diff --git a/HISTORY b/HISTORY
index c1b1e5c9..8eaa6569 100644
--- a/HISTORY
+++ b/HISTORY
@@ -9578,7 +9578,7 @@ Video Disk Recorder Revision History
   given (reported by Manuel Reimer).
 - Fixed handling $(PKG_CONFIG) in newplugin (thanks to Winfried Köhler).
 
-2021-03-16:
+2021-03-17:
 
 - Fixed strreplace() to handle NULL strings (reported by Jürgen Schneider).
 - Somewhere down the road the 'x' bit of Doxyfile.filter got lost, so the
@@ -9611,3 +9611,6 @@ Video Disk Recorder Revision History
   Processed(). The old functions Sync() and Repeat() are deprecated and may be
   removed in a future version. See the comments in filter.h for a description on
   how to use these new function.
+- When checking whether a particular recording has already been made by a pattern
+  timer, the characters ' ' (blank), ':' and '-' are now ignored, making
+  "TITLE - EPISODE" and "TITLE: EPISODE" the same.
diff --git a/MANUAL b/MANUAL
index cf667665..9377f93a 100644
--- a/MANUAL
+++ b/MANUAL
@@ -636,6 +636,10 @@ following the matching pattern. There are three macros that can be used here:
   {>}  everything after the matching pattern
   {=}  the matching pattern itself (just for completeness)
 
+As of VDR version 2.5.2, the characters ' ' (blank), ':' and '-' are ignored
+when checking whether a particular recording has already been made by a pattern
+timer, making "TITLE - EPISODE" and "TITLE: EPISODE" the same.
+
 * Managing folders
 
   The "Select folder" menu, which can be accessed by pressing the "Red" key in
diff --git a/recording.c b/recording.c
index c1baf54e..f53d4910 100644
--- a/recording.c
+++ b/recording.c
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
  * See the main source file 'vdr.c' for copyright information and
  * how to reach the author.
  *
- * $Id: recording.c 5.5 2021/01/19 20:38:28 kls Exp $
+ * $Id: recording.c 5.6 2021/03/17 10:55:43 kls Exp $
  */
 
 #include "recording.h"
@@ -3115,9 +3115,32 @@ void cDoneRecordings::Append(const char *Title)
      }
 }
 
+static const char *FuzzyChars = " -:";
+
+static const char *SkipFuzzyChars(const char *s)
+{
+  while (*s && strchr(FuzzyChars, *s))
+        s++;
+  return s;
+}
+
 bool cDoneRecordings::Contains(const char *Title) const
 {
-  return doneRecordings.Find(Title) >= 0;
+  for (int i = 0; i < doneRecordings.Size(); i++) {
+      const char *s = doneRecordings[i];
+      const char *t = Title;
+      while (*s && *t) {
+            s = SkipFuzzyChars(s);
+            t = SkipFuzzyChars(t);
+            if (*s != *t)
+               break;
+            s++;
+            t++;
+            }
+      if (!*s && !*t)
+         return true;
+      }
+  return false;
 }
 
 // --- Index stuff -----------------------------------------------------------