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XMLTV troubleshooting

An unescaped ampersand stops XMLTV parsing

A literal ampersand in XML text must be encoded correctly.

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A literal ampersand in XML text must be encoded correctly.

Reproduce the condition

The XMLTV sample below is a small synthetic file. It carries no active media source or account data.

<tv>
  <channel id="news.example"><display-name>News & Weather</display-name></channel>
  <programme start="20250715180000 +0000" stop="20250715190000 +0000" channel="news.example"><title>Evening test</title></programme>
</tv>

What the local check found

Reproducible check against the packaged fixture and parser.
Expected signalObserved signal
XML does not parseXML does not parse

What to do next

Generate XML with an XML writer. It will serialize the ampersand as an entity while preserving the visible station name.

What to share if the problem continues

  • The exact parser result and version of the importer or player.
  • A minimal redacted sample with dates, IDs or segment names retained as needed.
  • The output after checking the source export separately from the viewer app.

Sources and further reading