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Alternative Episode Groupings

Ideas

Concept:

Implement a frontend dropdown menu on a TV show's page that allows users to toggle between different episode sorting and grouping structures (e.g., DVD Order, Digital Release Order, Story Arcs, specific streaming platform orders).

The Problem:

Currently, users are often restricted to a database's default broadcast episode order. However, many shows (especially anime, long-running cartoons, and shows with messy network histories) have alternative viewing orders that users prefer or are actively using based on the media they own (like DVD boxsets) or the streaming service they are using. When a user's chosen viewing source does not match the default broadcast order, tracking progress becomes confusing and inaccurate.

Posted by Journey ·
3 comments

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Comments3

  • dgw

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    Oct 27

    Looks like I had already upvoted this, but I’m coming back to emphasize my support for it after running into bad data on my account that this could fix.

    Found an anime in my history that has a 26-episode default/broadcast order on TMDB, but my history stops at episode 24. That matches the alternate “blu-ray order” TMDB has for the show. If I could tell WeTrakr to use a selected alternate ordering for any given series, it should take care of this issue and any others like it.

    It would also be super helpful to have this feature for shows that originally aired a double- or triple-length season/series finale, but split it into standard-length episodes for later reruns.

  • tacolosse

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    Oct 19

    TMDB already has the data for this: shows can have episode groups (alternative orders) next to the default seasons, and its API exposes them. Re:Zero is a good example. TMDB's default order is one 85-episode season, which is what WeTrakr shows ([Re:Zero link]), but its "Seasons" episode group splits it into Season 1 (25), Season 2 (25), Season 3 (16) and Season 4 (19): https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/65942/episode_groups. Letting us pick an episode group per show would fix this, and the heatmap would become readable for shows like this too.

    • Journey

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      Oct 23

      Yes both TMDB and TVDB have this data, it’s just a matter of hooking into it and having things work correctly.