Option to default TV episodes to using the picture of the TV show itself

[tjobbins]

At the moment I am finding that I can't get pictures for most TV episodes.  The TVDB plugin doesn't yet import them, and most IMDB episode entries have no pictures.

I would like thumbnails for all my TV episodes, and I think the best way to ensure this is to have an option to automatically use the Master TV show picture against each episode (i..e use the picture/poster found for the TV show itself.)

So the option would specify "TV episodes use TV show picture if no episode picture is available"

If this is selected:

• Each TV episode is automatically populated with the picture stored against the TV show definition itself. 
• This happens when the TV Show master definition is created, or updated:
• On creation:  After fetching the photo for the Master TV show definition, it would then populate this picture to every episode definition that it has just created
• On edit/update: Every time the Master TV show definition picture changes, it would then scan each episode - if any does not have a picture, it writes the Master TV show picture to them
• On edit/update: It should NOT overwrite any episode that does have a picture.  i.e. if a user has manually added a picture, or a plugin has found one for a given episode, this should not be overwritten by the Master TV show picture

This will ensure that every episode has a picture, defaulting to the Master TV show picture if no specific one can be found for that episode.

Thanks in advance


Tom

[Anson]

in addition, it would be nice to be able adding a picture (and maybe other data) to the midlevel of the hierarchy: the seasons. Since most DVD-releases of series are done as season boxes, the season-level of the hierarchy could get the different pictures of the season boxes which then (according to tjobbin's suggestion) in turn could be applied to all episodes in that season.

an alternate method for achieving a similar effect (without the need to modify handling of the midlevel elements of the hierarchy) might be to add N pictures to the main entry of a series which has N seasons, and automatically use the Nth picture for the Nth season and its episodes.