• SupportScheduling

  • Channel functioning like a playlist where episodes in order are not skipped?

I've got a big group of cartoons and shows I'd like to have randomly play but following their original order. Every time the channel is watched, the order continues as it would be like in a playlist, so no episodes are skipped.

Example: channel plays Peppa Pig and starts at episode 1, next it plays Ed Edd & Eddy and starts at episode 1, next it plays Peppa Pig again and this time plays episode 2. However, if I stop watching during the middle of Ed Edd & Eddy episode 1, next time I tune in the channel I see the rest of Ed Edd & Eddy and next would play Peppa Pig episode 2.

Does that make sense? I know I could reach something similar with my Jellyfin setup but:

  1. Playlists in Jellyfin are extremely annoying to setup/keep track/play from a specific position
  2. I am looking for a solution where I just turn it on and don't have to think too much about it (of course only initially when creating the schedule).

Is that possible? Thanks in advance!

I think you can achieve this with the following:

  • New channel with the progress mode set to 'On Demand' (for only progressing while watching I believe)
  • New schedule to which you add Ed Edd & Eddy and Peppa Pig to as schedule items with a playout mode of 'One' (or multiple if you wanted to run 2x of one before another etc)

I just tried it and it seems what I was looking for. I am still quite noob with ErsatzTV, so I might come back here for some support. Thank you in the meantime!

6 days later

I've been experimenting with ErsatzTV and have a few questions. I'd appreciate your input on the following points:

  1. When I leave a channel and return to it after about 10 minutes, I notice that the playback progress is preserved, but it's usually around 2–4 minutes into the show. I believe this is due to the "stop" command being triggered after a certain period of inactivity. Is it possible to adjust this time so that the playback resumes from a point closer to where I left off? Ideally, I'd like the progress to be almost the same when I return to the channel after a short break.

  2. When I select Season 1 of three different cartoon shows, the software automatically spreads the episodes so that shows with more episodes are spaced out more evenly. This is a nice feature. However, would it be possible to have more granular control over the collection/playlist? For example, is there an interface where I can manually select or rearrange individual episodes?

Minor issues:

  1. I noticed that the TV guide doesn't always align with the actual schedule. I understand this might be a challenge for the type of setup I am looking for, but I was wondering if it's possible to "re-sync" the guide so that it updates every time I resume a channel?
  2. If I'm using a Jellyfin library, could ErsatzTV also update the playback status in Jellyfin? For example, if I watch Episode 3x12 of Peppa Pig, would that status be reflected in Jellyfin as "watched"?

Thank you very much in advance!