TV series assigned Originally Available date of 12-31-1899/1900 when episodes are correctly marked

Live TV & DVR
1

Server Version#: 1.19.5.3035
Player Version#: 4.37.2
Tuner Make/Model: HDHomeRun CONNECT QUATRO
Guide/Lineup name: Broadcast TV San Diego-LA OTA Broadcast
Using XMLTV?: No
Channel number/Name: 8.2/The CW

Lately I’ve been seeing recorded TV series being marked with an “Originally Available” date of 1899-12-31, which appears to translate to the year 1900 when directories are created and metadata is searched. This seems to lead to the various agents/plugins being unable to retrieve posters/banners/fanart automatically when shows are recorded. The “Originally Available” date for the individual episodes are all correct, it’s just the series date that’s wrong, so it leads me to think that the episode data coming from the guide is fine.

An example is a regular daily airing of Seinfeld, where the latest recorded episode is The Junior Mint. On the episode info page, the Released date is March 18, 1993 and that same date shows up as the Originally Available date when I click “edit”.

If I click Seinfeld instead to get the show page, the subtext says “1900” and clicking “edit” shows an Originally Available date of 1899-12-31. If, while on the show page, I click the “More” option and select “Fix Match…”, it initially tells me “No matches found”. If I select “Auto Match” and either “The TVDB” or “The Movie Database”, both quickly pull up the correct “Originally Available” date of 1989-07-05 (when the series premiered), and all fanart/backgrounds are retrieved.

I have “The TVDB” configured as the agent for the library where my DVR shows are stored, and Settings->Agents->Shows->TheTVDB has “TheTVDB” at the top of the sort list. I’ve tried changing the order of the search sites with no improvement. I’ve also tried deleting and re-adding Seinfeld to my DVR Schedule, set to Any Channel, Any Air Time. No luck, still the same behavior as above. When I manually fix the data as described and delete the show, the data for the show will again be incorrect when the next show is recorded; manually fixing the data doesn’t seem to retain that data for future airings.

I’ve seen exactly the same behavior with Nova recorded on my local PBS station, so it’s not limited to a show or channel.

I’m trying to figure out how to start debugging this. Is it likely that the problem originates when I schedule the show in the DVR and before a show is even recorded? I’m confused about why the show has an incorrect premiere date, but the episode is correct, and why selecting auto-match on the show immediately corrects the info, but it isn’t being done automatically.

In the logs, I just deleted the subscription for Seinfeld and re-created it. I already see a reference to 1900 (year%5D=1900):

Jul 12, 2020 09:45:01.955 [0x7fac3cff9700] DEBUG - Request: [192.168.1.207:60982 (Allowed Network (Subnet))] POST /media/subscriptions?prefs%5Bonly
NewAirings%5D=1&prefs%5BminVideoQuality%5D=0&prefs%5BreplaceLowerQuality%5D=false&prefs%5BrecordPartials%5D=true&prefs%5BstartOffsetMinutes%5D=1&pr
efs%5BendOffsetMinutes%5D=3&prefs%5BlineupChannel%5D=&prefs%5BstartTimeslot%5D=-1&prefs%5BcomskipEnabled%5D=-1&prefs%5BcomskipMethod%5D=-1&prefs%5B
oneShot%5D=false&prefs%5BremoteMedia%5D=false&prefs%5BautoDeletionItemPolicyUnwatchedLibrary%5D=0&prefs%5BautoDeletionItemPolicyWatchedLibrary%5D=0
&targetLibrarySectionID=7&targetSectionLocationID=&includeGrabs=1&hints%5Bguid%5D=plex%3A%2F%2Fshow%2F5cffa164e56e71001efa86ac&hints%5BratingKey%5D
=plex%253A%252F%252Fshow%252F5cffa164e56e71001efa86ac&hints%5Bthumb%5D=http%3A%2F%2Fcps-static%2Erovicorp%2Ecom%2F2%2FOpen%2FSony_Pictures_Televisi
on_369%2FProgram%2F4825%2FSeinfeld-Showcard2x3%2Ejpg&hints%5Btitle%5D=Seinfeld&hints%5Btype%5D=2&hints%5Byear%5D=1900&params%5BairingChannels%5D=8%
25252E2%253D8%25252E2%252520CWHD%252520%252528CW%252529&params%5BairingTimes%5D=1594697400%252C1594620000%252C1595140200%252C1594710000&params%5Bli
braryType%5D=2&params%5BmediaProviderID%5D=6&type=2 (11 live) TLS GZIP Signed-in Token (rccoleman)

Happy to provide logs as needed.

2

FWIW, I also have Sienfeld recording as (1900).

I haven’t looked into it but assumed it was due to the information in the EPG. I’m using the Plex San Francisco EPG.

3

Thank you for raising this. This goes back to when there were errors in our provider data for some TV Show year

We will get it fixed.

4

Thanks so much! It used to work, and I’d like to say that this started happening with the last few months.

5

This has been fixed now. An EPG refresh should switch it to 1989 (at the TV Show level)

6

Will I need to wait for another episode to record? I tried refreshing metadata after refreshing the EPG and it didn’t change the year for my Seinfeld recording, but as before, using “Fix Match…” and selecting The TVDB fixed it right away.

I have recordings of both Seinfeld and Penn and Teller: Fool Us (both from The CW) recorded, both were suffering from a lack of auto-matching at the show level, and both were fixed by using “Fix Match…”. In contrast to Seinfeld, P&T had the correct show premiere date (2011), so I wonder if I’m seeing a secondary issue where auto-matching isn’t happening as expected. I originally thought that it was due to the incorrect year for Seinfeld, but now I have a counterpoint to that. More specifically, I get the correct vertical “cover art” for these shows after recording, but I’m missing all posters, backgrounds, banners, and any sort of fanart until I go manually “Fix Match…” When I first go into “Fix Match…”, it tells me there are no results. If I then select either The TVDB or The Movie Database, it finds one right away and retrieves all of those artifacts.

7

The fix is to the EPG data for new airings. It may be picking up what is in the library already - if you delete the schedule for the series and re-create it - it may then record into Seinfeld 1989 directory

8

Ok, I deleted and recreated the scheduled series and I’ll see what happens tonight. I’ll also do some more research on the other issue that I mentioned and probably open a new thread.

Thanks for your help!

9

Is there a recommended way to integrate old episodes with the wrong year and new episodes with the correct year?

I’m assuming new episodes will be in a new folder with the correct year in the folder name, so I’d have to Plex dance the old episodes into the new folder and would lose the metadata for the old episodes.

10

I would move the files into the directory structure and re-name any that have 1900 or 1899

For info - earlier this year we stopped auto matching recordings to thetvdb because the mismatching was leading to loss of recordings or getting repeat recordings - that was announced here EPG metadata is now retained for DVR recordings - With dedicated DVR libraries and no shows previously matched to thetvdb in those DVR recording libraries, the EPG metadata would then be preserved.

11

Oh, is that why I’m not automatically getting my TV show posters, backgrounds, banners, etc. downloaded automatically after recording, but it works fine when I do a manual search with the same parameters? I just posted here with more detail and logs.

It looks like that’s the source of the problem that I described there, and why it used to work in the past. It seems like in choosing not to prefer bad matches with the TVDB, we’ve also lost the automatic downloading of all the additional fanart, backgrounds, posters, banners, etc.?

12

Unfortunately yes.

The loss of recordings was considered a more important issue to avoid. Also sometimes some episodes were recorded repeatedly because when thetvdb matching was done there were changes which meant that the recording was not found in the library because it was different after the matching with thetvdb

13

I see. My first reaction is to download artifacts for the match and don’t change the episode name/number/etc., but I suppose that would sometimes pull stuff that doesn’t match. Do the posters, banners, backgrounds, etc. all come from thetvdb? I’m not sure what comes from there vs. fanart or any other sources, and whether there could be some sort of compromise that doesn’t affect future recordings.

14

Ah, I remember reading about that but I was still to new to Plex and the DVR to fully understand the ramifications.

It’s too bad there isn’t a way to change the files and preserve the metadata. I’ve been struggling with Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and episodes not always matching thetvdb or IMDb. But I haven’t changed them assuming if I did, I’d miss the episodes I renamed it from because PBS didn’t have them labeled correctly in the guide. Are there any best practices for this situation, or just wait until the set is complete and relabel and manually match then?

And as always, really appreciate your help climbing the Plex learning curve :slight_smile:

15

I’m hopeful that this, which saves the metadata artifacts locally, will grab the posters, backgrounds, & banners and store them locally, so that future recorded shows will get them automatically. So, manual match once to save the series data, and then read it locally in the future. It also looks like Plex won’t delete a directory structure when you delete the episodes if there are other files in the directories, so the artifacts should persist even when all recorded episodes are gone.

Seems promising?

16

Had to Plex dance my Seinfeld episode last night after some issues switching the library from UNC path to using network drive path.

Changing the year on the filenames was a hassle but when I added them back in Plex recognized the show and episodes correctly and downloaded all the metadata. Nice to see it work so smoothly.

17

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