I’ve recently noticed that it seems like TVDB data is being cached for a very long time at Plex’s end in the last few weeks. When a new show or episode is added into Plex, the metadata is grabbed with whatever is available at TVDB at the time. While the examples I provide below will be cases where TVDB did not have any metadata at the time, I also had an example of Twilight Zone (2019) Season 2 where metadata was loaded right away, it just happened to be wrong episode names and descriptions as those were fixed later on. I think it is important to emphasize this as the issue is not that metadata fails to load…it just won’t change when TVDB changes.
As TVDB data is updated, other apps I use get updated with the new metadata after around 24 hours since the TVDB API caches for approximately that long. However, it suddenly seems like Plex refuses to update the data for roughly a week. I used to be able to refresh metadata the next data and see the new title/description/thumbnail appear. It took me a week of trying to refresh the Twilight Zone (2019) before the updates appeared. I tried purging my Plex plugin cache, doing the Plex dance, and even adding it to a new server. It always pulled the wrong metadata. On the other hand, other apps that use TVDB were updated since they only cache their API for 24 hours. This evidence leads me to believe that something has changed at Plex’s end that is resulting in some extreme cache times for TVDB metadata (it might be for other agents as well, but I only tested with TVDB).
Yes, I know the difference. As I mentioned in my OP, I refresh the metadata and am able to see the changes…just multiple days after those changes were made upstream. I have also tested purging the local cache for TVDB data, Plex dancing it, and even adding it to a fresh server. I have also checked with other people who have these shows, and they all confirmed that the same stale metadata is appearing.
In other words, this does not seem to be a user issue. Even more important, based on other apps I use that pull data from TVDB, it does not seem to be an issue at their end (besides the somewhat unreasonable 24 API cache), or at least, not isolated to them only. There seems to be something different with how Plex is pulling the data, and it’s relatively recent as I was able to “fix” the stale metadata fairly quickly just 1 month before (arguably even before their 24 hour cache time was over).
I tried that, but no luck unfortunately. Based on my admittedly limited sample size, it seems like it takes roughly 4 days for the changes at TVDB to make it downstream to Plex now. Not sure if you have experienced this as well (again changes only, not loading the initial metadata). Would be good to see if others are seeing the same stale metadata for the exact same episodes. The few people I know have the episode in my OP have the same issue as well actually (description is there, but episode title has not yet been updated).
Maybe you could shed some light if Plex’s own servers are playing a role in the TVDB agent? Basically, is it
TVDB -> Local
or
TVDB -> Plex Cache/Mirror -> Local
Because it seems like there’s something in the middle that is causing this new cache issue, but I am not sure exactly how the TVDB agent is loading data to begin with.
I’ve also noticed this issue. As an example, a deleted poster on TVDB continues to appear in Plex even after doing the “Plex Dance”. It seems to take a long time before posters that are edited/deleted on TVDB are reflected in Plex. However, newly uploaded posters appear very quickly.
A turnaround of 1 to 2 days is the target, once the new native agents are introduced. The current agent is depending too much on the availability of TheTVDB API.
It can be much longer sometimes, for some series.
