epgsearchcats.conf(5)

📦
version 2.4.6 · 8 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💅 epgsearchcats.conf(5) — the EPGSearch config for extended EPG info, bestie

okay so real quick: this is a section 5 man page for epgsearchcats.conf, and it ships with EPGSearch Version 2.4.6. It's the glow-up guide for that one config file, and honestly? it's giving "small file, big power." 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

epgsearchcats.conf – extended EPG information

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

So some EPG providers are overachievers and deliver supplemental EPG info — think the kind of event, the video and audio format, cast, all that — right there inside the content summary. And like, using tools such as tvmovie2vdr or epg4vdr, EPG content like this can be imported into the VDR. slay.

And this info is genuinely useful, no cap: it lets you, for instance, create a search for finding all tips of the day broadcasted in 16:9 format quite easily. iconic behavior tbh.

For this purpose, EPGSearch scans the summary of an event for lines starting with the names of categories, followed by ':' and a space, that have one or more values set in the search timer. And heads up bestie — the search is case-sensitive for both the category name and its values. 😭 so type it exactly.

To use this kind of info in search timers, appropriate settings must have been made in the file epgsearchcats.conf in the EPGSearch configuration directory. Sample files for epgsearchcats.conf can be found in the directory conf of EPGSearch. And honestly? quite often, copying the one that fits best as epgsearchcats.conf to the EPGSearch configuration directory and making some minor adjustments might be sufficient. then just restart the VDR and open a search timer's edit menu for making use of the EPG categories. periodt. 💅

Since setting up a new epgsearchcats.conf is quite a lot of work (like, a lot a lot), EPGSearch comes with the small tool createcats that does the biggest part of the job. It should have been installed to the directory of the VDR. See createcats(1) for information about how to use it. 🫶

🦋 SYNTAX 🦋

Lines within this file have the following format:

ID|category name[,format]|name in menu|values|search mode

A line's fields have the following meaning — buckle up, there's five:

  1. Unique identifier (ID) — Integer with a positive value.
Caution: Changing the identifier later on will require updating the search timers! 💀 like fr, don't just casually renumber stuff.
  1. Category name — String with the EPG category's name as delivered by the EPG provider, like 'Genre'. If an optional 'format' is supplied, the category value will be interpreted as integer and formatted as specified by the format string (see 'man printf' for applicable format strings).
  2. Name in menus — String with the EPG category's name for display in EPGSearch menus.
  3. Values — String with an optional, comma-separated list of values for the EPG category.
  4. Search mode — Optional enumeration with the following values:

Textual comparison:

  • 0 = the whole term must appear as substring
  • 1 = all single terms (delimited by one of ',;|~') must exist as substrings; this is the default search mode
  • 2 = at least one term (delimited by one of ',;|~') must exist as substring
  • 3 = exact match
  • 4 = regular expression

Numerical comparison:

  • 10 = less
  • 11 = less or equal
  • 12 = greater
  • 13 = greater or equal
  • 14 = equal
  • 15 = not equal

🔥 EXAMPLE 🔥

 1|Category|Kind|Information,Children,Music,Series,Show,Movie,Sports|2
 2|Genre|Genre|Adventure,Action,Business,Science,Cartoon|2
 3|Format|Video format|16:9,4:3|2
 4|Audio|Audio format|Dolby Surround,Dolby,Stereo|2
 5|Year|Release year||2
 6|Cast|Cast||2
 7|Director|Director||2
 8|Presenter|Presenter||2
 9|Rating|Rating|Excellent,Great,Average,Acceptable,Poor|2
 10|Age|Age|6,12,16,18|2
 11|Country|Country||2
 12|Themes|Themes||4
 13|Season,%02i|Season||14
 14|Season,%02i|Season from||13
 15|Episode,%02i|Episode||14

Identifiers 13 and 14 refer to the same EPG category, but provide distinct menu names for different search modes. And here's the important lil warning: as the evaluation sequence is not guaranteed, their formats should be identical to avoid unexpected results when referencing the category's variable. 🙈 like, keep them matching, trust.

👑 AUTHORS (man pages) 👑

Originally provided by Mike Constabel <epgsearch (at) constabel (dot) net>.

Revised and adapted to recent plugin features by the current maintainers.

🌈 PROJECT SITE 🌈

The plugin is maintained as GitHub project:

<https://github.com/vdr-projects/vdr-plugin-epgsearch/>

💀 REPORTING BUGS 💀

Issues can be reported, and features be suggested, through the project's bug tracker:

<https://github.com/vdr-projects/vdr-plugin-epgsearch/issues/>

Copyright (C) 2004-2010 Christian Wieninger

Copyright © 2011-2025 TomJoad (VDR-Portal), et al.

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 2 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, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA Or, point your browser to <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html>

The original author can be reached via cwieninger@gmx.de.

Current maintainers can be reached via the project's GitHub site (see above).

The MD5 code has been derived from the MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm of RSA Data Security, Inc.

🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

epgsearch(1), createcats(1), epgsearchcats.conf(5)

k that's the whole page bestie 💖 — this one's generated with perl v5.40.1 and dated 2026-04-19, so like, future-y and fabulous. go forth and configure ✨🦋🍓

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