Apologies, I was looking at airings on BBC which are correct. Looks like just an issue for ITV.
In the UK the broadcasters, and kit recording from electronic program guides, do not use the title or a series tag like S1E4 as a unique identifier, which is what Plex is doing. Therefore there is little need to be completely accurate with New tags or be absolutely precise with the series and episode number in our program guides, in many cases we never see the episode number or series number in the guide information, and it doesnât matter if it is wrong. I presume Plex or Plexâs supplier is having to self-generate the SxEx tags themselves, hence all the mistakes.
What the broadcasters and equipment use in the UK (and some other places as well) is the Series identifier and program identifier, meta data we donât usually see and most people are unaware of, in the program guide data.
As you can see, the guide has no series or episode information and is the wrong name. However devices designed for the UK will be set to record a program with the ID www.itv.com/1001685067, or it will simply record all programs that have the series ID ebs48561 if set to record the series. It matters not what the description says about series or episode numbers.
This is probably one of the reasons your system just doesnât work reliably in the UK, as the data you are trying to use to track a series and episode is not something the broadcasters are worried about being accurate, and in many cases donât provide anyway, hence your data providers are somehow manually creating the SxEx tags and getting them wrong.
It seems to me the data you are getting from your suppliers is perfectly acceptable for printed matter like newspaper listings, but is not designed for use by devices to record automatically.
Correct - no point because you already have and this is a new Channel and it is in the process of being incorporated - this takes a series of steps the first being to add to the lineup then other elements would be added and data would start to come in days later
âHospitalâ airing on BBC 2 Thursday (13th February 2020) is incorrectly listed as S4 E5 - should be S5 E1. It wonât schedule the recording as a result.
It would be useful if I could force Plex to record an episode which it incorrectly thinks is already in my library so I could sort out the issue manually afterwards by renaming the file with the correct data.
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Can you easily integrate the Channels content into your Plex library? Iâm also ready to pull the trigger on Plex DVR, as I donât record a lot (maybe 5-6 things a week) but only about half of my booked shows/movies now get recorded at all.
Is it, as I hope, as easy as using the same folder on my Mac (~/Volumes/Recordings/TV) for Channels, as I would for Plex?
Not resolved in time, so didnât record!!! 
At the moment it is correct for next Friday. Lets see if it remains correct for the rest of the week and it records correctly.
Can now see it has been marked as S5 E16. This year (2020), the provider has been marking the season as 5, just the wrong episode numbers compared to other sources. Itâs an odd situation when comparing to C5âs website. Other providers seem to use what TheTVDB shows. (not saying TheTVDB is the 100% source, but matches other places).
Tomorrowâs episode should be S5E20 instead of S5E16 for a metadata match.
Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly - 005 105 11/02/2020 @ 8PM - currently S2E5, should be S2E6. NEW to remain.
^ Can see this is wrong, as the episode after that on the 18th correctly is S2E7.
Thanks as always! 
Freevew Over-the-air EPG has Traffic cops marked as S5 Episode 17.
Dogs Behaving (Very) Badly on Freeview Over-the-air is showing as Series 2 Episode 5.
The main issue appears to be Plex is relying on the series/episode numbers to decide if it should record or not, but that data is never accurate as we can see different sources have different ideas. Hardware PVRs/YouView boxes etc in the UK donât use the series/episode information to decide to record or not, they use an ID to track programs, so donât care and will record just fine.
Fully using the Freeview EPG would be the worst possible case, there are no standards at all to it, each broadcaster does its own thing
Freeview ota doesnt have Traffic Cops properly flagged, Ch.5 are using the description field to put this data, useless
Using the Freeview ID for recording would just cause a mess, all episode would be lumped together as there would be no split per season
I am sure i am not the only one, but i use Plex so i can get my episodes organised correctly, the only way to do this is use a proper EPG solution (schedules direct/gracenote), using the poor Freeview EPG is not a solution
Not sure why you say there are no standards to the Freeview EPG, it operates according to DVB specifications. Using the Freeview EPG on supported equipment everything gets recorded, even if the program goes out late it still records in its entirety, that canât be said of Plex!
As it stands using the Freeview data Iâm able to get all the series recordings in their own folders and organised automatically, and Plex is in many cases fetching other meta data anyway like it does for itâs own recordings.
If your priority is to have hundreds or thousands of episodes all neatly catalogued to keep forever then perhaps you need something more elaborate like Plex promises but seems unable to deliver. However, I suspect a large number of people just want to be able to set a series to record and then watch later then delete it. Besides, what is the point of having a library all neatly catalogued containing a whole season of something if you are missing every other episode?
How do you know this (genuine question)?
How are you doing this?
I like to keep some things, yes, and keep a selection of my favourites that i like re watching
Thing is though, Plex used to do this perfectly before they changed EPG providers, now that it relies on the broadcasters/Tivo, the EPG is no better than the Freeview guide
Any PVR that has the Freeview logo has to comply with the specification to get it. This means they need to implement accurate recording and series linking. The majority of the channels provide their EPG data with unique IDs for a series and program (some donât like adult channels, QVC shopping etc). When we set a recording say for âEastEndersâ we are actually behind the scenes telling the PVR to record anything flagged with the same series ID. The omnibus edition for example will have a different series ID so they are automatically excluded so you donât get duplicates recorded.
The PVR will set a timer for the programs it can see 7 days ahead that have that series ID, this gives it a list of program IDs, the individual episodes. Fifteen minutes before the scheduled time, the PVR tunes into the channel and waits for the program ID to be transmitted in the data stream, this is sent automatically by the broadcaster just before it starts, so no padding is required to cater for it being a bit earlier or later. If it runs over the itâs scheduled time, no matter, it still gets recorded.
Same here. And that library grows slowly over time.
yup. âŠand it simply isnât worth reporting issues here because the problems keep recurring. Plex clearly doesnât care enough to recognise there is a real problem here. @SA2000 cannot win playing whack-a-mole.
So I stopped using Plex to record (and stopped reporting issues) - it is only a player for me now.
cheers.
Is this true of YouView, Virgin, Sky etc as well?
YouView will support accurate recording/series linking, not sure about Virgin and Sky. Freesat I think supports it as that is basically Freeview via a satellite.
Itâs a good system, many times a recording has started with the announcement, âNow later than scheduledâŠâ , and it has automatically started at the later time by itself and extended to the very end. When I started using Plex with a 5 minute padding to avoid clipping because Plex isnât that clever, I was surprised at how annoying it became to have to skip forward to the very start of the program. With accurate recording itâs like someone has cued it up all ready 
Sequencing for the series has been fixed
