XMLTV Program actor
Audio details, similar to video details above.
Structure representing a XMLTV channel.
Each ‘programme’ element (see below) should have an attribute ‘channel’ giving the channel on which it is broadcast. If you want to
provide more detail about channels, you can give some ‘channel’ elements before listing the programmes. The ‘id’ attribute of the
channel should match what is given in the ‘channel’ attribute of the programme.
XMLTV Program credits of the programme.
An icon associated with the element that contains it.
The true length of the programme, not counting advertisements or trailers. But this does take account of any bits which were cut out
of the broadcast version - eg if a two hour film is cut to 110 minutes and then padded with 20 minutes of advertising, length will be 110
minutes even though end time minus start time is 130 minutes.
When and where the programme was last shown, if known. Normally in TV listings ‘repeat’ means ‘previously shown on this channel’, but
if you don’t know what channel the old screening was on (but do know that it happened) then you can omit the ‘channel’ attribute.
Similarly you can omit the ‘start’ attribute if you don’t know when the previous transmission was (though you can of course give just the
year, etc.).
Structure representing a XMLTV program element:
Various bodies decide on classifications for films - usually a minimum age you must be to see it. In principle the same
could be done for ordinary TV programmes. Because there are many systems for doing this, you can also specify the rating system used
(which in practice is the same as the body which made the rating).
Listings guides may provide reviews of programmes in addition to, or in place of, standard programme descriptions. They are
usually written by in-house reviewers, but reviews can also be made available by third-party organisations/individuals. The value of this
element must be either the text of the review, or a URL that links to it. Optional attributes giving the review source and the individual reviewer
can also be specified.
many listings guides award a programme a score as a quick guide to how good it is. The value of this element should be
‘N / M’, for example one star out of a possible five stars would be ‘1 / 5’. Zero stars is also a possible score (and not the same as
‘unrated’). You should try to map whatever wacky system your listings source uses to a number of stars: so for example if they have thumbs
up, thumbs sideways and thumbs down, you could map that to two, one or zero stars out of two. If a programme is marked as recommended in a
listings guide you could map this to ‘1 / 1’. Because there could be many ways to provide star-ratings or recommendations for a programme, you can
specify multiple star-ratings. You can specify the star-rating system used, or the provider of the recommendation, with the system attribute.
Whitespace between the numbers and slash is ignored.
These can be either ‘teletext’ (sent digitally, and displayed at the viewer’s request), ‘onscreen’ (superimposed on the
picture and impossible to get rid of), or ‘deaf-signed’ (in-vision signing for users of sign language). You can have multiple subtitle
streams to handle different languages. Language for subtitles is specified in the same way as for programmes.
Contains only the value in a tag: <tag>value</tag>.
Date should be the date when the listings were originally produced in whatever format; if you’re converting data from another source, then
use the date given by that source. The date when the conversion itself was done is not important.
A URL where you can find out more about the element that contains it (programme or channel). This might be the official site, or a fan
page, whatever you like really.
Video details: the subelements describe the picture quality as follows.