Currently, Plex doesn’t do anything in regards to the Special Position metadata that is stored in TVDB, but it is crucial to the watch experience of many series. What it does is tell you where you’re supposed to watch a special in relation to the rest of the series. Often times, these specials come as movies (like South Park or Hilda) or as OVAs in the case of anime.
Using this metadata, plex would be able to pick out where specials lie within relation to a season or episode inside of another season, and show the special as the ‘continue watching’ item on the home screen, as opposed to ‘the next episode’.
An easy example is with Anime, where OVA items usually fall under specials, and also are a part of a season. Something like Violet Evergarden has this special, with the Special Position metadata that says "Airs before season 1, episode 5 ". If I were watching the series, Id want plex to be smart enough to play it before S1E5, and then continue on to S1E5 when it finishes the episode.
Recent Movies of South Park being classified as Specials have a similar effect. How am I, or my users, supposed to remember or know to watch it in the order S23 > Specials 43 and 44 > S24 > S25 > Specials 45 and 46 without consulting a wiki, when the metadata to tell plex to show it in that order already exists.
Not to detract from your feature suggestion, but Plex provides functionality to more or less achieve your end goal:
There are cases where it requires some manual intervention to cause things to work as expected (for example, when particular items aired on the same day).
Plex is already considering this information when displaying the next episode on the post-play screen and will add the next episode to the continue watching hub → if a special has aired between regular episodes, Plex will suggest that special… not the next episode.
There’s already an existing feature suggestion discussing an option to display specials in line with the episodes of a season according to their sequence Show mid-season specials inline
Unless we’re missing some unique aspect of this suggestion I consider it’s mostly covered (partly implemented, duplicate)
Not a duplicate; this thread is requesting a fix for broken logic in episode sequencing, via a specific field from TVDB, so that Plex can a) correctly and b) consistently sequence the episode order for serials.
The topic you are linking is 9 years old, has seen multiple years go by with no activity in it, and is about how something could be displayed.
The three people who’ve responded citing this as already implemented are giving pretty careless and incorrect feedback.
Currently, the behaviour is neither correct (Plex indifferently assumes that release date order = intended viewing order / narrative chronology) nor consistent (behavioural code is clearly decoupled given that it works from some places, like exiting out to Continue Watching, but not others, like ‘Up Next’ auto-sequencing or pressing Play on a season).
This feature request specifically and clearly outlines a problem that affects all manifestations of episode sequencing, and specifically and clearly outlines a solution (use the TVDB field if available, and - implicitly - refactor sequencing code to use the same piece of logic).
Broken implies that a feature was implemented and is not functioning as intended. This can best be described as the intended functionality not matching users’ desires. I posted the current best workaround above. It can require some manual tweaking, but it is completely workable for most situations.
Again, that’s not to say that this request doesn’t have merit. It’s only to point out that the sky is indeed not falling. There is functionality provided to achieve most users’ goals here.
The sequencing does not know how to follow viewing order and instead makes an assumption that is more often right than not. Not sure where the idea of catastrophising came into play.
OP’s request provides a clear scoping of both a specific problem and specific solution which affects any downstream sequencing behaviour, and what they got back was a series of replies that only read it thematically. It’s not like it’s too late to try to avoid devolving a precise and solid request thread.
Again. I’m not suggesting that the request, as submitted, is without value. Only that there is something they can do about their specific problem right now, in absence of an implementation of said request. The two are not mutually exclusive. Try not to let the dismissive nature of some of the replies devalue this genuine attempt to assist the OP. That helps no one.
