Sort By: last episode date AIRED

[Guest topbanana]

8 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

Or maybe just use dedicated software for tracking your TV shows? Emby is primarily media server, all these extra features are nice-to-haves, but with virtual items bringing their own set of issues (not related only to the topic in question but much wider in scope), I reckon they should generally be avoided, if feasible (or in my case: under all circumstances). You know how they say: Jack of all trades - master of none. 

I'm not sure what you're meaning.
Does sorting by Parental Rating also break this?

This is indeed a media server.
Users who watch TV shows want to know what shows are running right now and what episodes have just aired so they can catch up with them.  Which helps with the water-cooler chats the next day.
Such a sort order could/should easily be considered a core function of a media server of this type.  Serving the libraries of media, in specific collections and sort orders.  Core functionality.

As with any feature request for any software/service/etc... If you don't personally need that feature, then stating that you don't need it doesn't really help in any way.

If you don't want to display your tv shows in the order of the most recently aired episodes, then you simply do not select that sort order of the list.  Sort by title, runtime, or IMDB rating, as you wish.  Options are wonderful.

Computers and software are almost completely all about processing, sorting and displaying data.

This is just request for a sort order that is especially useful for media of the episodic tv show type.
 

[GrimReaper 3294]

Not sure what you're getting at there, I was actually quite supportive of your request and did try to argument for implementing it, even though personally have no use for it, but that is never a deciding factor whether or not I'll support a FR that I reckon might give a greater benefit to the community:

On 2/10/2021 at 5:04 PM, GrimReaper said:

Oh, I get it. Since the data is already there, Missing/Future, and known to Emby, why not just include Missing in Episodes view then? Why was it excluded in the first place, anyway? I personally don't use Show missing episodes so never thought about it, but wouldn't it make sense that that option includes showing them in Episodes tab also? 

 

On 2/11/2021 at 10:27 AM, GrimReaper said:

I reckon the distinction between Missing and Future episodes should be made here, as the latter makes no sense in any view except where they are already placed. However, OP's request sounds completely reasonable to me, if one opts to Show MISSING episodes within Seasons - and they are indeed shown, along with existing episodes, and the data IS present and known - what's the issue to pull and display them few levels up, on Episodes tab, again, along with existing episodes? 

Was just pointing out that you might avoid all that hassle and track your shows by alternate means. 

[Guest topbanana]

3 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

...but with virtual items bringing their own set of issues...

I simply don't follow what this is reffering to.

3 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

Was just pointing out that you might avoid all that hassle and track your shows by alternate means. 

Hassle.
Using another piece of software, service to show this same data would be a bit of a hassle.

We just talking about emby displaying the date it already has in a subtly different, but very relevant way.
Again, a big fraction of emby's purpose is to deal with tv shows.  TV shows are episodic, mostly release weekly, with 1 or sometimes 2 season per year.
I'll bet that a user would more likely, more often choose to pick a sort order of 'Most Recently Aired Episode', rather than 'Parental Rating', or 'Runtime'...  In a very, very similar way that they can currently choose to display movies by 'Release Date', showing all the new movies, irrespective of what other movies were added more recently.

Suggesting that we should use another piece of software or service for this simply data sorting and displaying task is silly.  And how does it interface with emby to know what series you have, what episodes have been added, and then how does it play one. 
No.  We just want to make emby better. 

It's just a sort order, using data emby already has, to display episodic tv shows in a useful and obvious way.

[GrimReaper 3294]

You're mixing several processes there, some of which might be misleading, as generally sorting episodes by date aired is already technically possible/implemented, for the items you have in your library. Not on Shows tab but on Episodes tab, so whoever wants to see latest episodes released/aired in that order - already can. What you're after is including virtual/missing episodes in the mix. Items that you don't have in your library. This comment sums it pretty well:

On 2/10/2021 at 4:56 PM, Happy2Play said:

Basically if Upcoming were to maintain the previous x amount of days. 

I really don't see this truly working from a virtual/missing standpoint on library view.  But I guess with enough parameter anything could be possible as it would have to limit how far out aired would apply to.

Whether Devs would want to endeavour into such undertaking is completely up to their decision and resources invested/devoted vs. benefit ratio. 

Anyway, nothing more to be said from my side here, your FR is competely valid and does make sense for the scenario intended, I sincerely hope it does gets implemented 

 

[Guest topbanana]

2 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

You're mixing several processes there, some of which might be misleading, as generally sorting episodes by date aired is already technically possible/implemented, for the items you have in your library. Not on Shows tab but on Episodes tab, so whoever wants to see latest episodes released/aired in that order - already can. What you're after is including virtual/missing episodes in the mix. Items that you don't have in your library. This comment sums it pretty well:

At the moment, in a Movie library, we can sort them by Release Date.  As movies are a single item, the movie library correctly sorts them into the order that they were release.  The user can see the latest movies available.  Perfect!
But with a library of TV Shows, if you sort by Release Date, you simply will not see the Simpsons, etc anywhere near the top, even though an episode aired last night.   If you sort by Date Added, you also get all the other seasons that i recently sourced HD versions of, and another season from the 90s that i've added to the library.  It's useful for finding the new episodes that are added, sure.  But it simply does not sort in the desired and obvious order.  We want the TV Shows to sort into the order of which has the most recently aired episode.  Then we choose a show, and find the new episode.

Emby just needs to list all the tv shows using the data it already has on the episode dates.  It actually doesn't even have to bother knowing whether the episode is added or not, missing... It just needs to order the shows, in the library, using the dates of episodes it has.  And using the current date and time.
Only when you click on the tv show, and the season, does emby then display whether it's added or missing... which is already how it works.

This is only about sorting the library of shows.

2 minutes ago, GrimReaper said:

Whether Devs would want to endeavour into such undertaking is completely up to their decision and resources invested/devoted vs. benefit ratio. 

Anyway, nothing more to be said from my side here, your FR is competely valid and does make sense for the scenario intended, I sincerely hope it does gets implemented 

 

All of the current sort-orders have their genuine uses.  But specifically to episodic tv shows, sorting the shows by those with the most recent aired episode is arguably more useful, needed than almost all of the existing sort orders.  Because a good majority of the emby server users would be using emby to watch episodes that have recently aired.  And that included discovering other shows that currently running too.
At the moment, we have a very clumbsy method (date added) that generally puts the shows in an order that is, in many respects, effectively random to the user.

Thanks.
Fingers crossed.