I would like to create a smart playlist that only shows the next unplayed episode from all shows in a collection.
In essence, I’d like to turn the On Deck part of the home page into a playlist that I could hit play or shuffle, and watch the next unplayed episode of all the shows I’m watching.
Likewise, for some playlists, it may be better to only sync a specific number of episodes per show. Adding an option to the smart playlist filters to limit the number of episodes per show would allow you to make a playlist with several long shows that always has five episodes of each show instead of 50 episodes of the first show.
Currently, I see an option to add ALL the unwatched episodes to a playlist, but not just the first unwatched episode.
To add, the other bonus to being able to create a smart playlist as opposed to just hitting “shuffle” under On Deck on the Home tab in Plex is that:
A: It would add new shows as you watch without having to watch an episode first.
B: It would only put the shows in there that I wanted so I wouldn’t have to skip the shows my wife was watching.
Another option would be to add a “Maximum episodes per show” as a filter
With that option, if you had 10 shows on a playlist, and set the maximum episodes to 1, it would only contain the next unplayed episode of each show, but if you set it to 10, it would contain up to the next ten unwatched episodes of each show.
This is especially useful because if you create a playlist of several shows from different years, a normal smart playlist would sync all of a show from the 80’s before syncing anything from the current year, but if I could limit it to 5 episodes from each show, it could potentially give me episodes from each show on the playlist.
This would let me sync my “On Deck” to my device, or sync multiple shows from one playlist and guarantee that episodes from every show makes it on my device.
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Added my Vote and posting to get some more visibiliy.
I would be using this to compile seperate “on deck” playlists for family members that are the only viewers of particular shows.
My Wife can have an “on deck” of all her NCIS rubbish 
I get all my Survival programs.
My kids get their kids shows.
We could use separate “users” but as anyone with a central family TV knows, you are not going to switch user every time someone joins/leaves the room. Also we would need a separate user for shows that we watch communally.
Is there any update on this or has anyone come up with a smart playlist formula that replicates the old “On Deck” functionality? It’s bizarre that this used to be a functioning feature in Plex for syncing to my iPad and they just removed it for years with no workaround.
