By default Plex won’t record episodes that’s already in the library if there’s no jump in quality (like SD to HD).
In cases where there’s conflicting information from the EPG and TheTVDB, or when the EPG is wrong about the episode numbering, this leads to episodes not being recorded because Plex thinks it’s already in the library. They won’t even show in the schedule.
Recordings are being skipped and lost due to this.
In addition, episodes that are already recorded will in some circumstances be recorded again (and again) with wrong episode numbering.
This issue is especially common with kids shows where two episodes often are combined in one segment and the EPG provider is a bit too liberal with the episode numbering.
It is, as far as I know, not even possible to force recording of a specific episode if Plex believes it’s already existing.
This could be handled by a per-show or episode setting that’d allow the user to force the recording even if Plex believes it to already exist.
I can even imagine a toggle in the schedule view to show which episodes are being skipped so the user can choose to override Plex in those cases.
Plex supports multiple versions of the same episodes, so conflicts would simply show up as two versions.
It would of course be up to the user to do the work of renaming the recording to match TheTVDB afterwards. For ease of use this could be integrated in the web interface in one way or another. Since we’re able to delete files from within the web interface, adding an option to easily rename wouldn’t be that far fetched.
