I think it’s related to them changing the source for cast photos. See this thread and response: Cast Profile Picture Source Changes? - #6 by drzoidberg33
Looks like they are going with licensed images for cast photos now like they do for posters and background images. Unfortunately server owners can’t pick other images for casts like we can with posters and background and some of these licensed photo are definitely worse than what was being currated at TMDB.
I’ve noticed it too on lots of movies shortly after they made this change as i had a TON of blank actor images (they’d be there in the discover profile but not on the movie listing). If you looked at the same movie at watch.plex.tv you’d see it missing there too so it’s Plex DB being empty\broken for it, not the server. I spent a few hours trying to fix it before finding those threads on Plex forums and checking watch.plex (which I have to do more often now since so much data is tied to that now). My picture for Anthony Stewart Head is currently missing from Gotham by Gaslight and it’s missing from watch.plex as well:
So that shows me it’s Plex’s metadb that’s missing it and not my server having an issue. No way to fix it other than to wait and run a meta refresh manually in a couple days because the maintenance refresh rarely picks these up (though it was quick to remove them). Those several missing cast photos I had were missing for over a week after this change impacted my server. I went ahead and ran the refresh manually and most images popped in but these one-offs still happen. I agree with those other posts about it that many of the licensed photos are not what I’d consider good choices.
Overall it’s not a huge functionality deal but it is an aspect that was rock solid for years and crowd sourced so admins could semi-manage it by uploading, fixing and voting on cast images at TMDB but now it’s controlled by Plex’s streaming service so just not ideally handled for us local media folks.
