What dictates shuffle/random play?

[myjunkmalebox 6]

This lack of random is still an issue in 4.6.4.0.    I have multiple TV shows with 100+ episodes where I routinely just put a series on shuffle in the evening.  It's very common to get the same episodes, sometimes in the same order.   It's really frustrating.  Is there anything we can do to raise the priority on this?  

[DJX 18]

Same issues with photos

[Luke 37066]

Can you please go over a specific example? thanks.

[DJX 18]

Just tried again and it seems ok. Sorry nevermind

[Luke 37066]

Thanks for the feedback.

[myjunkmalebox 6]

16 hours ago, Luke said:

Can you please go over a specific example? thanks.

All of Futurama, over 200 episodes, there's about a dozen that it really likes to pick.  They are from different seasons.  It doesn't always pick the same starting point, but when it's selecting the next ep to play there's a good chance it picks one of the chosen few.  I've got a few TV shows with over 100 ep that behave this way.  

My typical usage is it to click shuffle on the series page in the Android app and watch 1 to 2 hours on chrome cast.  So 3 to 6, 20 min ep per day, usually different series per night.  It's not uncommon to notice 2 to 4 duplicates per week.  For instance, watching the same series tonight as last night.  We skipped two ep tonight because they were selected last night too.

That being said, I just ran an experiment, shuffle then next 30 times in the browser.  With no significant duplication.  I also hit shuffle then back to the show page and shuffled again 30 times, no significant duplication.  

Edited August 19, 2021 by myjunkmalebox

[hstamas 153]

I use the VirtualTV add-on for my random TV watching and I find it plays the same episodes over and over again as well. I would guess that the add-on uses Embys shuffling "brains" as it basically just creates a playlist to simulate its "channel".

I can easily notice and episode of say Family Guy (which has hundreds of episodes) play every day for a couple days.

Happens all the time.

[Soren187 1]

This is absolutely still happening.  As this posting, latest version.  Big Bang Theory shuffle chooses the same subset of all the episodes.  Too many plays of the exact same episodes in a "random" shuffled playlist.   Seems the SQL Lite random function needs to be worked around or see if its their issue and report it?

[Spaceboy 2493]

Been reported many times in many guises. Per devs, this is the best they can do

Edited November 22, 2021 by Spaceboy

[myjunkmalebox 6]

1 hour ago, Spaceboy said:

Been reported many times in many guises. Per devs, this is the best they can do

It would take some work, but they could force the issue.  Track what content has been consumed recently and when playing on shuffle don't play anything that has been played recently.  There are a lot of different schema's to accomplish this.  

[Spaceboy 2493]

5 hours ago, myjunkmalebox said:

It would take some work, but they could force the issue.  Track what content has been consumed recently and when playing on shuffle don't play anything that has been played recently.  There are a lot of different schema's to accomplish this.  

Not disagreeing with anything you say, I have made the same points myself and just relaying the prior responses

[complexmessiah 0]

I would love to see this get fixed. I've been having the issue for years. I have a large playlist that I like to shuffle and keep on in the background but I've quit trying as it's never even close to random. I have shows with hundreds of episodes that never get played because the playlist only seems to select a few of the same shows or episodes to play over and over again despite having 3000+ available options.