Prerequisites: XML TV Guide

Plex needs program information to display in the guide. A channel without guide information will not show up in the Plex grid and cannot be used in Plex.

Telly 1.1 will republish an EPG, filtered and named so that all channels with EPG automatch in Plex, but it needs an input to filter.

There are a few possible sources for this data.

Your IPTV provider

Typically, your IPTV provider will give you EPG; this will vary in quality, but it's typically there. Sometimes [Looking at you, Iris] the link to the EPG isn't published anywhere, but you can figure it out if the provider uses Xtream Codes [XC] as its server backend, which many if not most do.

If your M3U URL looks like this:

M3U URL: http://server.net:9999/get.php?username=${IPTVUSER}&password=${IPTVPASS}&type=m3u_plus&output=ts

then your provider is an XC provider, and you should be able to get EPG at:

EPG URL: http://server.net:9999/xmltv.php?username=${IPTVUSER}&password=${IPTVPASS}

Vaders, for example, gives you a totally different URL:

M3U URL: http://vaders.tv/vget?username=${IPTVUSER}&password=${IPTVPASS}&vod=false&format=ts

EPG URL: http://vaders.tv/p2.xml

In some cases the EPG URL is to a gzipped file:

EPG URL: http://vaders.tv/p2.xml.gz

That's fine. Telly can decompress it.

Third-party commercial source

iptv-epg.com is a website that sells improved EPG along with the ability to edit your m3u file. It's a dozen or two dollars per year, depending on how many channels you need to support.

https://xtream-editor.com/ is another flavor of the same thing.

For both of these, you'll give it the m3u link[s] from your provider[s], rename and sort the channels how you like, match channels, then enter the new M3U and EPG links provided by those websites into telly. Chances are you won't do any filtering in telly, then. As your IPTV provider adds and removes channels, you'll need to visit those sites to keep them current.

There are a variety of other commercial sources for this service.

Plex itself

Plex, of course, has a built-in EPG, which one significant limitation for IPTV users. To use Plex' EPG, all your channels must be available on a particular TV provider in a single geo area, like DirectTV in Minneapolis. IF you have both US and UK channels in your playlist, for example, Plex' built-in will not work.

Something else entirely

If you can generate an XML-TV file through a script or some other means, you can tell Plex to use that.

There is some information on how the M3U and EPG connect here

Other Plex EPG issues

Plex only allows a single source of EPG for ALL connected tuners on a given Plex server, so if you thought you were going to be clever and stand up two tellys, one with US and one with UK channels, you will be disabused of that notion when you add the second tuner and are NOT asked for EPG details. The easiest possible solution here is to set up two Plex servers, one for each tuner.