We 100% need this. If not for the filenames, then atleast for the folders. The old TVDB agent refuses to pick up half my series because I include the year in the name when I’m not supposed to. I don’t think it should just be allowed, but required so it matches movies (and maybe even have the ability to eventually do a mixed movie/TV library!).
I think it’s stupid to tie naming convention to depend on TVDB solely. Why not just standardize to require year in naming?
What do you mean? Show Name (YEAR) is the standard for the folder of the shows. The files don’t matter because it identifies by the folder. But Re Zero (2016), Being Human (2008), The Ghost Busters (1975), Fraggle Rock (1987) are the standard & usually match fine. When I have a show not match, which has been happening more often lately, it’s because for some reason Plex recognizes the name as Show (YEAR) & the year as (1900) but that happens less often than not
I was also confused. I have lots of shows, all using Show (Year) format and they match nicely on a fresh install using TVDB.
Hmm. All those shows you listed have multiple entries listed on TVDB, so maybe the year is getting used as a differentiator and helping it match, but the problem is the cases where the year is NOT necessary. I have a significant amount of shows that don’t match on my server, my naming convention is not exactly what Plex recommends, but it’s very close:
My Naming Convention: Show Name (Year)/Show Name Season XX/Show Name - SXXEYY
The only thing different from Plex’s recommended convention is the (Year) and Show Name Season XX as opposed to Season XX. This convention succeeds on a lot of items, and fails on a lot more, and I’m not really sure what to do.
Here’s are some examples that failed:
City So Real (2020)/City So Real Season 01/City So Real - S01E01
Cristela (2014)/Cristela Season 01/Cristela - S01E01
Southcliffe (2013)/Southcliffe Season 01/Southcliffe - S01E01
Case Histories (2011)/Case Histories Season 01/Case Histories - S01E01
Which means there are only two variables in play here, the show name before Season XX and the year. So I tested it on a fresh installation, latest public PMS, TVDB, fresh library (on both Windows and Linux).
Taking out the year in all 3 cases Cristela, Southcliffe, and Case Histories led to an instant match on a rescan. City So Real (2020) never matched for me, presumably because it’s a 2020 show, and those rarely match no matter what anyway for some reason.
Note: Taking out the second variable (Show Name in the season folder) did not change anything, nor help matching.
If y’all cannot confirm this behaviour with any of these series, then I’ll open a separate thread as a bug report with logs, but afaik, this is intended Plex behaviour because I added the year, and so it looks to TVDB for Cristela (2014) instead of Cristela, which I think is absolutely dumb.
It should look for Cristela (2014), if no match, then strip year and look for Cristela. Fix matching brings up only 1 result often with 100% accuracy and the fact that Plex doesn’t just match it is ???
Now that I look at it many do, I included Being Human because I have 2 of that one but the others are all things I only have 1 of. Arrow, Legends Of Tomorrow, Dead Pixels, I’m not at my computer right now so I can’t add the years, but I use years always. I’ve even had a year be off by a year from what it matched as more than once without an issue, odd because I pulled them at random. But I do every show that way & up until a month or so ago the matched correctly 9 out of 10 times. Recently I’ve had it mess up more than it used to but that’s happened before & eventually fixed itself, so I always assumed it was a personal server issue but now I’m not sure.
So I really like the new Movie agent, but before I give this a spin, I wanted to check a few things.
On 2a, I note above that the agent might not use the year naming in folders by default, however that has been a common way to disambiguate common show names.
The most recent famous example of 2b is Money Heist or La casa de papel. Which Netflix took over (so recent seasons are originated by them, but they also went back and recut the show, thus not only are the air dates different the actual show is different, different episodes with different content in the episodes (they did not simply turn long episodes into 2 shorter ones).
Hi, I love the new scanner but I saw that actors who only have an image on the imdb and not on the tvdb or themoviedb don’t have an image on Plex. Is this a bug or should I make a feature suggestion for this?
I’m so glad there’s a new TV agent now!
Here are some of the things I hope it supports
Faster scanning et al. is always welcome if it’s anything like the plex movie agent which has been fantastic for me so far.
Just to talk a little about point 3, this has been a major concern for me, and I hope it doesn’t get worse with the new agent with yet another step in the middle TVDB > Plex Cache > Updated Metadata matching
You’re not the 1st one I’ve heard say this, & it seems to have been a problem I’ve run into more often recently but Plex DOES support year in the folders & is the way DVR recordings work. On that note I just noticed earlier today that the recording from yesterday of The Bachelor, which was recorded in Plex & named by Plex as The Bachelor (2002) didn’t have a poster, when I went to Fix Match it was the same problem I’ve been running into more & more, when you goto Search Options it had the name as The Bachelor (2002) & the year with a blank. So since that was named BY Plex & had the same problem it’s definitely a bug
Some feedback on the new TV Agent:
For context my TV library size is 354 shows with 35,660 episodes. First scan took approx 50 minutes to scan complete, downloading all metadata. Second scan (refresh) completed in approx 15 minutes. Its godly fast!
I typically get my posters, art etc… locally which I know is not working yet but overall the new agent seems to do a good job at its default content. Don’t think DVD order is working either as lost and terra nova are not right.
Almost everything was matched correct with a couple of exceptions (all of these are auto picked up correctly with TVDB agent with the exception of the first one):
Directed by metadata at the episodes level has been downloaded fixing this very long running bug, very happy to see this.
Cast member list might need to be looked into. Using Game of Thrones as an example if I access the WebUI (Version 4.49.2) it only shows main cast members which is a very short cut down list. However, if I go to say S01E01 using the Plex Media Player 2.58 (with Version 4.29.2) I can see cast at the episode level. I guess the older playing is accessing an API it probably should not 
The Walking Dead is another good example of the cast list being inaccurate for the show of its nature, its too small.
Cast avatars are really nice and generic now, love this
I don’t see a duplicate filter for TV shows (like we have for movies). May help folks find issues when they move to the new agent.
Outstanding work, I really look forward to when this comes online in the main builds for us to use.
Forum Preview version 1.21.2.3883-702fd07e3
(links have been updated in the first post)
Fixes:
Added:
Thanks! I’ll go through this feedback tomorrow morning. And yes, we’re still working on supporting alternate season ordering.
Season summaries… Wow, will take a look tomorrow 
The season titles is a pretty cool feature to implement, so cool to hear that is being implemented.
-Shark2k
I’ve installed plexmediaserver-1.21.2.3883-702fd07e3.x86_64.rpm and I don’t see this option when creating a library. Did it make it into the build ?
When creating the library, change the agent to “Plex TV”, do not change the scanner, that will change automatically. Once you change the agent, you should see the available options change and the one for the season title should be there.
The bundled web version should choose the new agent by default so this shouldn’t be a problem unless you change it.
Thanks – that was the problem. I had changed the scanner first which I guess is a bug as it does not change the settings. Anyhow, all good now thanks. Will report back in a few hours after some testing.
Use the bundle web app for testing (http://127.0.0.1:32400/web). Some things aren’t yet part of the hosted version.
