Q: Apple TV television shows out of order?

Same here, a large library with some bought/downloaded and some DVD ripped hand-tagged;

3500+ TV episodes, 750+movies is too big to be creating playlists per show, smart or otherwise.

I have sent in iTunes feedback but no repsonse, as yet.  When I saw the update and the tiles I assumed this was because it was no longer 'a hobby' and we could look forward to a adaptable interface and a TV app store.  I guess this ****-up proves it's just still a hobby to Apple, which is a shame.

Just as an update, I deleted and re-added my files earlier and it took about an hour to do my library of around 500 series, and that was with some fiddling around to deal with leading "The's" and "A's", as well as some particular sorting issues we have (i.e. my Sons shows at the top of the list).

If you aren't as worried about that and just want it in some sort of order then it just takes minutes.

The biggest problem is that you lose things like watched status, but if you don't mind that then I think it is certainly worth doing. A solution from Apple could take weeks.

same issue here on both appletv 2 units after the update.  Really hope they fix it soon cuz I have a lot of shows and the **** menu is useless!

I too am having the same issue.  I just got off of the phone with apple support and was told that I am the 1st person to call and complain about this problem.  Tech couldnt fix the problem, but he did take a trouble report and said that he would report my complaint to the next level.  UGH.  Maybe if more people take the few minutes to call Apple Support and complain, we could get this fixed more quickly???

This new sorting behavior of the Apple TV software 5.0 is utter chaos and is completely useless. What is Apple thinking, to break something as simple as sorting TV shows alphabetically by name? First iTunes Match turns out to be useless (to me) and now this? Who approved this drek?

I have to say, it's a puzzle how this one got through.

I turned on my appletv, noticed this problem, went to settings, saw an update, applied, went to settings, iTunes store, sort favorites, set to alphabetically. and now my problem is gone.  Good luck.

No, it doesn't work.

That is to do with how they are sorted in the TV Shows section on the main screen (i.e. ones you can get from the store). What we are talking about is your TV shows that are streamed from local computers , under the computers section.

I do wonder whether this is a confusion that the programmers had, which may have caused the problem though.

I'm having a hard time believing this is a bug that slipped past QA. It is so glaringly obvious that what every sort order this now is, it had to be done on purpose. And if it was done on purpose who is the chucklehead who thought this was a good idea!

That's what I would think, but it worked, please try it.  I am talking about local tv shows from my imac

I too have a Library with 3000+ TV Shows and 500+ Films and would of loved to of seen hirachial menus for Show Seasons on ATV come in in version 5.0.

ie. To scroll down through Smallville's 10 Seasons and Stargate's 10 Seasons is 20 Headings! and takes far longer than just the Show Name and then after selecting that into the season listings for that show only.

The Show selections lists end up 5-10 times longer than they need to be.

Does anyone know how to jump back to 4.4.4 after upgrading to 5.0?

I really do not like this latest cosmetic update, it's clunky, tacky and several steps back from the previous incarnation... My home menu is now full of oversized Icons that don't fit on the screen and that I'll never use (US Sports & News etc.) and the ones I do such as Radio are pushed to the bottom...

There really ought to be the option of hiding unwanted icons.

I called Apple Tech Support last night (Australian time) and the agent replicated the problem at their end. He wasn't sure what was causing it. I have called again today to see if they have come any closer to a solution, they didn't even have notes on the first call. Absolutely hopeless really. I've lodged a complaint again. Hopefully this gets sorted. It's made my Apple TV absolutely hopeless. I can't even search through the list.

In the meantime, I may just try to AirPlay from my mac to my AppleTV instead.

That is odd that it only worked for me, but it did work.  Shows were out of order, I changed that one setting and then my shows were back in order.  I have about 1100 tv episodes, maybe about 5 of those are from the apple store, and about 150 movies, none from the apple store.  Once I changed that one setting, all tv tv shows were ordered correctly.  I think they made it by default so that serialized shows are ordered for when purchased/released.  It's inconvenient, but they might of been trying to get networks on board for something else.

Louis Melledy wrote:

 

I turned on my appletv, noticed this problem, went to settings, saw an update, applied, went to settings, iTunes store, sort favorites, set to alphabetically. and now my problem is gone.  Good luck.

Nope, doesn't work for me either.  I found the setting that you've indicated, but it had no effect on sort order in my TV shows (all mine, no iTunes-purchased content).