I’ve recently gotten into collecting Mystery Science Theater 3000 for my Jellyfin library. For those who aren’t aware, it is technically a TV show, but each episode is a full length feature film. That being the case, these DVD sets tend to have a number of special features specific to each episode.
Now typically, you can create an ‘Extras’ directory specific to each season of a TV show, and that’s where I would normally put the special features. In this case, however, I would prefer the special features to be grouped by episode, rather than being grouped by season. That doesn’t seem to be possible in Jellyfin at the moment.
It could potentially work if I were to classify the episodes as movies, and put the special features in the movie directory instead, but neither TMDB or TTVDB classify MST3K episodes as movies, so I would have to write up all the metadata and images myself, instead of it being added automatically. That would take a lot of work, and it would also end up greatly inflating the size of my movie library.
Any suggestions on what I should do?
Well, I plan on collecting every episode they’re allowed to sell, plus as many special features as possible. I don’t know what you know, but relatively recently, previously out of print episodes have been seeing DVD re-releases on shout factory. We’re at the point now where nearly every episode of every season is available on DVD, minus the few where distribution rights couldn’t be renegotiated. The Shout Factory versions of these DVD’s appear to have a number of special features that were not previously available int eh Rhino DVD releases, So I’ve been buying from there.
I do also plan on collecting the reboot seasons. I know and understand people’s complaints, but I personally like the reboot, speaking as a new fan.
Edit: I should also mention that they started selling digital DRM-free downloads of episodes on their website, which I’m very happy about. You don’t even need to buy DVDs these days, and the digital movies are already in a codec compatible with most Jellyfin clients. Of course, you miss out on special features that way, which is a deal breaker for me.