Wrong date on TV shows

[mattisam 8]

I have a strange issue where the date on imported shows and even recordings are the date prior to the correct date.

Example, a show aired on sunday evening the 6th, but Emby shows it as the 5th. Recordings from live tv are the same, a show recorded today shows the prior day. Its all shows I have (at least recent ones I can compare to a TV Guide).

One such show is The Price Is Right, recorded and aired today the 8th, but Emby shows the 7th. The file system reports the date is today the 8th as well.

System time is correct, in UTC time, confirmed with an online clock. It is the same looking at them via a browser, android or Roku app. All devices have the correct time on them. Other things are correct, like the EPG shows the correct time line for my local time and recording a live show goes off fine and on time. The same result using a different user account on the server.

I know upstream data like from TVDB can be wrong, but it seems to be the same on everything I have checked. For the mentioned episode 128 of The Price is Right, the data on TVDB website is correct, today the 8th.

Debian Linux 12, Emby 4.8.11.0. System is up to date. I rebooted the server and restarted Emby server a few times.

Edited April 8 by mattisam
Mistyped a date

[mattisam 8]

It is also on music, Music Brainz shows an album as being released on Feb 14th, but in Emby it shows Feb 13th.

[marriedman 53]

Wild guess here, the timestamps might be in windows format instead. I have an app on my phone that includes timestamps for events when exporting data. When importing the CSV into Excel, the timestamps are off by 4 hours I think. I looked it up years ago and it had something to do with each OS definition of an epoch. And I think UNIX systems use a modifier from GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), e.g. +4 hours for Eastern Time.

Like I said, wild guess but that might be something to look into.

[mattisam 8]

Unix/Linux use UTC and the epoch is Jan 1st 1970. I am 5 or 6 hours difference between UTC and my time. Windows I think uses some time in the 1600s for some reason. The time offset is the same on several browsers on a Windows 11/10 computer, a Linux Mint browser, as well as on android and Roku clients, all in the same time zone and time.

The odd thing is the EPG for live tv always shows me the correct time frame and the vertical line showing where you are in episodes time wise is correct. So its getting the correct time zone there from the browser/roku/android client. On the server side if you set it to record a show from live tv, it goes off on time without a hitch on time.

There is something that changed because it was correct. So maybe a recent update or maybe an update of a plugin on the server. I really dont know.

The odd thing is it impacts almost all sections, TV Shows, Music and Recorded TV. It does not do anything I can see on Movies since it just gives  the year, not the full date.

I did try to change the "Date time locale" under preferences to English (United States) from its default of auto and there was no change.

[mattisam 8]

Looking into this more, I ran:

cat /var/log/dpkg.log |grep tzdata
2025-04-01 22:00:00 upgrade tzdata:all 2025a-0+deb12u1 2025b-0+deb12u1

So the TZdata package was updated recently. I went down this rabbit hole to a dead end. I ran:

TZ=America/Chicago date
Wed Apr  9 07:40:43 PM CDT 2025

and the time is correct for my time zone. I did a few other time zones and they are right. So I dont think its a change in tzdata.

I also changed the timezone and time on a windows 10 computer. The time on recordings/shows/music was still a day off. Live TV showed the correct info and time for the new time zone, proving it is getting the correct info from the browser for the users time zone.

I am pretty sure it is not an OS issue at this time, but something Emby is doing when calculating the date to display for shows.

[mattisam 8]

So I did a test. I fired up a brand new emby install on a Debian 11 machine. I copied a show over to it, and it has the right date. I replicated the settings that are enabled/disabled for meta data downloaders, such as the order of the downloaders, enabled/disabled, etc. I then did a library scan and then a few files I did the "Refresh MetaData" option on the file and selected "Replace all metadata". This still shows the wrong data.

I dont think its the meta data downloaders since I replicated the settings, and music uses a different source for data than tv anyways and it has issues as well.

The only difference is Debian 11 vs 12. tzdata I talked about before is the same version.

 

[mattisam 8]

So I installed Emby on a Debian 12 computer that has not been updated in some time. Put some media on it and dates are right. Updated the system, and dates are still right. Added new media and those are correct. So this goes against what I was saying before that I think it is an issues with Debian 12. This new machine is fine. So it is some setting in Emby on my main server that is causing it. I hope someone with more knowledge at Emby HQ can chime in.

[mattisam 8]

I did some more digging, and found this post:

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/14071-dates-displayed-a-day-earlier-in-metadata-editor/

This person from some time ago had an issue with the birth dates being a day off for actors.

So I checked the .nfo files for shows, and it does show the correct date. In the meta data editor in emby it shows the date the day before, and as stated before, the entry in emby is the day before. Still researching.

[mattisam 8]

One difference between the test units and this server is the server is in UTC time, where the test machines are in Central.

I set the server to central time (America/Chicago) and rescanned meta data for a show and the date is correct. I changed back to UTC, rescanned meta data and its wrong again.

I was able to replicate this error with my test server, set it to UTC and the date is wrong on files, move it back to Central and all is well.

I need help from the Emby devs on this one.

[Happy2Play 9397]

1 minute ago, mattisam said:

One difference between the test units and this server is the server is in UTC time, where the test machines are in Central.

I set the server to central time (America/Chicago) and rescanned meta data for a show and the date is correct. I changed back to UTC, rescanned meta data and its wrong again.

I was able to replicate this error with my test server, set it to UTC and the date is wrong on files, move it back to Central and all is well.

I need help from the Emby devs on this one.

But once imported into database you cannot change the existing timestamp so rescanning will not change anything.  I would assume one has to remove the content and readd it.  But Luke will have to comment on this as it comes up every so often on specific setups.

[mattisam 8]

Changing the timezone to central and rescanning the metadata on the show does fix the error. Changing back to UTC and rescanning it and the error is back. My guess is it is an issue calculating off of UTC time.

Right now I set the server time to central and doing the scheduled task, "Scan MetaData Folder". I hope this will fix it for all files so I dont have to go to each one and refresh meta data.

Leaving the machine in Central time is not ideal, but at least a work around for now.

[mattisam 8]

The Scan MetaData folder scheduled task did not fix all the entries, nor Scan Media Library task after changing to Central time.

I did a Refresh Metadata on the TvShows library, wishing it will update all the entries, but for some reason it stopped at 90%. Looking at the logs, its still going with updates every second. So I will let it wait.

Edited April 10 by mattisam

[mattisam 8]

I let it run and it took a very long time. It did complete. I also scanned the Recordings section as well. It did not update the dates to the correct one. If I do it manually on each item it works. Is there a way to fix this for all so I dont have to do each file?

 

[mattisam 8]

Well I thought we were good. A show recorded today with the time zone set as central still shows yesterdays date. Can Emby techs/admins please respond?

[Luke 39811]

Hi, usually this is caused by the timezone not being set correctly on the server machine and/or the device that you're viewing on.

Why - the server will store values in utc, so it needs to be able to accurately convert to and from local time.

But the Emby app you're viewing from will then take that utc value and convert it to it's own local time based on the timezone of the client device.

[mattisam 8]

I have tried the time zone on the server as UTC and central. For the client, I have tried central time as well as a few others. Its the same on the android client, web based or Roku. Tried Windows 10, 11 and a Linux Mint desktop for web based. Tried different browsers. Live TV shows the correct time, so it is getting the correct info there from the client OS. But for TV Shows, Recordings and Music its a day off.

[mattisam 8]

dates are also off by one on actors profiles. So it seems to be everything but EPG and recording on IPTV.

[mattisam 8]

Newly added shows (tv shows and recordings) now have the correct date and I dont know why as I have not changed any settings on the server or client, nor ran system updates. Older items still show the incorrect date.

[mattisam 8]

So rescanning meta data on each library has fixed it to the correct date. So I am working now, and that is good. But I do not know why. Server has not been rebooted, no updates to the server OS or Emby. There was the plugin "tvdb" that said it was updated today, but I have not restarted Emby server yet, and the corrected dates started appearing before that hit. So there is no reason I can tell that caused it to fix itsself, and no way to prevent it from happening again.