for about half a year or so (possibly more), I have to recreate my recording schedules for series every once in a while, because they simply “stop”. Plex claims there are no future episodes, which is entirely not true, and no longer records new episodes.
When checking the EPG, I can see new episodes there.
This has been bugging me for a while now. I’ve seen some older threads about this very issue going back as far as 2017, but none of them were ever really picked up. It’s 2025 now and the problem is still around. It probably never received any developer attention?
Most of the time it is user error, you will need to provide debug logs that covers a specific example to isolate the problem.
Off the top of my head here are a few things that could present as this:
Series is a continuation or a reboot so it gets new ID after you scheduled it.
Local Station, Gracenote or Plex makes a ID change.
A show is New when first aired but due to tuner/scheduling conflict not recorded and not new when rebroadcast later in the day and won’t record due to settings set to new only. This happens a lot with PBS where it is first aired on a station I don’t receive and later on my local station.
I’m having the same exact issue, and it’s my wife’s soaps, and she’s about to have my head on a silver platter! Running debug logging for Monday 1/6, we’ll see what happens then…
Can you provide a bit more information? It may help, if indirectly, by at least establishing patterns or common configurations for those experiencing issues like this.
What Plex Media Server version are you currently using?
What host platform is PMS installed on (Mac, Linux, Windows, etc…)?
What brand and model tuner are you using?
What is your guide data source (Plex-provided or XMLTV file)?
Is this problem exclusive to series you’ve set to record new episodes only, or does it occur with those “New and Repeat Airings” as well?
Do you have any advanced recording parameters set for these series, such as limiting to a specific airing time or channel?
Importantly, how do you recover from this? Are you able to just delete the recording schedule for a particular series and recreate it?
As @pl_5309 noted, the DVR scheduling function works recording a particular ID. If that ID changes, for whatever reason, it’s considered a different series and therefore does not get recorded. One notable instance of this occurring was several years ago when Plex changed their upstream guide data source back to Gracenote from the then current provider. As those providers had different IDs for the series, all users had to delete their current scheduled recordings and recreate them.
There have been other reasons for this occurring over the years (smaller regional changes to guide data). If this is happening to you regularly, there is likely something more fundamental causing it.
I’ve been seeing this across different versions of PMS. If memory serves right, it started maybe half a year ago, maybe longer.
For what it’s worth:
Current PMS version: 1.41.3.9314 (Plex Pass)
Running on Linux (official Plex docker container)
Tuner: HD Homerun EXPAND
Guide Source: Plex
The problem is not exclusive to any particular recording setting like new episodes only. I tried every conceivable combination of recording settings to see if it is tied to one in particular, but the problem occurs under any of them.
To recover, I delete the schedule and set it up again fresh. Then it works for a couple of weeks before it stops recording again.
If it is related to the series ID, that would make sense, but I wouldn’t know why it would keep changing so frequently.
A possible reason:
The recording schedule is not only tied to the generalized title of the show.
It rather uses a combination of title and release year (and maybe even additional data from the EPG). This is done to try and disambiguate between different shows of the same title.
It all depends on the EPG data. It wouldn’t surprise me if the EPG source of plex has slightly changed the data for certain shows over the years.
They (Gracenote) in turn are dependent on the data they get from the various tv stations.
It takes only the change of a single character of the title, or the addition or omission of the release year and Plex is suddenly considering the show as a different one.
The EPG data are not linked to a central database, which could ensure the safe match with a unique ID number. (i.e. like it is done in a regular movie or tv show library in Plex)
Can you provide a series to which this occurs regularly (preferably space sci-fi ). I wouldn’t mind adding it to my recording schedule to see if the same problem occurs for me. In that same vein, does it occur more commonly with any particular series? Or affect everything you record (either at the same time or spread out)?
Fair enough. That may be a clue in-and-of itself. Perhaps it’s a regional issue?
One other quick thought: It might be worth having a look at before and after dumps of the ‘media_subscriptions’ table of your Plex database the next time this occurs. If configured and working properly, you’ll have database backups in your Plex data folder (in the ‘Plug-in Support/Databases’ sub-directory). You could compare the subscriptions for an affected item in a backup from when it worked to after to see if there is any obvious difference (other than the creation timestamp). Just a thought.
Edit: I think it would likely be the ‘extra_data’ column of the above-mentioned table which would be of most interest.
). I wouldn’t mind adding it to my recording schedule to see if the same problem occurs for me. In that same vein, does it occur more commonly with any particular series? Or affect everything you record (either at the same time or spread out)?
