TV Show Seasons Out of Order

Same problem.

Sex and the City, out of order.

Sopranos, in order.

However using the remote app on the iPad or iPhone, everything is in order.

Probably just a bug. Good thing is since it's running iOS we should probably see regular updates and bug fixes now. The old Apple TV was running a variant of Tiger and I doubt they had developers spending much time working on an older version of OS X like that. You could argue that they're putting more development time in iOS than OS X these days so I wouldn't be worried about bugs getting fixed in a timely manner.

Upon reading a different thread I realized the following and posted it.

Thanks for solving a similar problem that I have.

My Sex and the City seasons are out of order while my Sopranos episodes are in the right order.

I then noticed that all my TV shows are first in alphabetical series order. Then each series season's are in the order that I ripped them.

With Sex and the City, I ripped in the following order - 5,6,1,2,3,4. That is the same order for ATV.

I have the complete series of Sopranos that I ripped 1,2,3,4,5,6. Same order for ATV.

I have several shows that I only own a few seasons, each of them are in the order I ripped them.

Interesting.

Same here.

Hopefully iTunes 10.1 fixes this.....

My songs in my music playlists are in alphabetical order rather than the order I placed them... Annoying

philipk said:

Upon reading a different thread I realized the following and posted it.

Thanks for solving a similar problem that I have.

My Sex and the City seasons are out of order while my Sopranos episodes are in the right order.

I then noticed that all my TV shows are first in alphabetical series order. Then each series season's are in the order that I ripped them.

With Sex and the City, I ripped in the following order - 5,6,1,2,3,4. That is the same order for ATV.

I have the complete series of Sopranos that I ripped 1,2,3,4,5,6. Same order for ATV.

I have several shows that I only own a few seasons, each of them are in the order I ripped them.

Interesting.

Click to expand...

There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to how the AppleTV is listing out TV Shows Seasons. I thought it was due to the date added field in iTunes so I removed ALL season of Family Guy (1-5 anyway) and then added them back in so the date added was identical for all 87 or so episodes. Went back to AppleTV, listed in the same order was before (Family Guy - Season 5, 4, 1, 2, 3.) I really wish I knew how it was ordering these so I could find a workaround...unfortunately right now we are all in the same boat.

look at the tagging, don't have an apple tv to test this out, but I've discovered that for the iphone, it doesn't look at the episode number tag, it looks at the track number tag.

so possibly it's ordering by disc number or something (or defaulting to the order added if that's not filled).

I've looked at one show i got from itunes, and the album tag is "Battlestar Galactica, Season 4" try naming your seasons similarly and see what happens. the "sort album" tag is also the same thing.

MCRunning said:

Just hooked up my new ATV2 and for the life of me I can't figure out the problem.

On my old ATV every season would appear in order, now some tv show seasons are in order and others are out of whack

Example for Dexter it goes:
Dexter 4
Dexter 3
Dexter 1
Dexter 2

In iTunes they show in order, I check the tags everything looks identical except the season numbers, I even tried using the sort show by, dexter1,dexter2,dexter3,dexter4, yet they don't change order. Anyone know how to fix this?

Click to expand...

After countless hours of google searches and more hours trying every thing I can think of, I have FINALLY found a solution. I was shocked to find out this works, but it does and this is a bit tedious but its worth it!

For each season I assume you already have the season's/episodes marked correctly in iTunes (which is the baffle as to why it doesn't sort correctly.) If that is done, then just do the following and AppleTV will have everything sorted in the RIGHT order.

I will use the example of Seinfeld, Season 1. Go ahead and highlight the entire season and do get-info. Since this is the first season change the Disc Number to 1 of 2 (all other seasons will be 2 of 2 for season 2, or 6 of 6 for season 6, but for the first season in order for them to be named correctly in finder it HAS to be 1 of 2.)

After that you can hit OK to close out/save changes. Now go to the first episode, go back into get info and change the track number to 1, 2 for the 2nd episode and so on. Make sure to start back at 1 for the 2nd season, 3rd season, etc. I know this is tedious (I had 754 TV shows I had to do this for.) Once you are done doing all that quit/restart itunes and go check out your AppleTV and everything should be named correctly.

PM me with any questions you have, I am so thrilled to have a solution and want to help anyone looking for one!

Jeff

I'm not sure you'd want to change a whole lot of stuff when a fix could be just around the corner. Apple does release regular updates for iOS and especially when there is a new hardware release like this.

newagemac said:

I'm not sure you'd want to change a whole lot of stuff when a fix could be just around the corner. Apple does release regular updates for iOS and especially when there is a new hardware release like this.

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This problem has plagued front row for years, so I am not sure if this is top priority for Apple to fix. I am just glad to have a solution now as I have like 30 seasons of shows and finding them in the right order is a pain.

spacepower7 said:

Hopefully iTunes 10.1 fixes this.....

My songs in my music playlists are in alphabetical order rather than the order I placed them... Annoying

Click to expand...

iTunes 10.1 doesn't fix this issue at least the beta i am running doesn't