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🔵 TV Series- Consolidate to single title

I still have all of the seasons of Gilmore Girls displaying individually... sure would be cool if there was just the most recent cover art and a secondary menu to select seasons.
 
I'm with Steelman... when i said that Netflix and others have TV series that look as good, or in some cases better, than what you can play on Kaleidescape, I was referring to HD and 4K streaming series that never came out in HD (much less 4k) on disk or in the K store.

Sure - I'm with you mbmapit that if a series was mastered well on BD (or proper files given to K for store delivery), then yes it will likely be better quality than a streaming service, but Netflix is getting many more BD and 4K TV series (or commissioning their own that may never come to disk or BD) and the quality has gotten pretty damn good. Have you actually tried NF4K on a 4K Apple TV to a good 4K display? It's surprisingly good.

Netflix has the Ultra 4K Planet Earth II, and it's stunning. Yes, probably looks slightly better on 4K BD, but you can't play that on a Kaleidescape, and they don't have it in the K store, so there's no way you'll get a better picture of that great series on Kaleidescape vs. Netflix. Same for The Crown, Ozark, Better Call Saul (in UHD4K), Stranger Things II, Breaking Bad, Dark, Black Mirror, Gilmore Girls (reboot), Narcos... plenty more.
 
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Secondid from me as I have 100's of TV series on my system
 
As you can tell from the first post in this thread, and others, many of us have asked for this for well over a DECADE, and have completely given up on Kaleidescape ever doing this. It's really kind of an embarrassment that we have this great video system that handles TV series so badly. Literally EVERY single other system out there for watching videos has found a way to collapse the shows into one title, organized by season. (Netflix, Hulu, Apple+, Disney+, Tivo, iTunes Video... )

Not Kaleidescape. ☹️

Essentially, other services offer at least 3 levels of hierarchy (Series->Season->Episode), and for whatever historical reason, Kaleidescape's UI and schema for metadata was always designed for just 2 levels (Season->Episode). So each season shows up as a separate title. Finish last episode of season 3 of a show, and the system will not only not move on to the Season 4, Ep. 1, it removes the whole thing from your "paused" list and you're on your own to now remember what season is next, hunt it down in the interface, and start it. Crazy. And cover view is laughable for something like Simpsons with 20+ seasons.... fills up your entire screen with simpsons covers.

It's the biggest disappointment in our household with Kaleidescape. And it's caused us to watch via AppleTV about 90% of the time and Kaleidescape maybe 10%.
 
To tag onto that, it would be especially great if we could consolidate an unrecognized TV series into a single entry without needing to send in the discs to K. Right now I have a lot of discs that are Series X Disc 1 - 3 all as separate entries.
 
Howdy folks,

As I wrote previously, we do understand that handling seasonal episodic content is, shall we say, not a highlight of our user interface. A number of us who work at the company deal with this ourselves on our home systems.

The challenge is, this is a major engineering project. Just to give you an idea, it would affect our guide database, our bookmarking tools, the onscreen display, the browser interface, the movie store interface, the iOS and Android mobile applications, the control protocol, the control system templates and drivers... the list goes on.

Now, does that mean that we won't do it? No it does not. But what it does mean is that as a small company, we have to choose where to invest resources, and so far other features have had higher priority.

With that said, I would like to invite those of you who enjoy (or would like to enjoy) watching episodic content on Kaleidescape to speak up and say what sorts of things would make the experience better. Obviously, grouping all seasons of a show together rather than presenting them as individual covers or lines in the list views would be at the top of the list. I personally think tracking which episodes have been watched and showing that clearly in the OSD would be another great addition. What else? Knowing a bit about the bar we'd be aiming for with this feature will help us scope it properly, which is a critical part of deciding when to do it.
 
Howdy folks,

As I wrote previously, we do understand that handling seasonal episodic content is, shall we say, not a highlight of our user interface. A number of us who work at the company deal with this ourselves on our home systems.

The challenge is, this is a major engineering project. Just to give you an idea, it would affect our guide database, our bookmarking tools, the onscreen display, the browser interface, the movie store interface, the iOS and Android mobile applications, the control protocol, the control system templates and drivers... the list goes on.

Now, does that mean that we won't do it? No it does not. But what it does mean is that as a small company, we have to choose where to invest resources, and so far other features have had higher priority.

With that said, I would like to invite those of you who enjoy (or would like to enjoy) watching episodic content on Kaleidescape to speak up and say what sorts of things would make the experience better. Obviously, grouping all seasons of a show together rather than presenting them as individual covers or lines in the list views would be at the top of the list. I personally think tracking which episodes have been watched and showing that clearly in the OSD would be another great addition. What else? Knowing a bit about the bar we'd be aiming for with this feature will help us scope it properly, which is a critical part of deciding when to do it.
Mike, thanks for the feedback. I think most would agree that the user interface would be better with multiple seasons combined into one title, but I understand the engineering challenges and considerations of cost vs benefits.

My biggest complaint is transitioning between seasons of a show. I often don’t remember what season I’m watching, so when it ends, I have to read descriptions or episode titles to find the correct season to resume watching.

One smaller feature that would be really useful would be to add a paused bookmark for the next season when one ends. For example, when I finish season 3 add a paused bookmark for season 4 episode 1.

I understand that this might still be a challenge depending on how your metadata is stored, but this would be a helpful first step.
 
New Kaleidescape user here… adding my wish to the discussion… which is not about adding a third level of hierarchy, but more so what @xxgenericsnxx requested regarding being able to merge an unrecognized group into a single entry. For example, I have a few box sets of concert videos that I would like to combine as a single entry.
 
I recently picked up all seasons of The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, and Boardwalk Empire during the sale. I usually look at everything in movie cover view mode, and I'm not a fan of how there are 6-7 Sopranos covers, 10 Curb covers, etc. It'd be great to have one cover for the entire show, and then have all episodes listed. Or perhaps some kind of subfolder system.
 
This is what I do. I download only the first seasons and keep on my server. Since the Terra is super fast to download, if I am every in a binge watching mode of a particular show, I can hit download on the later seasons and then they are ready to watch by the time I am done with a few episodes on the first season.

In addition to your suggestion, I would recommend having a download option for the season not on the server (similar to how the extras work).
 
I should do that. I download everything by default. I figured that once I run out of room I can start deleting stuff, but I should just remove all of the later seasons. Still, it'd be great to have the best of both worlds and have a decluttered cover view mode AND have access to everything right on the server.
 
With a push on TV content being made, the UI on-device could really benefit from enhancements and improvements for this use. Hope to see some feature work here (as well as in general and for movies too).
 
I've "stuck" this thread within this forum area, as it's the most requested item and keeps coming up... i combined 4 other threads into this one that all had the same basic request. coming up on 12 years since this was first requested by me and other users.

@MikeKobb has replied on the topic... in 2015 and again in 2021... you can see his responses here in this new merged superthread. They have at least acknowledged that it's "not ideal" as it's implemented now, but said the problem is super complicated. I can understand that a fix is complicated, but the problem is that the longer this goes, and the more that TV is becoming such a large part of entertainment viewing, the more that Kaleidescape's system looks embarrassingly out-of-date in this one key area.

Literally every other way to consume TV content solved this issue years or decades ago... Netflix, AppleTV, Roku, Tivo, iTunes, Hulu, Disney+, HBO, Showtime, Paramount... etc., etc. I continue to hope maybe that the new leadership team at Kaleidescape will finally prioritize the work needed to make this work the way that it should.
 
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I stopped watching TV content on K long ago.


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