I searched the forum for this answer, but didn’t find what I was looking for. There seem to be a lot of TV shows doing crossover episodes these days. The best examples I can think of are Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Super Girl.
In order to avoid spoilers or missed plot developments, you have to cycle back and forth between all four shows.
I think it would be REALLY cool if you could add all 4 shows to a smart playlist that let you watch them in order of date/time aired and watched or unwatched. That way I’d never accidentally spoil an episode by watching the wrong one first or skipping over an episode of Legends.
A playlist can be built, yes.
It is even a ‘smart’ playlist, which grows and shrinks automatically as new episodes come in and episodes get watched.
the snag:
if you stop in the middle of an episode, it may or may not be included in this playlist anymore, depending on how far into the episode you got.
In this case, you must remember to
continue watching the half-watched episode from OnDeck
after this episode is finished, don’t continue watching, press Stop
but call up your playlist and play this instead
How to build the playlist:
enter your TV Show library in Plex Web
set the library view mode to ‘Episodes’
then activate the ‘Custom Filters’
filter for ‘Show Title’ ‘contains’ ‘Arrow’ or ‘Flash’ (you must press Enter after typing in each show title)
click on the + icon to add a second filter condition ‘Episode plays’ ‘is’ ‘0’ (again, press Enter after typing the 0)
click on ‘Apply’
set the sorting order to ‘By Air Date’
set the sorting order again to ‘By Air Date’ (only this time, it will be ascending - check the little arrow icon) - this is crucial!
finally, click on the ‘Add to Playlist’ icon (circled in the second screenshot above) and give your playlist a name and save it
Your version of PMS must be up-to-date. I am not sure if the current ‘public’ version will be enough to do this. You might want to install the Plex Pass version.
Wow, thanks for the epic walk through! That was awesome.
I think I got it all setup correctly. I just have a couple questions.
There are some episodes that I’ve watched on Netflix. Because I haven’t played them on plex, they’re still in this playlist. Normally what I do is manually mark them as watched. But it seems that I’d have to actually watch them for this filter to work. Is there a reason we didn’t setup the filter for watched and unwatched?
This will automatically add the new episodes to the end of the playlist right?
There are some episodes that I’ve watched on Netflix. Because I haven’t played them on plex, they’re still in this playlist. Normally what I do is manually mark them as watched. But it seems that I’d have to actually watch them for this filter to work. Is there a reason we didn’t setup the filter for watched and unwatched?
The filter is setup for watched and unwatched.
I expect marking these episodes manually as ‘watched’ should be enough.
Keep in mind though, if you are looking at the playlist in a second browser window or even on a different Plex client, you’ll have to back out from it and re-enter it. Only then you’ll see a change.
This will automatically add the new episodes to the end of the playlist right?
Yes, as far as they are marked ‘unwatched’ and have gotten a proper ‘air date’ with their metadata
(which should all happen automatically - as long as the new episodes got ‘matched’ properly. Ensuring a proper match for tv shows is a topic for another thread, though. For now, I will only point you here. )
