Interesting. I have a regular- not smart- playlist set up mostly to easily sync video to iDevices for travel but no smart playlists. So I decided to try to create one around actors like you describe just to see if I could repeat the issue. However, the TV app would NOT display the tag to choose actors. Here's the entire list of tags for selection...
Note the Actors tag is missing from the list. One guess is you created these smart playlists in the past when such tags were available and since Apple has cut down the list of tags for smart playlists?
I suggest you try creating a new smart list to see if the Actors tag shows or does not show for you too. If not, perhaps this "ignoring" issue is the cause and Apple will get around to making more tags like that one be used in this way (again)?
More specifically you reference the
Show tag which is still there, so I also created a smart playlist around the show tag and that worked fine. On the Mac, it gathered the shows and on AppleTV it immediately showed the playlist in the Computers app, Playlist list. That offered no apparent way to sort for actors but only show titles.
Two things:
- Are you using the Computers app or the AppleTV app? If one, try the other and see if it presents playlists better. If shows are owned content downloaded to a local attached drive, Computers (which needs "home sharing" turned on) seems much better at everything (and no marketing). IMO, AppleTV app entirely revolves around trying to sell us something else. I've all but given up on using it at all.
- tvOS seems to have a bug in music playlists... that if you add new music to an existing playlist on Mac and then sort it as you want it- I generally sort by song title- all will look as you want it on Mac... but on AppleTV, the new music will not be sorted in the same way. Instead, new tunes are appended on at the bottom. The only remedy I've found that will then sort in the same order as how it is on the Mac is duplicate the playlist and then delete the original. AppleTV will then make the "new" playlist available and however it is sorted on Mac will be the sort on AppleTV. If your issue is that new shows are not automatically appearing in smart playlists, the playlist "new" bug may also apply to video files. If so, on Mac try duplicating one of the playlists and then checking the duplicate on AppleTV (basically forcing it to present the new (but actually just a copy) playlist. If what you seek is in the new one, you may have to use this same trick until Apple decides to tweak tvOS so that it at least periodically refreshes AppleTV versions of playlists or perhaps- smartly- "knows" when you've added new media to a list and refreshes that list immediately.
In the meantime, as the apparently quickest workaround, consider creating
regular playlists and then going into your smart playlist folders and dragging all video into the regular "copy" of the playlists. That should get you an immediate solution until Apple either fixes a bug excluding tags or just decides to put some tags back that someone decided to exclude at some point. Your brain will have to sub in for the "smarts" by updating these "dumb" playlists until the Apple ones are sufficiently smart again.
