I love having the option to sort a Smart Collection by “Random”, but it’s sometimes a massive pain in the a** to use.
As it stands, I have a Smart Collection sorted by “Random” on the Home Screen. All is well, I can browse it, look at an item, back out, etc. That’s fine right? Wrong, as soon as a new item is added to my library or some metadata is refreshed, that entire collection is shuffled again. I would love to see either a new sort option or have this option adjusted.
The perfect solution to this problem (in my eyes) is to have the logic work similarly to “Top Unplayed Movies”, “Top Movies by (Actor or Director)” or “Top Movies in (Genre)”. This would still, randomise the collection, but only refresh the order each day. So every day the collection is different, but not every time something is added to the library or some metadata is refreshed.
I’ve seen that as well. Though given I want that to be a random snapshot of a library, I’ve not yet ran into a situation where the additional shuffle bothered me too much (e.g. “6 random picks based on how long I haven’t played them / their rating”).
For me it’s rather unbearable haha, for example I’m currently tagging Movies / Shows with ‘Halloween’, ‘Christmas’, ‘Valentines’ etc, because I’ve created my own seasonal smart playlist (capped at 30 items). Not only is 30 items the max amount of items that is visible on a row (at least for the Apple TV), but when I’ve tagged over 30 items, the random sort option doesn’t ignore the extra items.
When it shuffles, it removes some items and adds some new items in, essentially keeping the smart playlist ‘fresh’ without much input needed from myself. However, when its refreshing every 5 minutes or so when items get added or meta gets refreshed its not only really frustrating, some of the movies you’re viewing will disappear
