I've done a bit of a search but haven't found anything useful.
Can someone please explain for me the purpose of "Up Next"? I also use Plex and they have an "On Deck", it seems similar but doesn't quite work the same.
For example I have a tv series I'm watching, but "Up Next" always seems to go straight to the most recent episode, even if I'm not yet up to that episode.
Channels uses your watch state to suggest the next episode to watch. It does this based on when you last watched it. It does this by calculating it based in the episodes in your recorded show.
So if you watch a show, the next show it shows there will be the next episode of that show. If you don’t watch it, it will slowly drift to the back of the list as you watch other shows and Up Next suggests those next episodes.
If you’re all caught up on a show, it won’t be in the list at all.
If you’re always caught up on shows, it’s not nearly as useful, as many people sometimes get behind on shows. Up Next attempts to make it easy to watch your next show, without having to browse around a lot.
That’s def odd behavior. It shouldn’t ever show the newest episode if older ones haven’t been watched.
Up Next also relies on the fact that your shows are marked as watched. Ending them prematurely can sometimes keep them slightly unwatched and throw it off.
Thanks for explaining how it works, perhaps I have jumped the gun. I'll keep an eye on it and do a bit more testing 
Hi - I've spent a little more time looking into this and I'm definitely not getting the correct behaviour. The behaviour seems consistent across the android apps and the web client. Up Next consistently just shows me the latest show, even if there are previous shows that are unwatched.
Happy to share any logs or information that would be useful. I have a show in this state at the moment (the nightly 6pm news).
Please submit diagnostics from your dvr
Actually I've just figured it out. I've set "Show Options", "Watch Newest First" to enabled. If this is enabled then it seems to use that sort order.
Also - the "Watch Newest First" toggle is not updating correctly anymore (although the sort order does actually change when I click it, when I refresh the page, the setting does show that it was changed). Update - odd, I just went back to turn on dev tools to see if there were any errors, and the toggle is working happily now.
Diagnostic logs submitted - 7190bef6-2b37-44cf-a70c-0d64b3de308e
Correct, Up Next will use that setting to decide what to show you.
That doesn't feel very intuitive. On the "Up Next" page, I just want to be able to click play and have it play the episode that I'm currently up to (i.e. the latest unwatched episode). But when I drill down to the show I do prefer having them ordered from newest to oldest. I feel the "Watch Newest First" setting should not influence what is in the "Up Next" screen. I can't quite understand a valid use case for that?
I guess the name is really in the setting, "watch newest first", it's doing exactly what it says 
In my mind that setting was "how should we order the list of episodes for this show".
So perhaps a misunderstanding on my part.
I would like to have an option to "order" which is separate to "watch newest first". I guess a valid use case for this option, ironically, is the nightly news! 
Yes it’s used for both. And it’s designed for daily shows like that where you care about the newest first.
So you inform Channels how you watch, and it uses that information to present you the episodes accordingly. This means the order in Up Next, and how it shows them in the Show view.
This should be fixed now.
i finally see the purpose behind the up next feature. it seems like a great feature. although i cant understand for the life of me. why you dont have a unwatched category on the sidebar. especially since you went threw the time of putting the option on the server side to select individually for each show. i did this, afterwards found out it only works for movies. and then i i need to click 3 menu s to get to just movies that are unwatched. i can see you guys are stretched thin with all the topics and devices you support. but in my opinion if you addressed a handful of topics you could become a multimillionaire company, and tens of millions shortly afterwards. and easily be the only choice for media centers software. and finally getting rid of that pesky plex. ive tested all media player software's over the past 2 decades and quite frankly im sick of looking for a new player that has all the basics and works well. so right now you guys are it. you do the absolute best in handing off streams to the house without over using the transcoding function. the closest too you guys are plex and jellyfin. jellfin does a great job as well, but then i have to use xteve and zaptoxml. so i like to keep things simple. you guys do a a awesome job for mapping guide to channels by using all sources as well, very helpful. well i could talk for ever, thanks for building a great dvr system.