will be repeated several times. The second stream contains the rest and is repeated only once every 20-25 minutes. This split makes it possible to load the near overview in a short time; only if you want the complete overview you have to wait for the complete cycle.

Note most current providers split the near cycle again into "now" and "near" parts, where "now" covers only the next 2-5 programmes on each channel and usually loads in less than 1.5 minutes. You can observe the loading progress by opening the Acquisition Timescales in the control menu in nxtvepg.

The data on the Nextview EPG page is encoded in a very compact binary format, except for text (i.e. programme titles and descriptions) which is transmitted in plain. Hence if you would manage to point your teletext reader to this page (possible with some computer software, e.g. alevt on Linux) you'd see a lot of funny characters with some text in-between. The binary parts are control data, such as start times and length, network code, theme codes etc.

Control data (for example start times, network codes, theme codes etc.) is encoded with a so-called "Hamming 8:4" forward error correction, which means up to two bit errors per octet can be detected and single bit errors can be corrected. Hence data is protected quite well, but if an error is detected the complete block (i.e. programme database entry) has to be dropped. Since a rather large inventory block (with the network table) has to be loaded at the start of acquisition, it can take long until you get incoming blocks if your reception is bad.

Text data is only lightly protected by parity (same as text on regular teletext pages), so you'll see occasional missing characters or even typos. Generally errors in texts are ignored, although when a block is received repeatedly copies with text errors (if detected) are replaced with copies with less errors. Hence if acquisition is running long enough the number of errors in texts is reduced (note this is only relevant if your teletext reception is bad.)

If you're interested in more details, you can download specifications for Nextview EPG (ETS 300 707) and the data stream (ETS 300 708) for free from etsi.org. The latter one is a bit harder to read, but at least the Nextview EPG spec contains a few introductionary chapters which should be easy to comprehend.

Digital TV transmission (DVB)

DVB natively supports an EPG which is completely unrelated to Nextview EPG. A major difference between those two is that DVB EPG is provided by the respective networks themselves and covers at most several related networks (i.e. channels in the same bouquet), while Nextview EPG is provided network independently and usually covers all national networks in a country.

nxtvepg is currently not capable of decoding these "digital" EPGs.