First off, let me say again—I’m absolutely loving this software! You've done an incredible job putting this together, and it's been a lot of fun to work with so far.
As I continue scheduling TV content, I’ve been experimenting with the different options available: scheduling via standard Collections, Smart Collections, or individual shows. While each of these methods offers some flexibility, I’ve run into a few challenges—particularly when it comes to controlling the exact playback order and behavior over time.
The issue mainly arises from how Collections are sorted. Since playback is determined alphabetically by title, I don’t have much control over the sequence in which shows air. For example, let’s say I create a “9:00 AM” collection that includes Hogan’s Heroes and The Andy Griffith Show. Because Andy Griffith comes first alphabetically, it always airs before Hogan’s Heroes, even though I’d prefer Hogan’s Heroes to play daily until it finishes, and then transition into The Andy Griffith Show.
To help address this, I’d love to propose an idea: “Rotation Playlists.” This would be a new type of playlist that plays one item (or a defined number of items) per scheduled appearance, then continues with the next item the next time it runs. I understand ErsatzTV already handles something similar with certain playlist behavior, but this would go a step further by allowing us to:
Manually reorder items in the list.
Define which item is next in the sequence.
Easily resume from a specific episode or item number.
This would be especially useful if something disrupts the schedule—like if we move a Collection to a different timeslot, which currently causes it to start back at the beginning. With a Rotation Playlist, we could simply indicate the next item to play (e.g., "resume at episode 14"), since the Collection would start over from the beginning.
Ultimately, this would give users much finer control over serialized programming, and offer a more reliable way to manage episode progress across scheduling changes. I could see this being implemented as a new Collection type—or as a playlist setting that adds a “remember playback position” and “manually set next item” feature.
Would something like this be possible to explore in a future update?