Interesting issue with Plex DVR. For two shows (Hot Bench, and Judge Judy; possibly more) that I have set up, Plex will record and then immediately delete an episode if it has previously aired.
The show is set to Record New and Repeat Airings and Keep 5 Episodes, Delete Episodes After Watching - Never, which should mean that it keeps the previous 5 episodes in the hopper regardless of new or repeat airings. For these shows, the new episodes are kept as expected and only repeat airings are recorded/deleted.
In the picture above, Hot Bench and Judge Judy are set to record today, and are not New airings. Based on history, I believe these will be deleted as well.
Logs attached. Please forgive the missing icons. I’m at work and they don’t show up on screen here.
Are the 5 episodes that are being kept “newer” as in original air date? I would expect Plex to keep the newest episodes based on original air date, not record date. Would need logs after the recordings finish and are deleted but that may not even show the determination Plex used for removing the episodes, just that they were removed based on Rule 5 or something like that. If you could provide the current 5 seasons/episode information that is in your library along with the original air date from TheTVDB it might help.
Yes, the five episodes being kept are indeed newer than the ones being deleted. If the rule is “Keep the 5 Newest Episodes” then it is functioning as it should.
If this is the case, the setting is oddly worded, as “Keep 5 Episodes” doesn’t say anything about original airdate being a determining factor.
I had to switch to this setting because “Keep Episodes for the Past XX Days” also kept deleting things by original air date… as I originally hoped that it would account for recording date and not consider air date.
I wish it wouldn’t consider original air date as a factor at all, and record what I tell it to. No other DVR I’ve had does this.
EDIT: I would think the only time air date would matter is for “Record New Episodes Only.”
Thinking about this more… Consider a show that is no longer active:
Roseanne. Let’s say that I have Plex set to record the show, which airs twice daily, and I set it to “Keep 5 Episodes” and I left it that way for several months.
According to the ruleset, I will only ever have the last 5 episodes broadcast? It would never record and keep the first episode of the series if I had anything newer currently in the directory?
That doesn’t seem correct.
The shows are recorded and then removed by Garbage Collection which runs based on your setting choices after recordings are moved into the library. If you want to have more shows in the library for viewing don’t set the options to keep or delete. Enable the option to allow media deletion and after you watch a show you can delete the recording.
@johnm_ColaSC, an excellent suggestion, but it doesn’t quite fulfill what I consider an ideal circumstance.
Honestly, I don’t even really care about these shows. I use them to run in the background sometimes or turn them on when I’m eating and don’t really feel the need to concentrate. Long story short, I like to keep the “hopper” that these things fall into fairly small. Ideally, “Keep 5 Episodes” would automatically purge my library so I didn’t actively have to manage it. Also, “Keep Episodes for the Last XX Days” would work as well, but it seems both are tied to original air date.
Have you tried “Keep Episodes for the Last XX Days” on a show that ended it’s run over a month ago? It keeps nothing. What’s the purpose of that?
It doesn’t function like any other DVR I’ve encountered in this manner. I guess that’s my conundrum.
Example of Keep Episodes for the Last 30 Days:
I just set All In The Family to record earlier today. It has already deleted the previous airing.
I’m still really struggling trying to wrap my head around Plex DVR Keep rules.
What are any scenarios where it would be useful to tie to the original air date over broadcast/record date?
Another add to the issue… If the scheduler sees an upcoming recording that it has no intention of keeping, it should probably not tie up the tuner and CPU resources to record the show, only to immediately delete it afterwards.
Hopefully this has been picked up internally. I agree with you, the behaviour sounds very unintuitive, tying things to the airing date is going to cause a lot of confusion.
