Smart Playlist order ignored on Apple TV

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Level 2

202 points

Smart Playlist order ignored on Apple TV

I have my tv shows arranged in smart playlist by TV show. I meticulously manage my TV Shows to make sure the metadata is consistent (batch entering as much metadata as possible, etc.). Ever since I upgraded iTunes to 11 (only because of iOS7 and Mavericks), my TV playlists display via Apple TV2 (latest upgrade as of last night) alphabetically by episode name rather than episode number / ID.

I have sorted by episode number and ID in main TV Shows section og my iTunes Library to see if this helps, I have used the "copy to playlist order" feature on the playlists themselves. I have trashed the library.xml file. None of this has worked.

Any suggestions for sorting fix on Apple TV?

iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9), 3.06 GHz, 12 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Posted on Oct 29, 2013 7:11 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 29, 2013 8:23 AM in response to CaffeineIV

You can't control the order ATV displays stuff. It gets worse in iCloud. The purchased shows frequently showup in reverse order from how they are listed under "Top TV Shows"

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Answer 2

CaffeineIV Author

Level 2

202 points

Oct 29, 2013 9:34 AM in response to Brian Cook4

I don't have the bandwidth for iCloud integration for AppleTV, but since my local smart playlists were getting it wrong, I kind of freaked out. I fixed it, though, by moving my iTunes Library.itl from my last working clone of ML to the iTunes folder on my Mavericks installation.

I had updated only a few items since it stopped working correctly, and I had nothing to lose, as AppleTV without properly ordered playlists is basically a sleek hokey puck. I don't know why I break down and finally post the issue here after days of hand-wringing and tears of blood only to then try the one thing I hadn't thought to try before.

If anyone else is having trouble with the smart playlists not ordering properly on Apple TV, maybe this will help. Try replacing the ITL and XML files.

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