I open the series folder from the mounted network share and watch it in VLC.

Similar, but I have a RPI by the TV running LibreELEC and Kodi.

Pretty naive to think someone isn’t doing it already, but as someone else said you don’t need to shutdown for it. Infact it is worse if you shut down as you don’t get new data.

It should be doable to so some audio analysis of the episodes. They “always” (I am sure some forget every now and then), have an outro and intro around the ad block. With a clearly defined jingle per podcast. You should be able to make a program that analyses the audio and listens for that block and cuts it out for you.

Nice rack!

That exact same phrase is used in a very different context in other communities!

More often than not that is corporate speak for “we fired the old team and replaced them with cheaper workers. And we didn’t want to pay them to learn the old code/they tried but failed, so we are dumping features now”