The Podcast That Would Not Die!!!
Several months ago, my iTunes downloaded the latest episode of one of my podcasts (Buzz Out Loud, in case you were curious, though I really doubt that this matters). I listened to it on one of my devices (I forget which). The little blue "this podcast is new" indicator disappeared from that episode's entry in iTunes, and the next time iTunes updated my podcasts, that now-listened-to entry was automatically deleted in accordance with my iTunes preferences ("keep: all unplayed episodes" in the Podcasts tab of iTunes preferences)
So far, this seems like a completely normal set of transactions. And it was... until one day I fired up Front Row to listen to something or other.
Like a soul that has not completely "crossed over" into the beyond, the entry for the podcast that I listened to above still appeared in my Front Row. It did NOT have the blue "this podcast is new" dot next to it. Attempting to play this episode resulted in Front Row giving the error message "Front Row cannot play the current song," presumably because this podcast's actual file was deleted from my disk.
Fast forward a couple months, to when the Apple TV 2.0 update finally dropped. I eagerly updated my Apple TV to check out the new goodies. Lo and behold, when I entered the "Podcasts" section... yup, you guessed it, just like what happened on my Front Row: the entry for the episode of Buzz Out Loud I listened to months ago still appears.
"Fine," I said, "let's go ahead and unsubscribe from the entire Buzz Out Loud feed and delete it from my computer." I did this, and even rebooted (for good measure). Unfortunately that didn't kill this podcast's "dead" entry from both my Apple TV and Front Row.
As a last ditch effort to stop the insanity, I resubscribed to the Buzz Out Loud feed, and noticed that that episode (the one that I listened to long ago and still insists on hanging around my computer) is still available for download from the Cnet servers (and is thus still in their XML feed). "Well, if I download this episode and listen to it, and then let it delete itself normally, then maybe that will stop this whole thing," thought I. Unfortunately this did NOT work; downloading this episode again results in TWO copies of this episode appearing in both Front Row and my Apple TV. Listening to one of them clears the "new" flag from BOTH entries, and when iTunes removes/deletes the just-listened-to episode from its database, this only deletes one of the duplicates in Front Row/Apple TV, leaving, once again, an "undead" entry for a podcast that does not exist in any way, shape, or form on my computer.
Does anyone have any idea of what's going on here, and how I can rectify it (hopefully short of blowing away my entire iTunes library and re-importing everything from scratch - that would be a HUGE pain)?
MacBook Core 2 Duo 1.83GHz, MacBook Pro Core Duo 1.83GHz, Mac mini G4/1.42GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.2), AirPort Extreme (with Gigabit Ethernet)