I know Vault Picks were moved out of their own category and combined with the Member Pass for a reason (although I was never entirely clear on what that was, other than people needing time to get used to the system) and that it’s been nearly a year since the change was made. But in that year, the Member Pass has filled with a ton of new content, and is only going to continue growing. It’s now gotten to the point where if I want to view this month’s picks in the Roku app, I have to scroll past the most recent livestreams, all of this year’s new episodes, and all the new shorts (all of which I’ve already watched) before I get to an option to “view all” videos in the Member Pass category. Vault Picks have scrolled completely off the main list of the category. Meanwhile, we have a perfectly good “Vault Picks” category sitting empty. It’s not a huge deal, and I’m okay with not getting my way on this, but I’d personally find it better and easier if we moved them back to their own category.
Somewhat related to this subject, I would love to be able to go directly to the vault pick from the marquee signs on the outside of the Gizmoplex. Maybe that’s not in the spirit of things though?
I agree. I use the app on my smart tv, and the “Vault Picks” are no longer visible unless I select “see all.” It’s just annoying and could be done much easier.
Friendly reminder: If this is a feature you are interested in, please vote! @ivan’s team prioritises work based on votes. So don’t just comment, click that box up there at the top. 
Is there a way to sort newest to oldest? That should place the current Vault Picks first at the beginning of the month, and they’d only fall a few places back by the end of the month.
Not that I can see. They are sorted newest first, but Vault Picks come after episodes and shorts, and there’s no other option to sort them differently. Nor is there a way to jump straight to “view all.” You just have to keep scrolling until you get to that button, and then you get a new screen with everything and you have to start scrolling again.
Yeah, looking again it looks like newest first but within categories. Episodes are together, events are together, shorts are together (because if it were just “newest first” they’d be mixed).
But the most recent event replays are at the top. So whatever mechanism that splits them apart from the other replays could possibly be used for Vault Picks. Maybe they are simply in a “latest category” So they can just be mixed in. But if it’s a clever/complex thing, like “find the most recent date of anything and place just items from that date first, then the others in their groups” then it’s going to be more of a challenge.
Still digging around to try to find an earlier discussion on this where Ivan weighed in, but not finding it yet. I know that the team has very little control over sorting and grouping on the Vimeo OTT side of things.
Thank you for doing the research. When the change was announced, I was all “okay, just go here instead, and hey I normally watch from the bunker with its nice filtering so I don’t really care anyway “ so I ignored the reasoning. I can make some educated guesses about it, but I can’t confirm if I’m correct and don’t want to think too far into solution space if I don’t have the parameters and limitations straight. Also I’m at my for-reals job and should be thinking about that instead.
Ivan has made some variation on this statement about Vimeo on multiple occasions, so I think we can say with some certainty that the way the episodes are organized within the Gizmoplex Pass is out of the MST3K team’s hands. I was thinking there was also a discussion of why Vault Picks were merged together with all other Pass titles but that’s what I’m not able to put my hands on this morning.
Thanks. Yeah, I don’t expect them to be able to add features like new sorting options. But the separate category outside the Member Pass seems from my end like it would be helpful if reinstated. I think, as was said above, that the merging was explained in a KS backer update at the time. October last year, maybe? But I don’t recall the details and I don’t have the wherewithal to go digging for it.
Hmmmm… part of me is thinking that, while dev work is not possible, there might be a way to hack it via config. Like, how is it that episodes/shorts/various picks are all together? Why are the latest events not grouped with the other events? If we could determine what drives the ordering we might be able to use that knowledge to our advantage.
For example, if the videos are in groups and those groups are alphabetical (that doesn’t seem to be the case, but that’s my example), then the Vault Picks group could be named _Vault Picks, or 1. Vault Picks or whatever. We just need to figure out the rules of the existing, unchangeable dev.
Edited to add: reverse engineering is kinda my thing, so I’ll poke around…. uh…. tomorrow I guess. I have a thing tonight. If I can figure out what’s going on I might be able to come up with a way to muck with it (and in turn possibly break something else).
The Vault Picks were initially the only ‘classic’ episodes the team thought they would be able to offer each month. Then they learnt they would be able to offer the entire (available) catalogue, so the vault picks were added back into the rest of the pass, at the time thinking it would be a less cluttered presentation.
Ah, right—it’s been a while. More caffeine please.
Just a quick demonstration for those who don’t watch via Roku.
Ah. That makes sense. Except now the classic episodes are under the “explore” tab and my purchases (including Season 13, the KS reward packages, and monthly Vault Picks) are in my library.
I don’t usually watch via the desktop Virtual Theater, but the Video Fridge there is much easier to navigate in that way. Everything is in one place, but there are easy filters to separate out owned episodes, livestream replays, shorts, individual seasons, or Vault Picks with just a couple of clicks. That’s really well done, and shows what Ivan and the team can do with free rein.
If the reasoning was purely aesthetic and not a technical/administrative decision then I definitely support putting them back in their own place. Especially since we’re left with an upsettingly empty category with the text “thank you Mario, but our Vault Picks are in another castle.”
Not sure how much was aesthetics and how much it was they thought it would be easier if the current stuff was all in one place, instead of clicking all over to get to different things to get to all of that month’s content.
The team knows that the VHX layout isn’t ideal (thus another reason for the theater) and they were trying to make it less painful for those who used it through the apps, I think.
In the end, it may amount to a six of one, half a dozen of the other situation. Neither layout is ideal. Which one is the least painful?
Initially, it was a six of one situation. It’s only recently that Vault Picks started to get bumped off the top line. So it didn’t really make a difference if I went to the Vault category or over to the Member Pass category and moved past the few episodes of Season 13 that had been released.
Now, though, we’ve accrued a ton of new content, which is awesome. Vault picks are getting buried, and they don’t entirely fit in with the Member Pass, which is otherwise exclusively Season 13 content. Now what was six vs half dozen seems more like 5 vs 7 to me. 
The only advantage I see to keeping things as they are is that they’ve been this way for over a year and changing things back might cause some confusion.
(And I know plain text strips away a lot of useful non-verbal cues, so I’ll say one more time that I don’t have a strong feeling here. I keep posting in order to try to clarify things people have asked about and suchlike, but I’m not sitting here hovering over the keyboard glaring at the screen until I get my way, you know? Anyway, I’ve more than said my piece.)
Here’s a wild idea: can Vault picks exist in both places? Member Pass as well as Vault Picks? I suspect they are already being added to the several different flavors of Member Pass (3-month, 6-month, etc) so it’s just a little bit of additional work to add them to Vault Picks. That would remove “where did they go” confusion.
Two updates:
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Vault Picks have been added back into the 9 and 12 month Vault Picks products, so you can find them there as well. (Thanks for the suggestion, @Chris_Combs.)
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We’ve moved Vault Picks up the list within your Member Pass, so the only thing in front of them will be either the most recent Event Replay or the next upcoming Livestream Ticket. Everything else comes after the Vault Picks now, for easier access.