Are you having issues with a Kodi add-on streaming the wrong episode or even the wrong series?
Don’t worry, there are ways to fix it.
In this post, I’ll cover the reasons why this happens and some tips to resolve the problem.
The basis for this post comes from a question from a reader (like you) in the Forum. The gist is this…
Kirsty was watching a new TV show that just started airing. Only the first couple episodes have aired. She watched the first episode just fine, but then when she tried watching the 2nd episode, it would either play the first episode again or it would play an entirely different TV series with the same (or similar) name. She wanted to know how to fix this issue.
There’s kind of a lot to unpack in this issue, so I’m writing this post so hopefully I can help others who run into the same problem.
Why Does The Kodi Add-on Play the Wrong Episode or Series?
First, I’m going to explain why it does what it does.
These Kodi streaming add-ons are built to scrape the Internet for video links that are available to be streamed by using the TV show name, season number, episode number, and sometimes episode name.
The add-on gets this information by using TVDB which is online database of meta data about every episode of every TV show.
When you find the episode you want to watch, it uses that episode’s meta data to send to the scrapers. Scrapers take that data and search for video links. They usually return a bunch of links, but sometimes they are not all accurate.
Reasons why scrapers find the wrong links:
- Mislabeled file names on the hosted videos – People make mistakes. Sometimes videos are name inaccurately before being uploaded to hosters. That can result in the wrong video coming up in the scraper’s search.
- TV show names that are too similar – There are many shows that are named very similar if not identical to another show. For instance, there are many TV shows called “Dracula”. The only way they get it right is when the year the show started is in the title of the filename.
- Episode is too new – Just because an episode shows up in your Kodi add-on doesn’t necessarily mean it’s ready to stream. If it’s still the same day that the show airs, there probably hasn’t been enough time for someone to record it and upload it to a host. As a result if you try watching an episode that hasn’t aired yet, you’re bound to get links that are not what you’re looking for because what you’re looking for doesn’t exist on the Internet yet.
Because of these reasons, there are some tips for you to fix this issue when you get the wrong episode playing.
Use Play Using Instead of Auto-play
Most add-ons ship with auto-play enabled which means you simply select a show and it search for it and starts playing when it finds enough links.
When the wrong episode plays, that just means the first link was wrong. But, you can easily see the whole list of links and try each one for yourself until you find a good one.
To get the list of links instead of auto-playing, open the context menu with your episode highlighted, and select “Play using…”
How to open the context menu? Here are some options depending on how interact with Kodi:
- Press the menu button on your remote
- Or press the “c” key on your keyboard
- Or long-press the link on your touch screen
Once you select “Play using…”, the add-on with search for links and then present them to you in a list. Now, you can select each one to try them all out until you find one that works correctly.
Wait Until After the Episode Airs
This one can be hard, but sometimes you just gotta be patient. Like I mentioned earlier, sometimes the show simply hasn’t aired yet or there hasn’t been enough time for people to upload to servers to be available to stream.
The amount of time you need to wait varies a lot depending on how popular the show is. Extremely popular shows are usually available to stream within an hour after the show finished airing. But for other less popular shows, you might need to wait until the day after the episode aired.
Use a Debrid Provider for Higher Quality Links
I’ve said it over and over again, but subscribing to Real-Debrid or Premiumize is a game-changer for Kodi streaming. The links you get have better accuracy and higher bandwidth (which means less buffering).
Before subscribing to Real-Debrid, I kept auto-play off on my add-ons because I couldn’t rely on auto-play to select a good link. But after setting up Real-Debrid, I only use auto-play and rarely ever have issues.
Did This Help?
I really hope this post has helped you. If so, please let me know in the comments which part helped you the most.
If you’re still having an issue, leave a comment explaining your problem and what you’ve tried. I like to help.
Thanks!
How can I get Law & Order on Kodi. All I seem to be able to get is SVU. I hate that show. I used to be able to get the original L&O just fine and binge-watched the whole thing. I then set it aside to give it a break. Now, I want to watch it again but can’t get it. Makes no sense.
Which add-on are you using? Are you subscribed to Real-Debrid?
Actually, I just tried it myself. There some free links that didn’t work, but then there were lots of premium links, but they were all torrents. So, one of them downloaded to my Real-Debrid cloud and then started to play. Just like you said, it started playing an SVU episode.
I guess there are not as many hosters these days as there used to be, so some shows (especially ones that are 30 years old) are harder to find.
Addons I use are Tempest, Exodus, The Crew, Seren. None of them do the job. So what you’re saying is – nothing can be done. I find that so hard to believe. Keep trying. There has to be a solution.
All those add-ons do the same thing, scrape the internet for video links. If those videos aren’t hosted anywhere publicly, then there’s not much they can do. I would suggest you try the “Play using…” feature under the context menu when highlighting an episode, and then try each link to see if one of them is the one you want.
If you want to continue using auto play I have found that it is usually the same link that miss plays wrong episodes. If you go into hoster settings and disable the bad hosts then the problem goes away!
Good point!
I have an old PC, I long hold down mouse & there’s no choice for Play Using. There’s only Auto Play. So I can’t try that. ???
Also I have Premium RD, I have settings for 1080 or usually 720, depends because of the age of my PC, some are too fast for it. I use The Crew, & it deletes many choices when searching & mostly what’s left are 1 or 2, 720s & the rest SDs, of the same provider which most always causes the problems of wrong episode. I have toggled my RD from cloud to automatic, but doesn’t seem to make a difference.
Can you shed any light?
Vicky, are all of the links showing the wrong episode? Is it an old or obscure show?
Hi all,
After handling the most basic issues, namely temporally changing “Auto-Play” to “Directory” or using “Play as…” as suggested before; and using a paid source for your “sources” like Real-Debrid, my newly discovered, nearly full-proof fix to find the right episodes for older, but popular shows such as “Law and Order” or in my case “House”, is to initially start NOT with first episode of the first season, like you mentioned (and I was trying), but instead choose the last episode from the last season!
Most of the incorrect, but similarly named, (or newer shows) will not have have reached episodes in for example the 8th season.
So start with that last episode and choose the first (top) stream result. If it’s wrong and plays “Tiny House” or “House of Horrors” instead of “House”, stop the show, and choose the next stream.
Carefully watch the number of the stream that the plug-in is trying to start because you will notice if the stream you choose is not fast enough or valid, the plug-in will automatically choose the next one; but eventually you will find a valid stream with your show.
Once found, stop the episode one final time, find the number of the stream that was correct and note the valid provider, (like Kickass or SkyTorrent). You might also note the incorrect provider names and perma-remove them from your provider list so they will never come up in your results again, but remember gone is gone until you add them back, and just because a provider was wrong about one show doesn’t necessarily negate their value for other shows/movies.
Anyway, now you should be able to return to the episode you wish to start with, (say Episode 1 of Season 1), chose “Play as” again, and now when you’re presented with a list of the streams, you can scroll directly to that source you noted before that was correct and find the right show stream every-time,
Hope this helps ya
Mat
A stinker this weekend. Flying blind, so to speak.
10 links, only 1 playing the right show/episode. But being as Exodus handles No Response by auto-advancing to the next link, there’s no way to tell which of the 10 was airing the correct episode. And there is nothing given the users to mark episodes as incorrect.
It just shouldn’t be this hard.
Trying to finish watching Virgin River season 4 however when I am going to watch episode 10 its playing the wrong episode on the crew addon. Is there anyway to fix this?
Was always told Kodi will be free and you can see what you want when you want now I have to use my coffee money to get RD to watched my shows but if it’s a torrent my wifi provider will throttle me so I get a VPN and it then gets so slow nothing works so what happened to Kodi I used to be a wonderful thing