Missing Episodes are shown for results without an air date

[brothom 177]

I've been going back and forth with the meta data providers (tmdb, tvdb, etc) about "empty" episodes being added without an air date which are consequentually detected as "missing episodes" within Emby somehow. 

An example would be House of the Dragon - s03e01.
This is shown as a missing episode eventhough it's empty and has no air date:

https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/94997-house-of-the-dragon/season/3/episode/1

Is there something we can do to prevent these episodes from showing up as missing episodes? I had the issue before where "someone" had added Wednesday Season 03 to TheMovieDB (eventhough there's nothing known about it yet) and those items immediately showed up under "Missing Episodes".

I prefer to use the "Missing Episodes" feature because it prevents me looking up in a bunch of repositories if something has aired or not.
Thanks in advance!

[Luke 42077]

Hi, what metadata fetchers are enabled on the library and in what order?

[Happy2Play 9780]

6 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, what metadata fetchers are enabled on the library and in what order?

Make TMDB your primary and you see this.  You can test on just one show. 

 But with TVDB as primary you do not see the issue.

Edited December 8, 2025 by Happy2Play

[brothom 177]

2 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Make TMDB your primary and you see this.  You can test on just one show. 

 But with TVDB as primary you do not see the issue.

Yep, that's the reproduction case!

Tvdb has many other issues which is why I prefer tmdb. But looking closer at the issue it boils down to a missing air date apparently. Maybe we can work with that somehow to prevent false positives also coming from other providers with brackish data.

[Happy2Play 9780]

2 minutes ago, brothom said:

Yep, that's the reproduction case!

Tvdb has many other issues which is why I prefer tmdb. But looking closer at the issue it boils down to a missing air date apparently. Maybe we can work with that somehow to prevent false positives also coming from other providers with brackish data.

Since it was just added to the plugin I will guess there may be other quirks like this.  May have to look at what the api is returning also.

Edited December 8, 2025 by Happy2Play

[brothom 177]

1 minute ago, Happy2Play said:

Since it was just added to the plugin I will guess there may be other quirks like this.

Hm that also explains other random seasons and episodes appearing. 

Is this plugin maintained by Emby or a third party?

[Happy2Play 9780]

1 minute ago, brothom said:

Hm that also explains other random seasons and episodes appearing. 

Is this plugin maintained by Emby or a third party?

Emby

 

[Happy2Play 9780]

Looks like Luke needs to exclude missing air_date or have them fall under Upcoming but that I think only applies to individual Missing reports.

from my example

            "air_date": "2024-08-04T00:00:00.0000000Z",
            "episode_number": 8,
            "name": "The Queen Who Ever Was",
            "overview": "As Aemond becomes more volatile, Larys plots an escape, and Alicent grows more concerned about Helaena's safety. Flush with new power, Rhaenyra looks to press her advantage.",
            "id": 5234730,
            "production_code": "",
            "season_number": 2,
            "still_path": "/1XuMwNuO3BKUXFCQCOoC4qcdvKi.jpg",
            "vote_average": 6.612,

 

            "episode_number": 1,
            "name": "Episode 1",
            "overview": "",
            "id": 6086485,
            "production_code": "",
            "season_number": 3,
            "vote_average": 0,
            "vote_count": 0

 

Edited December 8, 2025 by Happy2Play

[brothom 177]

23 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Looks like Luke needs to exclude missing air_date or have them fall under Upcoming but that I think only applies to individual Missing reports.

They can't really fall under "Upcoming" either I suppose, because there is no date to compare with.
Maybe it would be better to have an option to exclude or ignore entries from metadata providers when their date is empty/null. I can see this happening with other providers as well and not just themoviedb.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Yes as that has somewhat been an issue with users entering future incomplete data.

[Happy2Play 9780]

Just like one could put Season 3 for 2026 and Season 4 for 2028 per IMDB.  But almost all missing air_dates will be Upcoming/Future.  But yes the best bet would protentially ignore/exclude this partial api info.

Edited December 8, 2025 by Happy2Play

[brothom 177]

17 minutes ago, Happy2Play said:

Just like one could put Season 3 for 2026 and Season 4 for 2028 per IMDB.  But almost all missing air_dates will be Upcoming/Future.  But yes the best bet would protentially ignore/exclude this partial api info.

Agreed. Thanks for checking this out and reproducing it.