[SandmanCL]

Pardon me if there already is a way to do this:

Would it be an idea to have an option in Television show library mode to show all available episodes, where episodes that didn't have an associated file be grayed out ?

Idea:
If I create a new subfolder, call it "24" and add subfolder to the TV library, allow for an option to 'scan complete episode list'. This would give the user the possibility to navigate through all episodes of a show, where only the episodes already present would be available to watch.

In top view for the show, with the Season thumbs, an entire season could be 'grayed out' to indicate that there's nothing to watch there since nothing has been recorded or downloaded.

As a bonus: Include air date for each show so that the user would know when to start looking for the next upcoming episode...

[rwparris2]

I think that sounds really cool... I know I've downloaded 'entire seasons' only to find out 1 or 2 were missing.

The only problem I can foresee is with seasons that aren't completed yet, there simply isn't always information available about air dates & episode names.

Plus you'll need somewhere to scrape that data from...

[SandmanCL]

You would use the same scraper as today to fetch show information. The only difference would be that the scraper would fetch the info for all episodes rather than for episodes you've already downloaded or recorded.

This could potentially improve the lookup time for complete shows as well (depending on how the data is delivered from the source): Instead of looking up information with a separate lookup process for every single episode, the lookup would happen in two phases:

1) pull down information for all episodes in all season
2) assign file to episode, if present

[spiff]

which incidentially is exactly the way it works todayb

[SandmanCL]

spiff: if that's the case then it should be programmatically relatively easy to display the information for *all* episodes instead of just the ones already downloaded, right ?

[spiff]

programatically, sure.

convincing me however will take some more work it's a video library not an episode guide

[SandmanCL]

Fair enough.... Please be patient while I'm trying to come up with compelling arguments

[tvdb-scott]

It would allow people to see which episodes they've missed. It would allow them to easily look back at the previous episode and read the synopsis in case the show doesn't start with "Previously on...". It would round out the views nicely in the instances where people only have one episode in a season. Etc.

Not saying I want or need this functionality, but those are all valid reasons.

Note: You might consider working in the specials the same way we do if you do this. Not sure how they currently work in XBMC, but we display them on the site in a separate season AND display them inline where they belong in each season.

[spiff]

we do the same

[Mental Block]

I would just like to say I agree with this being a good feature. I often want to know what I have got coming up that hasn't downloaded yet, or if I have all the episodes. I also agree it would look nice having all the episodes there with the ones you don't have greyed out.

Did I mention Grumpy Devs are the best ones?

[rwparris2]

it's a video library not an episode guide

we know! we're asking someone to fix that & make it both!
the usefulness really comes in for questions like "how many episodes are left this season" or "when will the next episode air" (assuming that info is already on tvdb... idk whether it is or isn't) or "ok i just downloaded episodes 1-12 of 1994's Profit, are there anymore episodes or is this it?"

honestly though, it should be pretty low on the xbmc to-do list. there are at least five or six other features I'd rather see implemented (rtmp!, movie fan art) before a borderline useful one like this.

convincing me however will take some more work

How about a twelve pack of New Castle? A bottle of Black Label? Maybe a box of cookies? Name your poison, and I shall paypal it to yah (double payment and 1000 internets for rtmp support)

[SandmanCL]

honestly though, it should be pretty low on the xbmc to-do list. there are at least five or six other features I'd rather see implemented (rtmp!, movie fan art) before a borderline useful one like this.

honestly though -- did you just hijack this thread to +1 a completely different feature request ? :p I for one think that this feature would be much more useful than those you mention. But lack of activity in this thread tells me that not too many people agree :o

For those of you who end up with this thread when searching for ... Arr Tee Emm Pee, here's the thread for that:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=32114&page=3

[angrycamel]

I stumbled across this thread after posting about a similar idea on the Hulu plugin thread: http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=256...stcount=28

I would love to see a mixing of the video library and an episode guide in the same fashion that is mention here. In addition however, it would be great to intermingle a video plugin like the hulu one to check and see if the episode is available on a streaming site such as that.

So, the tv show episodes that you have video files for would appear as normal, then secondly episodes that you do not have but are available via hulu or a similar site shown in some other distinctive way, then lastly, episodes that are not available in either way would be greyed out.

Also... having a feature like the one purposed here (Allow scripts to add additional context items in library & file views) would allow for things like "Download this episode from EZTV" where it could be configured to find a torrent and drop it into a torrent autorun directory on your network. Or maybe: "Specify RTMP URL For This Episode" so even if there is no built in support for hulu or the like, you could just manually supply it.

I would love to work on this, so I am starting to look into what it would take, but those who are more familiar with the developing for XBMC would be faster. Anyone else want to take it on too?




EDIT:
I was just thinking about this more and came up with a more future proof way of doing it.

For the episodes that it does not find a local file for, it would write to the database with a plugin:// path, using a configurable plugin from the settings. The plugin would be a special type that accepts episode information as parameters such as the show name, season and episode numbers.

An example plugin would be one that takes the parameters passed in and generates a Hulu.com RTMP link from it, then loads the resulting RTMP stream with the video player. If the information provided results in more than one possible video from the host site then a selection list could be displayed for the user to choose.

For example:
A normal library entry for which the local file exists:

smb://SERVER/~Episodes/30 Rock/Season 1/30 Rock - [01x09].avi

A plugin library entry for which the local file doesn't exist:

plugin://VideoPluginName?ShowName=30%20Rock&Season=1&Episode=9

Another example plugin would be one that could make use of multiple supporting plugins. Each supporting plugin would specialize in a different content provider (Hulu, FreeMediaTV, CBS, etc) with its return value being an RTMP url that could be passed back to the main plugin. The main plugin could be responsible for either finding the first RTMP stream then just displaying that one, or finding all applicable ones and displaying the on screen list so the user can choose.

[rwparris2]

honestly though -- did you just hijack this thread to +1 a completely different feature request ? :p I for one think that this feature would be much more useful than those you mention.

Yeah sorry, didn't even realize I was hijacking, but I totally was. Apologies.

Anyways, I'm curious if any dev is interested in this? Especially awesome grumpy ones?

[kay.one]

is this feature dead? I would love to know when the next episode for a specific show airs without having to go online and checking it! it could be as simple as adding it to the end of Show description.