[mwkurt]

Hello,

I would like to try to recreate a Saturday Morning Cartoon Experience for my Granddaughter, at least as close as possible.
I can get fairly close by creating random playlist of the cartoons I want to play. It works good, but there really isn't any control over the order or number of certain cartoons that are played.
So is it possible to have a script that will play a series of playlists in a predefined order? Along with this, is it possible to construct a playlist so it will either play one random show from a folder in your library or play a selected number of episodes from a folder in your library? The end result would look something like this:

Playlist 1 - play 5 random looney tunes
Playlist 2 - play a random episode of Johnny Quest
Playlist 3 - Play 3 random epsidoes of Casper
Playlist 4 - Play a random episode of Fat Albert
Playlist 5 - play a random episode of The Groovy Ghoulies

The script would therefore play the playlists in their order thus recreating a representation of whatever TV schedule you could come up with, including Saturday Morning.

So is something like this possible and is there someone who would be willing to take this kind of thing on? I have absolutely no experience writing scripts and do not know any scripting languages. I would eternally grateful if someone could come with with something like this.

As an update, after thinking some more about this, all that would be needed would be a script that would play a series of playlists in a specified order.
Then using the above example, the playlists would look like as follows:
playlist 1 - Play random episode of looney tunes
playlist 2 - play random epsiode of looney tunes
playlist 3 - play random episode of looney tunes
playlist 4 - play random episode of looney tunes
playlist 5 - play random episode of looney tunes
playlist 6 - play random episode of Johnny Quest
playlist 7 - play random episode of Casper
playlist 8 - play random episode of Casper
playlist 9 - play random episode of Casper
playlist 10 - play random episode of Fat Albert
playlist 11 - play random episode of The Groovy Ghoulies

So would this be possible to do?

Thanks,
Mark

[craigd]

at work so cant try this (and some of the labels are probably wrong) but couldn't you do it by creating a smart playlist of smart playlists?

ie.
create playlists for each show eg...
<smartplaylist type="tvshow">
<name>1. Looney Tunes</name>
<match>all</match>
<rule field="showname" operator="is">Looney Tunes</rule>
<rule field="playcount" operator="is">0</rule>
<limit>5</limit>
<order>random</order>
</smartplaylist>

then create a playlist to run them...
<smartplaylist type="tvshow">
<name>Cartoon Schedule</name>
<match>any</match>
<rule field="playlist" operator="is">1. Looney Tunes</rule>
<rule field="playlist" operator="is">2. Johnny Quest</rule>
<rule field="playlist" operator="is">3. Casper</rule>
<rule field="playlist" operator="is">4. Fat Albert</rule>
<rule field="playlist" operator="is">5. The Groovy Ghoulies</rule>
<limit>0</limit>
<order direction="ascending">playlist</order>
</smartplaylist>

This shoulg give you the desired effect and ensure it never plays the same episode twice, once they've all been watched either change the playcount match to1 or set the show back to unwatched, you could also set it up this way and set it to ascending episode order so it will play the shows in correct order each time.

you could then just add a button on home screen pointing to the main playlist

[mwkurt]

craigd,

Thanks...I'll try this when I get home tonight.

Mark