I’m with you on this. I’m a new customer trying to ditch my super old Windows 7 Media Center edition in my vacation property and Sat subscription at my primary residence. Plex is letting us down at the moment… 2 days with missing shows! I like to binge watch TV and I’m going to be pissed again when I reach these holes in my collections! This has got to be fixed this weekend or i’m done. I like lots of things offered by Plex, but this just doesn’t pass the family acceptance factor. Too much failure too much tinkering. Just want a reliable service. Maybe I’ll try the HDHomeru DVR service tomorrow if Plex can’t get their stuff together. 2 days already, I’m giving them another 32 hours and then I’m done. At a minimum, I’d expect more communications from Plex with updates and maybe some credits for the outages.
if you are getting the EPG refresh JSON Parse Error in the Plex Media Server log files then this is the issue that has been referred to our Metadata Provider. I do not have any further updates on this.
The error that gets logged would be
ERROR - EPG: JSON parse error.
Our provider has been made aware of the wide scale impact of the problem.
It does not appear to be a solid fault and not for everyone. I have not had any errors in EPG refreshes - checking my logs for past 7 days
Don’t waste your time with the HDHomerun DRV Service with Plex. It uses the same guide service that is currently not working for many of us. My family is not happy at the moment as they are missing more and more shows as this goes unresolved.
I’ve attached my Plex Media Server log, I think I see a few errors, I’m not sure if this is related to this specific problem or something else.
Can you tell?
Plex Media Server.log (977.2 KB)
Could it be a location issue? Different people getting their information from servers located in different locations? ISPs messing with something?
Could it be a Java version error?
Seems to be platform independent.
Is it for sure down to the metadata provider? Is there any information that we could collect to help in the debugging?
So if we’re getting the ERROR - EPG: JSON parse error. onlythin we can do is wait ?
Really frustrating. Trying to sell this setup to the family and their show are not recorded …
Yes same issue
Nov 10, 2018 15:06:44.992 [0x7f5376911700] DEBUG - Activity: updated activity 0e399f0a-c35c-46be-b2fb-1a98d0a00913 - completed 28% - Refreshing guide data
Nov 10, 2018 15:06:45.329 [0x7f5376911700] ERROR - EPG: JSON parse error. Wrote JSON data to "/share/CACHEDEV1_DATA/.qpkg/PlexMediaServer/Library/Plex Media Server/Diagnostics/EPG-onconnect-b1cc23b5-7755-4bce-b047-c7843dc7b9db.json"
Nov 10, 2018 15:06:45.329 [0x7f5376911700] WARN - EPG[onconnect]: Failed to load EPG.
I do not have an update yet to share. The problem is still being looked into by our metadata provider
I think there may be something else going on as well. I’ve been able to retrieve 5 days worth of the program guide, but my programs will not record. I’ve deleted my recording schedule and re-added them, but there appears to be some sort of memory or previous setting that is not being cleared. I can see the programs in the guide that should be recording but PMS shows there are no programs to record.
I’m seeing the same thing. On my system it’s only today’s series based shows that don’t record. The rest of the week shows as scheduled. I can over ride it by setting each individual show to record as an individual item rather than part of a series.
If the last two days are a patter then tomorrow will update and all of those shows will suddenly not be scheduled to record. It’s kinda pissing me off. If I want anything to record I have to check it an hour or so before it’s time slot just to be sure it’s still setup.
This morning I installed update 1.14.0.5465, Im still getting the EPG failed and JSON error as before, however I’m now getting a new error. HTTP error 403 which means forbidden, so I’m guessing there are some mis-configuration with the web server.
[4112] ERROR - EPG: received HTTP response of 403 from request to https://tmsapi.plex.tv/v1.1
/lineups/USA-OTA46748/grid?api_key=xxx&endDateTime=2018-11-20T04%3A00Z&imageSize=Ms&imageText=false&startDateTime=2018-
11-20T00%3A00Z
I’m indiscriminately seeing the same thing. Some shows that I know should be recording are not scheduled, even when they are set up to record all episodes. I even saw scheduled recordings disappear in front of my eyes from the recordings display during a guide data refresh. The only way to get them to record was to completely disable the recording rule so that I could record the skipped episodes…btw, little ridiculous if a recording rule is set up you can’t schedule a single recording. That is making it a bit of a hassle to record skipped episodes (ignoring the fact I have to catch that they were actually skipped)…
The JSON Parse Error issue where the response contains error 403 Forbidden should be fixed now.
Additionally Plex Media Server beta 1.14.0.5465 has retries for failed requests to fetch the guide - so that in itself would have helped whilst the issue was there
Please do manual update to the guide and once that completes ok, then incremental updates would ensure the guide remains up to date
If problems persist, please provide fresh logs from the server with debug logging enabled beforehand and also a zip of the Diagnostics directory which is within the Plex Media Server data area
https://support.plex.tv/articles/201643703-reporting-issues-with-plex-media-server/
https://support.plex.tv/articles/200250417-plex-media-server-log-files/
https://support.plex.tv/articles/202915258-where-is-the-plex-media-server-data-directory-located/
This is great ! Ill check tonight if my issue is fixed.
Thanks !
I have confirmed, the issue is fixed for me without updating to the beta PMS. I did a manual guide refresh and got to 100%. Unfortunately all scheduled recordings still showed it had no programs to record. Once I removed and re-added my programs, my recordings have resumed and programs are recording on schedule .
I have set my preferences to update the guide nightly with maintenance.
Thank you for sticking with the issue and getting a resolution . Lots of happy family members 
Thanks for the feedback, There has been one reported case of the issue coming back today. This has been referred back to our metadata provider
My post here Guide shows “Unknown Airing" or "Guide is empty”
The residual issues on the 15th November appear to have been cleared.
Please relay our request to allow “users” the option to delete media, not just the “owner”. We’ve been asking for a long time.
Thanks
I believe there is a feature request. I would not want anyone deleting my media. But there are a lot of users asking for it !!
This has no relevance to a topic about the EPG faoling to update
